For the UPA Government in New Delhi, industrializing the country means, Mandalising the country. Mandalising the country means Communalising the country on the basis of an artