Pride in Identity and its Place

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Every individual has multiple identities. Some identities, like those of caste, religion, state, nation etc, are determined by circumstances of birth, over which the individual has no control.

Caste is an unchangeable identity. You can’t choose another in place of the one you were born in unless you wage war and carve out a kingdom of your own, in which case you may find priests who are willing to proclaim you a Kshatriya through a ceremony.

Even subdivisions within a caste are insulated from one another by insurmountable barriers. Descendants of Pandits who migrated from the Kashmir Valley centuries ago remain Kashmiri Pandits wherever they are because under caste rules their identity is permanent and unchangeable.

While identities of religion, state and nation can be changed, few people exercise the option. Those who exercise the option often do so on practical considerations dictated by social, economic or political factors. The identity so acquired is then inherited by their progeny.

I am, therefore, amused --- and sometimes perturbed -- when I see the lengths to which people, in their innocence (not to say ignorance), are ready to go to defend an identity which they acquired by sheer chance or force of circumstances. Pride in an identity is not something one is born with. It is a cultivated one. The family as also social, religious and political bodies play a part in the process.


Illustration credit: wikispaces.com

Those born under beneficial conditions quite naturally want to hold on to the blessings which circumstances of birth have conferred on them. Those born under adverse conditions quite naturally want to shake off the curse which circumstances of birth have cast on them. The authors of the caste system used the Karma theory to justify the good luck the iniquitous order bestowed on some and the bad luck it imposed on some others.

When Gandhi visited Vaikom in Kerala in 1925 while the Congress was conducting a satyagraha campaign against the bar on use of the road around a temple by members of the so-called lower castes, he met the head of the Namboodiri family of Indamthuruthi, hoping to persuade him to relent on the issue of discrimination.  Do the Vedas sanction restrictions on the basis of caste, he asked. The Namboodiri said the disabilities of the so-called lower castes were the result of their deeds in previous births.

Since Gandhi was not a Brahmin, the Namboodiri did not let him into his house. He received him in a shamiana in the forecourt of his house. With the collapse of the feudal order, the Indamthuruthi family’s fortunes declined and it had to give up the house from which Gandhi was kept out because he was a Vaisya, and not a Brahmin. That house became the office of a trade union of toddy tappers belonging to a so-called lower caste. So much for Karma.

This is not to decry pride in an identity one is born with. Such pride can serve a useful purpose. It can help one to maintain one’s self-esteem. However, there is a corollary to this. Only those lucky to be born under favourable circumstances can develop such pride. The unlucky ones cannot take pride in their identity. They experience lack of self-esteem, and may even be reduced to a state of self-deprecation. The most pernicious aspect of the caste system is the way the dominant forces consciously undermine the self-esteem of the suppressed. The victors obliterated the history of the vanquished and forged their own in its place. In the process, they boosted their own pride and destroyed that of the vanquished.

Failure to understand the limited nature of the usefulness of pride in identity can have deleterious consequences. It can lead to hallucinations of divine favour (of which notable examples are the Jewish belief that they are God’s Chosen People and the Vedic concept that the way to propitiate the gods is to take care of the Brahmins) or racial superiority (of which the best example is Nazi propagation of Aryan superiority).

The different identities of an individual are not packed in the body or mind one on top of another.  It is therefore absurd to say “I am a …. first and all the rest later.” When a person does that it simply means he places a particular identity above all other because he finds it convenient or beneficial for some reason.

A few years ago, a CPI(M) minister of West Bengal, Subhas Chakraborty, proclaimed that he was “a Hindu and a Brahmin first”. Thereby he tacitly acknowledged that being a Hindu and a Brahmin gives him greater self-esteem than being a Marxist and a minister. A week later he called a press conference and announced that he looked at everything on the basis of dialectical materialism and did not believe in religious practices or casteism. When the party waved the stick, he found it prudent (or should I say convenient and beneficial) to revise his position publicly.

Circumstances can force not only individuals but even groups of people to modify their position in this way. We don’t have to look farther than the recent history of the subcontinent to understand how the relative position of various identities is adjusted for personal, social, political or economic reasons.


Illustration credit: franceinlondon.com

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was not a practising Muslim, kept aloof from the founding of the Muslim League and pooh-poohed Chaudhuri Rahmat Ali’s idea of a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent, later became the foremost champion of Pakistan. When the state of Pakistan became a reality he declared that all its citizens will be equal regardless of religion or caste. But it was too late. The forces unleashed by him turned it into a religious state.

Twenty-five years after Muslims of East Bengal became part of Pakistan, upholding the primacy of their religious identity, they revolted under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s leadership. As they put language above religion, East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

There are people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who believe Partition was a mistake. This does not mean it should be undone. The final test of nationhood is whether people have the will to live together. Pakistan became a reality because at the given moment a large section of the Muslim minority of the subcontinent lost the will to live together with the majority and inclined towards the idea of a separate homeland, apprehensive of their future in Hindu-dominated India. Bangladesh became a reality because Bengalis of Pakistan lost of the will to live together with the rest of the Pakistanis, apprehensive of their future in Urdu/Punjabi dominated Pakistan.

There may be people who still have dreams of a Reunited Pakistan or a Reunited India. They should ask themselves if they have conducted themselves in such a way as to remove the apprehensions which led to the breakup.

We have around us a host of vested interests who, for their own reasons, want to hold us down at various levels by playing upon particular identities. "Patriotism," George Bernard Shaw said, “is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.” This observation is also true of pride in various other identities.

Facebook note dated September 2, 2014 https://www.facebook.com/notes/brp-bhaskar/pride-in-identity-and-its-place/746275582096813

Global call for action to eliminate caste-based discrimination

The following is a joint declaration issued by activists from caste-affected countries and representatives of international bodies:

We, over hundred Dalit activists and social movement leaders from the caste affected countries of Bangladesh, India, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Yemen, solidarity networks from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, members of International Organizations, International Non Governmental Organizations, and researchers, united for the International Consultation on Good Practices and Strategies to Eliminate Caste Based Discrimination, and launched this Declaration and Global Call for Action.

Building upon the Kathmandu Dalit Declaration (2004), the Ambedkar Principles (2005), The Hague Declaration on the Human Rights and Dignity of Dalit Women (2006), and the Geneva Declaration for the Decisive Decade against Discrimination Based on Work and Descent (2011);

Recognizing that caste-based discrimination is a violation of international human rights law that affects more than 260 million people worldwide, particularly in South Asia, including Dalits and other communities discriminated against of the basis of work and descent;

Condemning the heinous structures of caste and the continued practice of caste-based discrimination in the public and private spheres, the impunity for crimes committed, and the egregious impact on affected persons, including violence, rape, poverty, landlessness, caste-based slavery and other forms of economic, social, cultural and political exclusion;

Recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family and holds that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms therein without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status;

Confirming the obligations of States to eliminate caste-based discrimination and emphasizing the responsibilities of international and national human rights bodies, the private sector, multilateral and bilateral development agencies and financial institutions, and non-governmental organisations to assist in the elimination of caste-based discrimination through local, national, regional and international measures;

Deeply concerned that women and girls affected by caste-based discrimination face intersecting forms of discrimination and particular human rights violations such as rape, sexual exploitation, forced prostitution and domestic violence, and less access to political and economic participation;

Affirming the (draft) UN Principles and Guidelines for the Effective Elimination of Discrimination Based on Work and Descent, including the general and specific measures proposed in the areas of survey and research; segregation; protection against violence; access to justice; equal employment opportunities; forced labour; equal access to health, food, water, housing and education; awareness raising; discrimination against women; participation; humanitarian and development assistance; market enterprises; international cooperation; and diaspora communities;

Recalling General Recommendation XXIX on descent-based discrimination adopted by the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination;

Recalling International Labour Organization Convention No. 111 concerning Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation, and its accompanying Recommendation No. 111;

Recalling also General Comment No. 20 on Non-Discrimination in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comments No. 25 and 28 adopted by the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, and General Recommendation No. 7 adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child;

Recalling the global commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and the urgent need to adopt enhanced measures to ensure that all persons can benefit from the MDGs without discrimination on the basis of caste;

Deploring the failures to implement fully legislation and policies to combat caste-based discrimination and the resultant continued exclusion and marginalization, including political exclusion, and lack of equal access to public services, land, education, markets, credit and proper employment;

Deeply concerned that in situations of humanitarian crisis and in disaster response, caste-based discrimination continues to exclude affected communities from equal access to assistance and relief measures;

Calling for a world conference on the elimination of caste-based discrimination and a UN Convention on Caste- based Discrimination;

Calling for coherence in policies to eliminate caste-based discrimination and adherence to human rights obligations, including the prohibition of caste-based discrimination, and to this end, we issue this Global Call for Action to Eliminate Caste-Based Discrimination.

Urgent Global Call for Action to Eliminate Caste Discrimination
We make this urgent Global Call for Action to citizens of the world to bring an end to millennia of immense human suffering, resulting from a brutal system of caste segregation, affecting over 260 million people worldwide.

We support the words of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: "Other seemingly insurmountable walls, such as slavery and apartheid, have been dismantled in the past. We can and must tear down the barriers of caste too."

We call for leadership, cooperation and constructive engagement at the local, national, regional and international levels to achieve a caste-free world.

We call for the empowerment of individuals and communities facing caste-based discrimination in decision- making at all levels of governance and in the implementation of policies that affect them.

We declare that structures of caste or analogous systems of inherited status constitute an offence to human dignity, a barrier to equality and a form of apartheid that has been perpetuated in the public and private sphere, largely with limited, or no access to justice for its victims.

We appeal for effective police reforms for investigations, independent and neutral prosecution mechanisms and an unbiased judiciary that is committed to uphold justice.

We deplore notions of ‘untouchability', pollution and caste hierarchy that cause segregation in villages, schools and places of worship, restrict individuals to the most menial and dangerous jobs, and prevent access to justice for crimes committed against affected communities.

We Appeal to All Stakeholders to Unite to Eliminate Caste-Based Discrimination
To Governments, we applaud those states where progressive legislative and policy measures to eliminate caste-based discrimination have been adopted and we urge the full and immediate implementation of these measures and monitoring of their enforcement We call for the development of new legislation and policies to eliminate caste-based discrimination where such measures are lacking. We appeal to governments to officially recognize caste-based discrimination and to implement without delay measures for its elimination.

We call for National Action Plans to eliminate caste-based discrimination in all affected countries, to include also specific provisions for women. We demand that all relevant UN recommendations on caste-based discrimination be put into effect immediately.

To UN Human Rights Bodies, we commend the work of the Treaty Bodies, Special Procedures, and other mechanisms, with the support of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and we call for further development of policy recommendations and technical support to eliminate caste-based discrimination.

To UN Country Teams, Multilateral and Bilateral Development Agencies, and International Financial Institutions, we welcome existing efforts to eliminate caste-based discrimination and we call for all relevant country strategies and agreements to include measures to overcome caste-based discrimination.

To the Private Sector, we urge efforts to eliminate caste-based discrimination within their own organizations, as well as within the operations of their subsidiaries and through their supply chains, and call for the application of the Ambedkar Principles and for equal access to employment opportunities.

To the Member States of the G-20, we recommend the integration of measures to eliminate caste-based discrimination into policies for protecting marginalized groups from the global financial crisis and into all their bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.

To Regional Inter-Governmental Organisations, including the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, European Union, African Union, Association of Southeast Asian States, and the Organization of American States, we call for attention to caste-based discrimination in their respective agendas and the adoption of appropriate dialogues, political statements and policy recommendations to member states.

To Civil Society Organisations, we call for alliances with communities discriminated against on the basis of caste in order to build strategies across relevant sectors of advocacy and service-delivery to eliminate caste discrimination. We strongly encourage drawing from the good practices of Dalits and other affected groups in the critical analysis of public institutions, media and justice mechanisms.

To the Public, we call for an immediate end to caste systems and to practices of caste-based discrimination and untouchability in private and public life. We strongly encourage expressions of solidarity with caste- affected groups and support to government reforms for the elimination of caste-based discrimination.

To Governments of Selected Countries Affected by Caste
India, we recognise the regional leadership taken in the fight against caste, such as the adoption of Constitutional provisions and guarantees, and other important legislative and policy frameworks, including affirmative action. We call for the full implementation of these measures to overcome the human rights violations that persist, including ensuring access to rights, monitoring of enforcement, and identifying and rectifying gaps in legislation and policy.

Nepal, we applaud the Interim Constitution, inclusive Constituent Assembly, establishment of the National Dalit Commission, adoption of proportional political representation for Dalits and declaring the country as an untouchability free state and we call for the full and continued implementation of these reforms, including the adoption of a National Action Plan. We further urge an inclusive State re-structuring with Constitutional guarantees of special provisions for the promotion and protection of all rights for Dalits.

Bangladesh, we welcome the recognition of caste-based discrimination and we call for the adoption and full implementation of appropriate legislative and policy measures to eliminate caste-based discrimination.

Sri Lanka, we call for the official recognition of caste-based discrimination and the adoption and implementation of the required legislative and policy measures for its elimination.

Pakistan, we call for the official recognition of caste-based discrimination and the implementation without delay of legislative and policy measures for its elimination.

Japan, we applaud the adoption of legislative and policy measures to address Buraku discrimination and now call for enactment of a law to prohibit racial discrimination, including Buraku discrimination.

United Kingdom, we call for the adoption of Clause 9 (5)(a) to allow for the amendment to outlaw caste-based discrimination as part of the UK Equality Act (2010).

African states, we call for the official recognition of caste-based and analogous forms of discrimination and the implementation without delay of measures for its elimination.

Caste-affected diaspora states, we call for investigation into practices of caste-based discrimination and recommend the adoption of legislation to prohibit caste-based discrimination.

Courtesy: Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong.

Counting the numbers

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The massive operation of counting the people of India enters the final phase this week when 2.7 million trained personnel will spread across the country to enumerate all those whom they can find. Census operations have been a regular decennial exercise since late 19th century. Rising population has made every census a bigger undertaking than the previous one.

China and India are the only countries with populations in excess of one billion. China crossed the one billion mark in 1980. India followed 19 years later. Currently China’s population is estimated at more than 1.3 billion and India’s at close to 1.2 billion. Demographers say there is little possibility of any other country entering the Billion Club.-- ulGf Today, Sharjah, February 7, 2011.

A few years ago the UN Population Division estimated that by 2016 India will have a population of 1.22 billion, which will be larger than the combined population of the countries of Europe including Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and the United States.

It also said that by 2045 India, with a population of 1.501 billion, will replace China, with a population of 1.496 billion, as the most populous country.

The British Indian authorities scheduled the first census in the subcontinent for 1871 but it materialised only in the following year. Since 1881 census operations have taken place every 10 years.

Departing from the practice at home, the British included in the Indian census data on race, religion and caste presumably to fine-tune their divide-and-rule policy. Early in the 20th century, one U.N. Mukherji of Kolkata, citing census figures, claimed Hindus would be swallowed up by others in about 420 years. The fear that he kindled still animates Hindu communalism.

The census data helped the socially backward sections to understand their plight and demand justice. By the 1930s, progressive princely states like Kolhapur, Mysore, Travancore and Baroda and British-ruled Madras Presidency introduced reservation in the services and in educational institutions for them.

In 1941, the colonial administration, under the influence of the dominant castes already well entrenched in the bureaucracy, decided to stop collection of caste data. However, at the instance of an organisation of the Maithili Brahmins of Bihar, it gathered data about that community that year for a small fee.

The Constitution, as amended in 1951, empowers the government to make special provisions for advancement of socially and educationally backward classes. Absence of reliable caste data has hindered identification of groups which need such provisions. Conceding demands by some political parties and social organisations, the government has agreed to gather caste data this year. This will be done separately between June and September, after the census operations are completed.

Work on the 2011 census began on April 1 last year. By September, the enumerators completed listing of houses in all but some villages under the control of Maoist rebels. An attempt will be made soon to go into those villages too.

This time, besides counting all people in the territory of India and classifying them on the basis of gender, religion, occupation and education, the enumerators will gather data on a number of other subjects. These will include personal particulars like nationality and whether they have bank accounts and cell phones and whether they use the Internet.

On the basis of the data the government will prepare a National Population Register which will contain photographs and fingerprints of all persons. It will be sent to the Unique Identification Authority of India which has been authorised to generate a Unique Identity (UID) for each resident of India who has completed 18 years and issue a smart card.

The UID project, estimated to cost about Rs1,500 billion, has been entrusted to an independent authority headed by information technology expert Nandan Nilekani.

The government claims the data bank will help draw up focussed development plans. However, a section of civil society views it as an intrusion into civil liberties and has mounted a campaign against it.

“Let us not be naïve,” Jean Drèze, development economist with special interest in issues like hunger, rural employment and gender inequality, said recently. “This is not a social policy initiative. It is a national security project.”

Critics point out that India, which has no reliable data protection law, is not equipped to deal with problems like trading and selling of information which other countries with national identification systems have faced.

British example of treating caste as an aspect of race

AVINASH PANDEY

Britain, in a major victory for the movement against caste based discrimination and atrocities, can soon declare caste prejudice unlawful under laws against racial discrimination becoming the first country of the world to do so. The development was imminent in the wake of the fact that the House of Lords had already passed the Equality Bill empowering the government to treat caste as 'an aspect of race' in March this year leaving just one more step of getting it passed by the House of Commons to be enacted as law.

The victory has come as a result of the valiant struggle of the Dalit groups along with members of the broader civil society against the exploitative and oppressive system of caste, amidst tremendous opposition of the Indian government and the right wing Hindu groups based in Britain.

The significance of the development lies in the fact that it has taken almost a decade to come since 2001 when the Government of India had succeeded in botching up the attempt of the Dalit Rights Group together with the broader civil society to make caste based discrimination an aspect of racial discrimination at the Durban World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Government of India claimed the caste issues as ‘internal matter of India’ and asserted that they were making all attempts to put an end to caste based discrimination.

What it forgot in doing that was its own, and glorious, role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. If caste issues are an internal matter of India, would not apartheid be an internal issue of the governments of apartheid-era South Africa? So why did India play a crucial role in mobilising the world opinion against apartheid?

The government of India tried to further substantiate its claim by asserting the caste issues as intra-racial and intra-cultural even while conceding the existence of discrimination. Soli Sorabjee, the then Attorney General of India, maintained that the only reason behind India’s attempt to keep caste discrimination off the agenda of Durban Conference was that “it will distract participants from the main topic: racism”. Even while conceding that caste discrimination in India is 'undeniable' he stressed that 'caste and race are entirely different'.

It could very well be. After all, no two systems of social stratification in this world are absolutely similar to each other. A lot of factors, from culture to economy, intercede with the systems of stratification to produce the division of power and hierarchy in the society and make the systems, in the process, absolutely distinct from one another in internal structure. The crucial question, however, is not about their distinctiveness but their efficacy in maintaining and safeguarding social hierarchies.

Sadly, Indian caste system has proved itself to be one of the worst, if not the worst, system of social stratification for maintaining and perpetuating social hierarchies. Most probably, humankind has never devised a more comprehensive system of keeping a section of society under perpetual subjugation amidst inhuman conditions. It has never devised a worse way of dehumanising fellow human beings and reducing them to being mere labour force devoid of any dignity leave aside rights. Everything said and done, when it comes to committing atrocities on people, the caste system has proved itself to be far more clinical in brutalising its victims than race and not less.

The argument of the Indian government that caste based discrimination should not be included under the category of racial discrimination because it is making serious progress in the issue by having protective laws and positive discrimination fails miserable in the wake of data produced by its own agencies.

For example, the number of crimes against people belonging to the Scheduled Castes as per records of the National Crime Records Bureau of India, a body of ministry of Home Affairs, went up to 33615, an increase of more than 2 percent from the preceding year. Or the fact that the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act does not get applied even in such ghoulish cases of caste based atrocities as in the killing of a Dalit family in Khairlanji while committing brutal rapes on the women speaks volumes about the seriousness of the efforts of the government.

The second argument of Indian government, unfortunately backed by a few leading sociologists, was that since 'race' is a not a meaningful biological category in India and all attempts of profiling different castes along racial lines have fallen flat. Their claim is that even if caste is based on descent it is entirely different from race.

Even if the discrimination against the Dalits is intra-racial, the consequences for them are no less brutal than that in racism. On a more fundamental level, the lack of 'scientific' evidence may prove the absence of 'race' in India but not the absence of 'racism', an ideological structure based on the belief of superiority of some people because of birth and inferiority of others because of the same! And there is no doubt that this ideology is becoming stronger day by day despite all the attempts of Indian government to put an end to this ‘evil’ practice.

The seriousness of the government on the issue speaks for itself in its acts. After all, the government's dogged opposition to the inclusion of caste based discrimination does not come out of some failure to understand the ground realities out of sheer ignorance. It reflects the mindset and the psyche of the government and the people manning it. The stand of the government emanates from that pre-modern, barbaric and regressive social structure of caste that rules the country under its democratic façade. A facade that gets exposed more often than not by the deeds of all organs of the state, including its judiciary.

It is hard to believe that even judiciary can do that but even a cursory glance on its track records bear out the fact. Be it the highly misogynist and casteist verdict in Mathura rape case ((Tukaram V. State of Maharshtra, AIR 1979 SC 185) when the Supreme Court overruled the decision of the Bombay High Court convicting two policemen for raping Mathura, a 16-year-old girl because of the fact that the girl was an ‘illiterate and orphaned tribal girl’ and was of loose character by implication to the recent verdict of Maharashtra High Court in Khairlanji massacre, the judiciary has proved itself complicit in letting the government off its responsibility of abolishing caste based discrimination.

At times, ubfortunately, it has went all the distance to be part of the perpetuators ad not only accomplices of caste discrimination. Like in the infamous and stinking observation of the trial judge in the Bhanwari Devi rape case in 1995 that because Hindu scriptures do not allow upper caste men to touch a low caste woman, the accused could not have raped the Dalit victim. This case and many others have put our constitution to shame.

And that is why, compartmentalising the issue of caste into the 'scientific' and 'cultural' aspects and then prioritising the scientific ones to assert that caste is not race is not only incorrect but in fact a deceitful attempt to violate the spirit of the constitution of India if not the letters itself, and should be fought against from within and outside.

As a matter of fact, the meaning of the term 'descent' has been expanded to include 'discrimination based on caste' ,by the general recommendation number 29, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) 1969. Indian government will do well to remember that it is a signatory to that convention along with more than 170 other countries.

It will also do well to take note of the fact that the lives of more than 165 million citizens is not a question of intellectual theorising over whether race is caste or not before putting its act together and cracking down on all forms of caste atrocities decisively. By then, it can begin with accepting that caste is a form of racial discrimination, at least of racism if not of the 'pure' (in the Brahiminical sense) biological category of race!

Meanwhile, lets us all support the British Dalits in safeguarding their hard won victory against the demon of caste, threatened by the right wing Hindu organisation in Britain as well as Indian government which is, reportedly, trying to arm-twist the British government into not intervening in its 'internal' matter. Making that absurd claim amounts to appropriating anything relating to Hindu religion as ‘internal’ and caste serious aspersions on the secular credentials of Indian state. Does Indian government want to claim that all issues concerning Hindus are its ‘internal’ issues, throwing all its secular pretensions away?

After all, caste based atrocities have long ceased to confine themselves in Indian subcontinent. If the gory facts about honour killings taking place in Britain and Canada among other places were not proof enough, the recent killing of a Sikh religious leader belong to the Ravidasi sect (a Dalit sect) in Vienna leaves no scope for doubts about the same.

We can begin by standing by the policy and reminding the Indian government not to meddle in the internal issues of Britain, as it is dealing with an issue concerning its citizens and has nothing to do with a ‘secular’ India. Further, no government can sit idle when caste issues lead to illegal confinements, abductions, forced marriages, and even killings. It is the Indian state which has failed to contain the demon of caste, leave aside killing it, and it has no right to demand the same indifference and disdain for human life from a sovereign state for such a pressing issue.

Avinash Pandey, alias Samar, a research scholar based in New Delhi, is currently in Hong Kong on assignment with the Asian Human Rights Commission, which has distributed this article. He can be contacted at samaranarya@gmail.com

India's police are its worst enemy

BASIL FERNANDO

On 23 May 2010, police officers, including a woman police constable, reportedly tortured and abused a mother and her 12-year-old son in Rajouri Garden Police Outpost in Delhi. It is reported that the officers forced Mala (name changed) to strip naked in front of her minor son and demanded her to have sex with her son. Upon refusal, one of the police officers asked Mala to have sex with him. Mala, a slum dweller from Delhi's Mayapuri area had gone to the police outpost with her husband to enquire why her two sons were detained at the police station.

The police on 22 May arrested Mala's two sons, aged 12 and 10, on the accusation that they had stolen Rs. 6,000 from a car. The torture and abuse was reportedly to force the 12-year-old boy to confess the crime and return the money. As the result of a complaint lodged by Mala with the help of a local human rights organization, the Delhi Police Commissioner, Mr. Y. S. Dadwal, suspended from service Woman Head Constable Amrita Singh and Constables Pramod Kumar and Santosh of Rajouri Garden Police Post. The Assistant Sub Inspector who was in charge of the outpost was transferred from the outpost.

This incident reported from an Indian police station, does not surprise anyone who understands the Indian caste system and the country's policing system.

India, the second most populated country in the world, is today facing the challenge of becoming a modern nation, and taking the place it deserves in the community of nations. However, it has two great obstacles in achieving this aim. One is India's caste system and the other is its policing system.

Caste is the curse of the Indian nation. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, realized what a tremendous obstacle caste poses to India.

To be a civilization that considers inequality as an ideal is of course the worst obstacle that any nation can have in entering the modern world. There is no other principle, more important to the modern world than the recognition of equality of the people. The principle was agreed upon by India when it agreed on its constitution. However at that moment itself India's Dalit leader and father of the country's constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, pointed out that realizing this ideal will be the greatest challenge India will face in the future.

It cannot be said that India has done enough in order to meet this challenge.

The test of what India has done to meet the challenge of living up to the idea it has accepted in terms of democracy are the measures it has taken or not taken in order to make the Indian police a law enforcement system that accepts the principle of equality. No law enforcement agency in a modern democracy could function if it rejects the very notion on which the constitution of the nation is based. However Indian police has not accepted this notion of equality so far.

In fact it has become the instrument with which ancient rules are still maintained in India. It is an instrument with which the poor are suppressed and are prevented from airing their voice to the rest of the nation.

In a democracy the people of the country are allowed to talk to each other. Democracy is based on the principle of discourse. A discourse essentially means the right of all to talk on an equal basis to each other.

India's poor are prevented from playing this role. They are prevented by enormous use of force in order to prevent them from talking. Police with their fists and their batons and nowadays with guns prevent the people from asserting their voice and talking to the nation on the basis of equality.

Today India is facing an enormous problem of violence. Often it is attributed to those who are called Maoists/Naxalites. However, the root cause of violence in India is India's own mentalities and deep-rooted systems of operation which refuse to go away. And this violence is expressed best through the Indian police. India's violence is essentially a hostility that generates through the Indian policing system.

Indian government has declared its desire to deal with the problems of the people on the basis of equality and dealing with conflicts in a manner deserving of a great nation. However Indian government has done little to reform its police. If Indian government stops making empty promises and get down to the business of reforming its police, India will be able to deal with the problems of violence in a completely different manner.

When the ordinary Indian has the right and opportunities to express themselves freely as the constitution promised them, the country will be able to solve its problems by a discourse among its citizens. Preventing this discourse has generated violence.

The country's Prime Minister and the government he leads should reflect on the Delhi incident cited above that happened in a police outpost in the national capital. The details available about the incident are so horrific that it is hard to imagine that such an incident can happen in any civilisation. However, in India it happens every day because some people are not considered as human beings. When the mentality of country's law enforcing system is such that some people are seen as cattle and not as human beings, there cannot be peace in that nation.

It is very easy to dismiss this incident as an act of perversion of a few policemen and a policewoman; however, this is not an act of perversion. This is an expression of the normal state of the Indian mind that prevails within Indian police stations. It is this normalcy that is frightening.

If India wants to be a true democracy, and if India wants to be respected among the community of nations, India must deal with its greatest enemy, its own police.

Basil Fernando is a distinguished human rights lawyer and leads Hong Kong based organizations, the Asian Human Rights Commission and the Asian Legal Resource Centre.

AHRC: India’s conscience nailed in the gutter of caste

The Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong, says in a statement:

The stoning to death of 22-year-old Swapna and her husband 28-year-old Sunkari Sriniwas on 23 May by Swapna's family near Krishnajiwadi village, Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh state is one more proof to the stark reality of the continuing practice of caste based discrimination and caste prejudices in India. Swapna belongs to a Hindu upper caste family. Her parents and relatives were opposed to Swapna's marriage with Sriniwas, a Dalit.

The family believed that one of them marrying a lower caste is a shame upon the family and that other upper caste families will ostracise them for having a relationship with an untouchable.

Despite her family's resistance, Swapna married her fiancée Sriniwas in March this year. Swapna's family wrecked vengeance upon the couple by storming into Sriniwas' house, dragging the newlywed couple out and later stoning them to death just outside their village. A case of murder is registered against the suspects by the local police.

The brutal murder of Swapna and Sriniwas must shame every person who cares to be called an Indian.

While India has been defiant and sensitive to national and international criticism on everything related to caste based discrimination, it has refused to show similar sensitivity in dealing with the issue at the domestic level. Though the country had enacted laws to counter caste based discrimination, of which some are currently under review, like the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 it is a reality, that at the very minimum, the implementation of these legislations are half hearted and often left at the mercy of caste prejudiced law enforcement officers.

Though India boasts about some of its senior bureaucrats, a former President, Chief Ministers and constitutional court judges including the former Chief Justice as members of the Dalit community, in reality, the effect has been only symbolic. The ordinary Dalit continues to face discrimination and social stigmatisation throughout the country. The fact that the parents of a woman went to the extent of stoning their own daughter to death for marrying an untouchable Dalit, underlines the fact that mere legislations will not end caste based discrimination. The incident also is the grim reminder to the fact that caste prejudice is deep-rooted in India.

Caste based discrimination is widely considered to be worse than slavery and any other forms of discrimination known to human. Over the period of the past 3000 years, it has had its influence sans continents. While caste, its parallels and their influence have been mostly wiped off from the society in most parts of the world, in South Asia, in particular Nepal and India, caste remains the singular denominator with which individuals are evaluated in the society. To deal with such a deep-rooted violence mere law making is not enough.

A legal text is only the mere codification of certain principles, norms and rules. In punitive jurisprudence, a law could also be a deterrent against a crime. But the deterrence factor of the crime, in this case, caste based discrimination as referred to in the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, depends upon the effectiveness in the execution of the law. This is where India and its entire justice institutions and policies have failed.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has documented cases over the past ten years, where atrocities committed against the members of the lower caste were refused to be registered as crimes at police stations. The general failure of the law enforcement mechanism in the country coupled with the caste prejudice of the officer who runs the system poses a double walled challenge to a complainant who would want to register and investigate his complaint and prosecute a person who has committed a crime that is covered under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

In addition to the lack of willingness of the government to root out caste prejudice is the omnipresence of the caste prejudiced mind in government policies. One of the worst forms of caste based discrimination is the continuing practice of manual scavenging. The Indian version of manual scavenging is literally carrying of human excreta on heads by the Dalits, in particular by the members of the lowest of the lower caste communities.

In spite of a dozen laws preventing manual scavenging the practice continues in India due to more than one reason, of which an important one is the lack of adequate sanitary facilities in most parts of the country. Investment in proper sanitation facilities is a factor conveniently overlooked even in the national capital, New Delhi. Of course a government has no reason to spend money on sanitation if there are a few million lower caste persons destined to do the job of scavenging for a meagre pay.

The lower caste has also been let down by their own leaders like Ms. Mayawati, the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who have spent millions worth of tax payers' money to erect her own statues and that of her deceased political mentor.

Whenever there has been a national and/or international debate on the issue, so far the government of India has prevented any form of intervention on the issue from external agencies like the United Nations on the ground that caste and dealing with caste is an internal matter of the country. This is similar to the arguments of the Sri Lankan President, Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, and Mr. Robert Gabriel Mugabe the President of Zimbabwe that ethnic and other state sponsored violence is a matter of internal discussion of their respective countries and that no external help is required to sort it out.

The unique and staunch resistance posed by the government of India against any form of assistance to deal with caste based discrimination in India has resulted in the practice being allowed to continue unabated. Though, it is not for an external agency to resolve a domestic issue, but receiving some help would not hurt.

There are thousands of couples and individuals who have faced similar fate as that of Swapna and Sriniwas in India. There will be many more. But the ultimate blame for allowing such dehumanising practice to continue must be upon the governments that have ruled India for the past 62 years.

Caste prejudice and caste based violence in India can be addressed. But that requires a change in the government's Brahminical mind, irrespective of its political colour. Until that happen India will have to bear the burden of carrying a broom of shame perpetually tied to its back.

No Longer At Ease: From Dinakaran To Koda

BOBBY KUNHU
Countercurrents.org

Let me set out with the caveat that I do find corruption abhorrent, but what I am trying to do in this essay is question the paradigm in which the discourse on corruption is framed. This definitely is not a defence or indictment of the people mentioned here - I believe that the procedure established by law should take care of it.

Some time back at a party that was also a meeting, I was incensed with a friend justifying a leading celebrity civil society careerist's exit as the head of a prominent International non-governmental organization in India as owing to " conflict of interest". In other words, this person from a privileged socio-economic background had transferred funds to organizations where he had stakes - directly or indirectly - some of us - not so sophisticated call it benaami, but others largely seem to have a preference for "conflict of interest"

It took me more than a month to balance what I was writing about judicial corruption in India. I re-wrote more than half a dozen times. I set out writing the article in the context of the activism against Justice Dinakaran's elevation to the Supreme Court on grounds of alleged land-grabbing. What got my goat in the process was a marginal media story when an historical moment was captured by a state agency like the National SC Commission - it set out looking at whether Justice Dinakaran was being castigated for his Dalit identity. What was ironical was the way "progressive" friends including those that have been pioneers of the Dalit movement instead of grabbing the opportunity to nuance this discussion - taking a hard look at how only people from certain identity categories get persecuted for corruption generally, distanced themselves from the discourse.

What was also shocking was a statement that Justice Dinakaran was not a Dalit any more because of his conversion to Christianity. All of this is in the realm of media gossip available for all of us consumers of mainstream media.
I have been disturbed and suspicious about efforts like Transparency International for almost one and a half decades now - more so after I read the second novel in Chinua Achebe's African trilogy - No Longer at Ease. It is the story of a first generation Igbo youth who gets into the Colonial civil service in Nigeria - the conflicts that he passes through as a price for the cultural transition that is forced upon him - and finally he ends up taking a bribe - as a sort of a cultural resolution of a first generation encounter with an "alien" culture that is at the same time restricting and empowering. A single novel that changed the way I look at corruption some thirteen years back. Why I find it necessary to share some of my perceptions here.

One of the narratives that has been universally inherited from the colonial legacy is the notion that third world countries are generally inept at administration and more importantly. This is precisely where the methodologies adopted for corruption evaluation through processes such as Transparency International’s need to be examined with suspicion. If we take the United States or Qatar as examples, the former ranks 19th with a score of 7.5 and the latter 22nd with 7.0. India interestingly has the 84th place amongst 180 countries with a low score of 3.4. I can intuitively vouch that at least in its twentieth century history there has never been a serious contestant for the US Presidency who has not accessed corporate money. Barack Obama's success lies not in so much having subverted the system or being clean of vested corporate interests - but on the contrary, in subverting the racial stereotypes surrounding the system.

Some interesting insights do emerge when corruption in India is seen within this frame. From Bangaru Laxman to Koda, most of the people who have had to receive some form of social, legal or political sanctions for corruption related misdemeanours come from certain marginalised identity groups. A clear case of shining India with dreams of super-powerdom in its eyes - appropriating the colonial paradigm and turning its gaze inwards towards Dalits and Adivasis mainly. It is fairly commonplace in public offices including academic spaces to hear statements that point to the ineptitude and corruption of people who manage to get in through reservations!

A journalist friend was sharing a rumour about Shibu Soren the other day, about how he deposited the entire two crore rupees that he received as bribe for saving the P.V Narasimha Rao regime in his personal bank account. It really is not surprising that there are no such jokes floating around about Vajpayee. In fact Vajpayee has acquired iconic status in Indian democratic lore. The reason that Muslims do not figure so prominently within the discourse on corruption has to do with their gross under-representation in public life and moreover, vast majority of Muslim faces in public life happen to be Ashraafs. The same logic can be applied to other minority religious identities like the Sikhs or Christians.

As far as I know almost all Indians pay a bribe at some point of time or the other. Many do it out of compulsion ranging from trying to access public health services to getting a PDS/ration/BPL card. While others, including me, do it for reasons ranging from getting a railway ticket confirmed to saving the government of the day. It is therefore rather amusing to see the righteous indignation amongst the latter - exempting themselves from the scanner that establishes the causes of corruption.

It is not my case that all those who do get persecuted or prosecuted for corruption are deserving of our empathy like Obi Okonkwo, the protagonist of No Longer at Ease - but it definitely is my case that the discourse on corruption in India is built on a hegemonic premise of caste as it is built on other hegemonic premises elsewhere!!

Why Dalits don’t trust Maoists

THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
Countercurrents.org

Dalits really, really distrust the Maoist movement of India and Nepal. As the Maoist movement begins to challenge for state power in Nepal and has struck a serious level of alarm in the ruling elite in India, this question has important ramifications for the future of south Asia.

The Dalit movement in India is the largest and fastest growing threat to the status quo, followed at some distance by the Maoists. Interestingly, almost all the Dalit leadership I know, mostly mid-level cadre in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), India's third largest national party and main force in the Dalit liberation movement, are ex-Maoists.

When asked why they distrust the "Naxalites", the common term for the Maoist movement, they point out, to start with, that almost all the rank and file fighters in the Maoist movement are Dalits or tribals and almost all the leaders are "high caste". The Dalits I know have had firsthand experience with just how casteist the Naxalite/Maoist leadership is.

When delving into the "political line" put forth by the Maoist movement in India and Nepal, it is rare to find mention of caste/varna, let alone any attempt to address caste/varna (colour) in any sort of historical perspective. It would seem that the Maoist leaders would prefer to blend class with caste and avoid any dealing with such a potentially divisive question.

The Dalit movement exemplified by the BSP cadre I know is firmly rooted in organizing Dalits into community collectives and focused on mobilizing Dalits in exercising their voting rights. When it is pointed out that no ruling class has ever peacefully relinquished its privileges, i.e. through elections, my Dalit comrades point out that 85% of Indian Dalits still believe in the one, unifying tenet of Hinduism, varna/caste/colour. Simply put, most Dalits believe they are being punished by God for sins in a previous life and their lot as "untouchables", Dalits, is God’s will. If God willed your punishment today with the promise of a better rebirth in the next life , then trying to lift your and your children’s lot above that of cleaning communal toilets is going against Gods will. Sounds like a brilliant scheme for social control using a religion, in the opinion of all the Dalits I know.

Taking into consideration just how mentally enslaved most Dalits remain, moving the masses of Dalits from being so crushed and broken to real liberation might take a series of steps instead of one giant leap, or so my Dalit comrades seem to feel. Dalits may have to see for themselves that casting a vote is not going to midwife any real liberation for the rank and file. While acknowledging that a series of trials and errors may mark their struggle and that the Maoists scorn such an approach, Dalits feel that if the Maoist movement continues to ignore varna/caste while depending on Dalits to win power, Dalits are doomed to see their struggle for equal rights and justice betrayed by the new Brahmins, the leaders of today’s Maoist movement.
One fact remains utterly non-debatable and that is that India and Nepal remain overwhelmingly a society of villages. Equally non-debatable is that in Indian and Nepalese villages, caste rules. How the Maoist movement can hope to succeed without even addressing this issue in any real way bodes ill for any hopes that the Maoist movement offers solutions to the most barbaric, inhumane system of human oppression in the world, the Apartheid in India and Nepal.

In a previous incarnation, Thomas C. Mountain was the publisher of the Ambedkar Journal and a founding member of the Phoolan Devi International Defence Committee. He can be contacted at thomascmountain@yahoo.com

South Asian organizations must be more active against caste-based discrimination

Human rights organizations working against caste-based discrimination in the region must engage in debates on the need for a comprehensive UN framework to tackle caste- based discrimination and should encourage affected governments to support such initiative at the UN level. This is the response from the Asian Human Rights Commission and The International Dalit Solidarity Network to the recent media attention following a parallel meeting at the 12th session of the Human Rights Council.

There have been several attempts by institutions, for instance the UN, to address the problem of caste internationally. However, there have so far been very few effective interventions to address caste based discrimination internationally owing to political pressure and regional dynamics.

International attempts to recognise caste discrimination as a human rights violation have been 'diplomatically softened' owing to objections mostly by governments, particularly by the Government of India. Of particular relevance is the objection by India to consider caste based discrimination as a form of blatant human rights violation coming within the sweep of international instruments, for instance, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are parties to this convention.

Of the five countries, India has remained the most active opponent of having caste-based discrimination included within the scope of the ICERD. The convention in its sweep, however, cover caste-based discrimination as a form of human rights violation based on descent. India's leading role in lobbying states against this view has been a subject of criticism within India.

On September 16 however, Nepal broke the ranks of states opposing the consideration of caste based discrimination as a serious human rights violation within the sweep of international human rights law. In a parallel event organized at the UN in Geneva, sponsored by The International Movement against all forms of Discrimination and Racism and co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch, Anti-Slavery International, Minority Rights Group International, The Lutheran World Federation, The World Council of Churches and Pax Romana/ICMICA in association with the International Dalit Solidarity Network, Nepal's State Minister for Ministry of General Administration, Mr. Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam said that his county welcomed the idea that the proposed draft principles and guidelines sponsored by the UN, would augment collective efforts of the international community, regional and international mechanisms, the UN and its organs, international civil society and the private sector to contribute to the elimination of caste based discrimination. The proceedings of the event and ensuing debates are available here.

Soon an article appeared in The Times of India titled 'UN set to treat caste as human rights violation'. While the article is slightly misleading, since caste-based discrimination is already considered as a form of human rights violation in international law, it speaks about the possibility of Government of India's objections of bringing caste-based discrimination as a subject for international debate, especially at the UN. In addition, the BBC World Service aired a 50 minute live radio debate on caste discrimination on September 29. A BBC blog has been established to debate further on this issue. This has created a vigorous debate on the internationalization of the issue of caste-based discrimination with contributions from all over the world. Another interesting debate is taking place on the Readers' Opinions page of The Times of India.

The response by the Government of India regarding this debate is eagerly awaited. But chances are, instead of viewing caste from a wrong point of view as a tool for 'Indian bashing' the government will show its maturity by contributing positively towards addressing the centuries-old practice of caste based discrimination. India's Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has repeatedly expressed his view, that he and his government condemn caste based discrimination.

On September 7, Dr. Singh while inaugurating a new scheme intended for the Scheduled Castes in India, the Pradhanmantri Aadarsh Gram Yojna, said that much more need to be done at the domestic level on prevention of manual scavenging and the rehabilitation of manual scavengers. Manual scavenging is an evil practice in India rooted in caste based discrimination, where members of the Dalit communities are forced to work as manual scavengers.

While waiting for a response from other states in the region, particularly India, regarding the debate triggered off by the statement made by Mr. Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam on September 16, it is important for human rights organisations working against caste based discrimination in the region to make use of the new momentum to engage in debates against caste based discrimination. Such participation will further encourage the Government of India to take a positive position on the issue and support the initiative at the UN.

Caste discrimination – in context

Caste based discrimination is one of the worst forms of human rights violation known to humans. The widely accepted period of the origin of the inhuman practice dates back at least three thousand years. It is still actively practiced in societies following religious hierarchy, particularly among the Hindus. For this reason, the practice is mostly concentrated in regions influenced by the Hindu religion, in particular, countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The concept of caste is stratification of society based on purity of origin and thus duties defined by birth to a particular caste group. It is a defining tool to cast obligatory duty on people that could not be taken away. The worst form of discrimination in caste is the practice of untouchability. Those who are worst affected by caste based discrimination are the members of the lowest group in the Brahminical hierarchy, including those considered to be outside the four Varna system of caste. This large group, more known as Dalits, is estimated to be slightly more than 250 million in number globally.

The closest comparison to discrimination based on caste is slavery. Caste based discrimination is however worse than slavery. This argument is crystallised in Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's statement comparing caste and slavery when he said, "either slavery nor untouchability is a free social order. But if a distinction is made, and there is no doubt that there is distinction between the two, the test is whether education, virtue, happiness, culture and wealth is possible within slavery or within untouchability. Judged by this test it is beyond controversy that slavery is hundred times better than untouchability. In slavery there is room for education, virtue, happiness, culture or wealth. In untouchability there is none". Dr. Ambedkar is the father of the Indian constitution.

Within India, there have been continuous attempts to address the problem of caste based discrimination. For instance, the practice of untouchability is prohibited in the constitution. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 criminalises untouchability, social ostracism based on caste and various other forms of caste based discrimination. The courts in India have also on several occasions adjudicated issues based on caste, often in favour of the Dalits and other lower caste groups. However, the practice of caste based discrimination still continues in India.

Source: AHRC

Myths about reservation

Nearly six decades after the Constitution of India came into effect, its proclaimed goal of equality and equal opportunity remains a distant dream.

Measures taken in furtherance of the constitutional provisions have not borne fruit primarily because those charged with the task of implementing them have not acted with due diligence.

Lately, provisions designed to help Dalits and other backward classes to catch up with the rest have come under attack on the ground that they work against the interests of the advanced sections.

The arguments against these provisions run as follows:
--The only way to create a casteless society is to adopt casteless policies.
--Reservation tends to undermine the self-esteem of the backward classes
--Support for reservation means support for procedures that favour unqualified candidates over qualified candidates.

The affirmative action policy in the United States, designed to help the non-white peoples, has also attracted similar criticism.

At the root of such criticism are bias and intolerance resulting from deep-rooted prejudice.

UnderstandingPrejudice.org, established in 2002 with funding from the National Science Foundation and McGraw-Hill Higher Education, has been offering educational resources and information on prejudice, discrimination, multiculturalism, and diversity, with a view to reducing the level of intolerance and bias in the society.

It provides more than 2,000 links to prejudice-related resources, as well as searchable databases with hundreds of prejudice researchers and social justice organizations.

One of the documents featured at the website, titled “Ten Myths About Affirmative Action”, although produced in the US context, is quite relevant in the Indian context too.

Ambedkar unravelled master-servant relationship in caste system

BASIL FERNANDO
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission

B.R. Ambedkar (picture on left) was a man whose work unraveled the unique nature of the master-servant relationship in South Asia. Today is the anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar’s birth.

Born to the family of an untouchable on April 14th 1891, Dr. Ambedkar was destined to reveal the central mystery of the South Asian social relationship which, has for its grounding a system of human grading or branding based on a classification known as the caste system. From his lifetime until now, the understanding of this issue has spread from small groups of militant intellectuals and activists to one that has spread into mainstream thinking, not only in South Asia but also throughout the world. Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Ambedkar as one of the few who had taken the radical stance of the interpretation of the entire history of India on the basis of caste. However, if that was a radical view then that is no longer the case.

Today there is almost unanimous acceptance that without paying serious attention to the implication of the system that is called caste, there is hardly any possibility of understanding South Asian society, culture or politics.

The same can be said of the understanding of South Asian conflicts which, in recent decades have turned into some of the world’s most violence clashes. In the understanding of these clashes insight into the work of Ambedkar could be an enormous resource. In fact, much of the analysis of these clashes and conflicts is poorer for the lack of attention to the central issue of caste and its implications on countries where Indian culture had a foundational influence.

Two well known creative writers in India through their work have brought the issue of caste into mainstream contemporary thought. Arundhati Roy, in her work, the God of Small Things and Aravind Adiga, in his novel the White Tiger have based their stories around the social behaviour rooted in the caste system. Aravind Adiga makes this more explicit. He writes:

The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop.

Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly coloured roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench — the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.

The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.

Watch the roads in the evenings in Delhi; sooner or later you will see a man on a cycle-rickshaw, pedaling down the road, with a giant bed, or a table, tied to the cart that is attached to his cycle. Every day furniture is delivered to people’s homes by this man — the delivery- man. A bed costs five thousand rupees, maybe six thousand. Add the chairs, and a coffee table, and it’s ten or fifteen thousand. A man comes on a cycle-cart, bringing you this bed, table, and chairs, a poor man who may make five hundred rupees a month. He unloads all this furniture for you, and you give him the money in cash — a fat wad of cash the size of a brick. He puts it into his pocket, or into his shirt, or into his underwear, and cycles back to his boss and hands it over without touching a single rupee of it! A year’s salary, two years’ salary, in his hands, and he never takes a rupee of it.

Every day, on the roads of Delhi, some chauffeur is driving an empty car with a black suitcase sitting on the backseat. Inside that suitcase is a million, two million rupees; more money than that chauffeur will see in his lifetime. If he took the money he could go to America, Australia, anywhere, and start a new life. He could go inside the five-star hotels he has dreamed about all his life and only seen from the outside. He could take his family to Goa, to England. Yet he takes that black suitcase where his master wants. He puts it down where he is meant to, and never touches a rupee. Why?

Because Indians are the world’s most honest people, like the prime minister’s booklet will inform you?

No. It’s because per cent of us are-caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market.

The Rooster Coop doesn’t always work with minuscule sums of money. Don’t test your chauffeur with a rupee coin or two — he may well steal that much. But leave a million dollars in front of a servant and he won’t touch a penny. Try it: leave a black bag with a million dollars in a Mumbai taxi. The taxi driver will call the police and return the money by the day’s end. I guarantee it. (Whether the police will give it to you or not is another story, sir!) Masters trust their servants with diamonds in this country! It’s true. Every evening on the train out of Surat, where they run the world’s biggest diamond- cutting and polishing business, the servants of diamond merchants are carrying suitcases full of cut diamonds that they have to give to someone in Mumbai. Why doesn’t that servant take the suitcase full of diamonds? He’s no Gandhi, he’s human, he’s you and me. But he’s in the Rooster Coop. The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy.

The Great Indian Rooster Coop. Do you have something like it in China too? I doubt it, Mr Jiabao. Or you wouldn’t need the Communist Party to shoot people and a secret police to raid their houses at night and put them in jail like I’ve heard you have over there. Here in India we have no dictatorship. No secret police.

That’s because we have the coop.

Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 per cent — as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way — to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

You’ll have to come here and see it, for yourself to believe it. Every day millions wake up at ,dawn — stand in dirty, crowded buses — get off at their masters’ posh houses — and then clean the floors, wash the dishes, weed the garden, feed their children, press their feet — all for a pittance. I will never envy the rich of America or England, Mr Jiabao: they have no servants there. They cannot even begin to understand what a good life is.

Now, a thinking man like you, Mr Premier, must ask two questions.

Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?

Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer’s money and ran? What would his life be like?

I will answer both for you, sir.

The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and fled to the coop.

The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed — hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters — can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.

The understanding of punishment within the caste context involves two components. One was that the punishment far exceeded, in proportion, the alleged offense. For example an untouchable who is not supposed to learn meditation and the practices of yogis may be punished with death for doing so as demonstrated in the story of Sambuka, or an untouchable boy who is not supposed to learn archery may have his thumb cut off for having done so arbitrarily. Coming down even to the modern day are examples of children being blinded for looking at a TV screen at a shop belonging to an upper caste person or people being punished for drinking water in a glass instead of using the utensils that are allowed for the lower castes. However, the spread of the concept of punishing the poor in the severest possible ways has become inbuilt into the criminal justice systems of the countries in the region. Even today, the prisons are full of the poor who, of course, at the same time belong to the so-called lower castes. Torture meted out at police stations and prisons is also directed towards this same class of persons.

The second aspect of punishment within the caste system is that it is collective. As Aravind Adiga has graphically explained, for the transgressions of any single person the entire family will be massacred. This message is written deep in the psyche of all persons and acts as a motivating factor on matters regarding safety at the deepest levels of their minds.

Another talented India thinker Dr. D.R. Nagaraj, in his famous study called the Flaming Feet – the Study of the Dalit Movement, wrote:

The important thing here is that the entire community of Dalits is punished for the offence committed by a single individual. That traditional society in India has never accepted the concept of individual should not make us blind towards the working of the caste ethos here. When similar offences are committed by an individual of upper caste he is always treated as an individual, and his act is not linked to his community. In other words, the notion of the individual is preserved in the context of deviant behaviour of the upper castes. We are yet to hear the news of a village boycotting an upper caste for a crime, that too a petty one, committed by one of its members. In Indian literature there are enough descriptions of the unpardonable violation of ethical codes of society, but only the individual concerned is held responsible. To put it differently, one of the chief characteristics of the caste system is to attribute certain inerasable traits to each caste, and they are even judged in moral terms: the superiority of the caste is indeed decided by its rank and station in the hierarchy. A careful analysis of proverbs and popular sayings of Indian languages will reveal the hidden and not so hidden biases and prejudices of the caste system. When it comes to understanding the nature of virtues and vices of a social stratification, the caste system accepts the collective category as the criterion. While confronting deviant behaviour of upper castes the individual is used to explain away the aberration, but in the context of lower castes the category of the individual is never accepted as legitimate. Such at least is the value system that informs the eruption of violence against the untouchables. To give a charitable reading of this phenomenon one could say that the charges in historical situation have intensified the hypocritical behaviour of the caste society which was under check in the pre-conflict situation.

Recent conflicts and the caste based habits of disproportionate and collective punishment

The tracing of many of the existing violent conflicts in South Asia would clearly demonstrate that one of the most important contributory factors that continue to contribute to these conflicts is the culturally inherited habits of disproportionate and collective punishment towards the weaker sections of society. Many conflicts which have today blown up into so much violence that they have come to the notice of the global community are often the result of a limited protest of one or another weaker group within society, protesting on some issue and being subjected to disproportionate and collective punishment. The use of police fire power against small groups engaged in protests and the use of state sponsored riots to retaliate against some violent act done by a militant group has later developed into the type of crises that has undermined the stability of entire nations.

The use of disproportionate and collective punishment by those in power leads the more self-conscious sections among the protestors to take precautions for their security by adopting methodologies that can equal the ways of disproportionate and collective punishment of their opponents. In this way a conflict is magnified from its very inception because of the fear of annihilation by such disproportionate and collective punishment.

In this kind of conflict those who represent the state develop the ideology of the total annihilation of the opponent. In preparation for this the protestors also acquire a similar mentality and prepare themselves for a kind of battle which has, for its aim, the annihilation of the state counterparts.

Such conflicts defy any form of resolution by way of agreements arrived at on the basis of the mutual understanding of each other’s legitimate positions. Even the very thought of a dialogue or compromise does not enter into a mindset that is full of fear of disproportionate and collective punishment.

The state, when faced with a conflict abandons the rule of law rapidly. The concept of the rule of law is based on the idea of proportionality of punishment to the offense and the total rejection of collective punishment. Within the rule of law context offenders are always individuals and it is the guilt or otherwise of the individual that the judicial system deals with. By this means the rule of law system when properly used prevents the conflicts degenerating into collective conflicts. When the state abandons the rule of law and goes back to the cultural habits of trying to deal with opponents with ideologies of annihilation there is no room for any mediators to deal with the parties to the conflict with a view to bring about a rational discourse leading to settlements which both sides can accept as legitimate.

While almost all leaders of the independence movements in South Asian countries attempt to romanticise and glorify the cultural traditions of their countries, B.R. Ambedkar alone raised the issue of the internal contradictions which were inherent within all cultural traditions which had the Indian culture as its core by pointing to the nature of the master-servant relationship within this setup rooted in the organisation of caste. By raising this issue he provided the basis for the understanding of conflicts in the post independence societies of South Asia. His life and work and the enormous amount of writings that he left behind remain a guide to the understanding of the type of conflicts that many people have thought of as defying any kind of rational understanding.

Justice Katju’s optimism over end of caste system is misplaced

Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju, in a two-part article published last week (“Looking back on the caste system”, The Hindu, January 8), “Why the caste system is on its last legs”, The Hindu, January 9) discusses the origin of the caste system and argues it is on its way out. In fact, he suggests that it is being kept alive by vote bank politics.

Justice Katju's announcement of the imminent demise of the caste system may be well-intentioned but it is based on selective analysis of past developments and present trends. He discusses the past without even a passing reference to the long period when Jainism and Buddhism, both of which rejected caste-based discrimination, held sway in the subcontinent. It was during this period that the development of productive forces, which he sees as a beneficial result of the caste system, took place. The period saw a flowering of arts and crafts.

Tamil Sangham literature bears evidence of the presence of various caste groups in the south in the early years of the Christian era, but not of caste-based disability. The caste system, as we know it today, emerged after the Vedic establishment gained political ascendancy in the north following the decline of Buddhism. It was during this period that the Code of Manu, which sanctified caste division, was written and enforced.

This aspect was discussed in great detail by an eminent scholar in law and Sanskrit, K. P. Jayaswal, in12 lectures on “Manu and Yajnavalkya – a comparison and a contrast” which he delivered at the University of Calcutta in 1919. The lectures were published in book form in 1929. After 75 years a new edition of this book was brought out by Cosmo Publications, a division of Genesis Publishing Private Limited, 24-B Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002, in 2004, under the title “Manu and Yajnavalkya”.

Justice Katju eloquently describes how industrialization is rendering caste irrelevant by producing skilled technical personnel to undertake tasks performed by different caste groups in the feudal era. In doing so, he overlooks the fact that the process is actually doing further harm to the victims of the caste system. It deprives them of means of livelihood by eliminating their traditional occupations. The skilled jobs that are created go largely to the beneficiaries of the caste system who can access the training institutions far more easily than the victims of the caste system. The West Bengal example that he cites will prove this point. All available studies show that in that State the Scheduled Castes are worse off than in most other States.

Justice Katju's assertion that vote bank politics is now artificially propping up the caste system is based on a specious theory trotted out by the urban elite. One look at the results of the 1977 and 1980 elections is enough to know that India's voters keep the larger interests of the society in mind when they walk into the polling booth. This is not to suggest that caste plays no part in electoral politics. It does play a part not only in elections but in other contexts, like those of admissions, appointments etc too.

Caste may have outlived its utility but the caste system will remain so long as it continues to produce 'born beneficiaries' and 'born victims'. The argument that reservation is keeping caste alive is specious: it is the beneficiaries, not the victims, who keep it alive.

Caste-based discrimination in a Tamil Nadu village

The report on India circulated by the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission on the eve of Independence Day is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the country.

The AHRC statement is based on developments in a village in Tamil Nadu.
It says:

A resolution, recently passed by the Naloor panchayat in Narikudi block of Virudunagar district in Tamil Nadu state is the quintessence of caste based discrimination in India. The panchayat convened a meeting a few months ago and resolved that the proposed construction of a public library building in the panchayat must not be permitted.

The minutes of the panchayat meeting reveal the reason for the council decision. The council and its members feared that the library would be of use to the Dalits (lowest caste/untouchables) in the locality and that the Dalits might get enlightened by accessing knowledge through the public library.

Not stopping at the resolution the council had the audacity to approach the Tamil Nadu High Court with an application seeking the direction of the court to the government to prohibit the government from constructing the library building against the wish of the panchayat. The court while expressing anguish about the very nature of such a resolution dismissed the application. While dismissing the application the court also expressed its concern that such decisions would in fact lead to social unrest and is fundamentally against Article 17 of the Indian Constitution. MORE

Portrait of a three-caste village in Uttar Pradesh

Below is the first part of a papertitled “Village structures perpetuate caste system”, written by Bhagat, edited by Sister Mariola and distributed by the Asian Human Rights Commission.

No Indian can imagine “India without the caste system”. Is it possible to have an Indian society without caste system and other social evils? In northern India, it is alarming to notice strong in-built age-old practices that ensure the caste system not only survives but thrives.
Land distribution and related traditions significantly contribute towards this social evil. Every village functions on a set pattern, namely:
Every village is comprised of settlements which are strictly caste-based. The upper castes, namely ‘thakurs’ of the kshatriya (warrior) caste and ‘brahmins’ (priest) caste, enjoy ownership of land, orchards and ponds Persons belonging to the thakur, brahmin and sometime of vaishaya (merchant) castes, are generally educated and therefore most dominating in Indian society.
Most of the officers in government offices belong to the upper castes.

This structured village system is the biggest hurdle in educational opportunities for dalit children. Lack of education and rampant illiteracy among dalits cements the servile status of the dalits vis-a- vis the upper castes. Hence, the upper castes do everything within their power to prevent dalits from getting educated.

The upper caste children are indoctrinated in such a way that they consider it a virtue to engage the services of dalits in their fields, orchards and homes. They are made to believe that Dalit women exist meant solely for their pleasure and entertainment.
The village economy is based on the agricultural produce and almost all land belongs to the upper castes.

The roots of the caste system run deep and can be compared to a Banyan Tree. It is well structured and properly demarked and though based on descent and occupation, is practically a class-structure. In order to justify their misdeeds and greed, the upper caste has developed the theory of ‘varnashram’, which later evolved into the caste system. They popularized this theory claiming it had divine origin.

Prevailing rituals, practices, economy and family structure in a village:
Uttar Pradesh of India has 97942 villages. 80% of its population lives in villages. 85% of those who live in the villages are Hindus. 60% of these Hindus are kshatriyas and brahmins (upper castes). A closer look at one village will help us understand other villages and villagers of Uttar Pradesh.

Bhupiyamau is a village in Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. It is situated at the intersection of the National and State highway and merely 5 kilometers away from the district headquarters.
1. Total Population 2152
2. Total Male Population 1107
3. Total Female Population 1045
4. Total Scheduled Caste Population 470
5. Total Scheduled Caste Males 240
6. Total Scheduled Caste Females 230

This village is inhabited by only three communities, namely brahmins, kshatriyas and scheduled castes. There is no presence of other backward classes in this village. Let us see the land ownership pattern in this village.

The area of the village is 215.1 hectares. The total irrigated area is 180 hectares whereas 15 hectares is un-irrigated. The entire 195 hectares is owned by kshatriyas and brahmins. None of the Scheduled Caste (SC) owns any piece of land for agriculture. The SC occupies land on which their house stands. This is either provided or leased to them by a Kshatriya.

At harvest time, the SC is subjected to ill-treatment by the kshatriyas. This is because by and large kshatriyas compete with each other to have their crops harvested as early as possible. The entire harvesting is done by the SC who has to ensure the good pleasure of the Kshatriya.
That is why Kshatriyas pressurize them by beating and abusing them so as to get their crop harvested first. SC women are often victims of such violent assault. They are often paid in kind - food grain, rather than cash. Women have to work late night; which is hazardous, as they are molested and even raped by the land owner who, on the pretext of watching over the crops, generally sleeps in the thatched enclosure near the tubewell.

A close look at the geographical map and habitat of the village clearly reveals that the Brahmin settlement is strategically placed at the main entrance to the village on either side. A number of schools are found in the vicinity of the Brahmin settlement. The adjoining area is occupied by Kshatriyas followed by agricultural fields. The scheduled caste makes their abode in and around these fields. Therefore, they have no access to pasturelands to graze their cattle. They have no entitlement to the burial ground either, despite the fact that they are also Hindus. Hindus traditionally cremate their dead near the bank of a river. However, the lower castes are compelled to bury their dead due to sheer poverty and inaccessibility to village commons. Since there is no graveyard in the village, they sometimes leave the mortal remains in the river or cremate it on the river bank. Brahmins and Kshatriyas have their habitats close to the orchards and pasture lands; hen

This is how Bhagat, a thakur, recounts his childhood experience: “When I was young, I shouldered the responsibility of managing the agricultural fields and harvesting the crop. I was barely 14 years old then. It was the summer season, and the month of June to be precise. The monsoons threatened to destroy the crop; hence I was anxious to harvest the crops. I approached the Dalit settlement many times to hire labourers, but with no success. They gave me false hope, saying they would come the next day, but they never turned up. I noticed that those who promised me they would come, were often working in the neighboring field. One evening, as I sat dejected outside my house, my father enquired as to what the matter was, and why the labourers had not come to harvest the field.
"I simply said, “They are working in our neighbor’s field.” He laughed and said, “You are worthless boy; you will never be a successful man. I have some advice for you, take it or leave it. Get your hockey stick or any other stick, and be prepared to use abusive language. As soon as you reach the settlement of the scheduled caste, beat up whomever you meet first. Then warn them, saying that if they fail to come to our field the following morning, you would meet them again along with your father. I did what I was told and to my surprise the labourers actually came to my field the following morning. When I returned home that evening, having harvested the crop, my grand-mother said, “Son, ‘Dhol, ganwaar, shoodra, pashu naari, ye sab taadan ke adhikaari” (the drum, the uneducated, the dalit, the animal and woman deserve to be beaten) says our sacred book.” “Thereafter, I successfully harves

“Annually, we are expected to offer certain ritualistic prayers in every season and for every crop. Formerly, my father performed these rituals as it was his birthright to do so, he being the only son of his parents. Therefore, when I was a teenager, my father was anxious to share some of his responsibilities with me like, agricultural work and related rituals, attending social ceremonies in our village and other villages as well.”

“I noticed that the other youth in my village were more carefree, they did not seem to have responsibilities like I did. That is probably why I suffered from an identity crisis. Sometimes I felt superior, at other times inferior to them.”

“Once there was a cricket tournament in my village. I wanted to participate but on the same day I was asked to perform a ritual in the sugarcane field for a good crop. I refused and asked why my younger brother could not do it instead of me. Before I could even complete the sentence, I was slapped. I awaited the arrival of our family priest on an empty stomach till noon that day. Together, we went to the field for the ritual prayer. Hungry as I was, I requested him to hasten the prayer. The priest was annoyed and abused me, saying that I should remain quiet and not disturb him during prayer. After the prayer, we went home together. The priest was expected to cook for him and for me. I lost my patience. I took a cane from the field, hit him on his read and ran away.”

“He complained about me to my family. When I returned that evening my grandmother said, “What the hell did you do?” You will go to hell for hitting the Brahmin (priest) on his head. We have great for the brahmins. I will go and call him. Only if he pardons you, will you enter the main gate. Finally, the priest came and forgave me. The priest said, “For the first time, in my life, a thakur’s son abused me and beat me. This time I pardon you. But take care. If it ever happens again, you may be afflicted by leprosy.”

Three cup practices at home
“Like most other ‘thakur’ households, we have the “three cups practice” – one cup is kept for the use of a dalit, another for the family, and the third for my use. I was the only non-vegetarian in my family. That is why I was not permitted to cook and eat in our kitchen. I bought some utensils and started cooking non vegetarian food outside the house, where husk and other fodder was stored for our cows and buffaloes.”

“Some old and broken utensils meant for the use of dalits were also there. When ever any dalit visited us, she or he was served in those utensils. One day by mistake a dalit lady used my glass to drink tea. My grand mother saw this but did not say anything. When I came back, she told me that one of my glasses was used by a dalit lady. She instructed me to stow away my utensils in a bag, lest they be misused.”

“She gave me an old glass from the kitchen and asked me to keep it for my use. She told me to put back my glass with the other utensils.

I was very disappointed by this state of affairs. I told my grandma that if she considered me a dalit, then why she was trying to segregate me from other dalits. She said, “You are not yet a Thakur. You will become a full-fledged thakur only after the ritual ‘upnayan sanskaar’. Once that is done, you are forbidden to eat non-vegetarian food. You still have time to enjoy a life, before you start living a disciplined life as a true thakur. Whenever I cooked non vegetarian food I was debarred from access to any other food that was prepared in the kitchen at home. The following day, I was permitted to get food from the kitchen only after I had bathed and performed other ablutions. However, I was not allowed to use my grandmother’s utensils, as she was considered ritually clean, as she prayed daily. Others in the family only prayed occasionally. I had to avoid non-vegetarian food for a couple of days before engaging in ritualistic prayer.&rdq
“When my sister got married, she was only vegetarian among her in-laws. When her in-laws visited us, I was very happy to have them join me in enjoying non-vegetarian food. One day my grandma tried to convince my sister to persuade her in-laws to quit non-vegetarian food. She replied very innocently, “When our God and Goddess accept offerings of non-vegetarian food, how can I coax my in-laws to give up that. Today, my nephew is also a non-vegetarian, but my sister has no objection. She also cooks non-vegetarian food for her husband and son. When I ponder on what happens in these two families, I realize that in a thakur’s household, women and children have no choice concerning their food. They are ‘dalits’ – ostracized within their own family.”

“My first experience of drinking liquor:My grandfather was very fond of drinking liquor. Every evening he enjoyed drinking either with his friends or by himself. One day, I broached him with a question during one of his drinking bouts. “What are you drinking?” I asked. He replied, “It is ‘som ras’ – nectar.”“I said, “Let me also taste this nectar.” He gave me a little bit of the drink. And, repeated the same the following day. Just then my mother saw my grand father serving me liquor. She was furious. She refused to serve dinner to me and my grandfather. I screamed, demanding why she excluded me from dinner. Just then my father intervened and asked my mother what the matter was. She gave him a detailed explanation, justifying her action.”
“At this, my father started abusing my mother, asking how she dared to check his father and son. He ordered her to serve food to my grandfather. Thereafter, my grand-father started avoiding me, as he felt guilty. Gradually, he gave up drinking. One day, he pleaded with my mother to forget the past and forgive him. He said he had stopped drinking and that she ought not to worry about her son. It was for first time that I saw tears in my grandfather’s eyes. When my father got to know about this, he rebuked my grandfather saying, “Why did you have to apologize to my wife? If you act in this manner, she will start controlling us.

My grandfather replied, ‘Look son, this has nothing to do with you or me. This concerns our innocent child. That is why you have to be aware of this. But my father said he disagreed with his advice. He said he knew how to manage his family.”
To be continued…
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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.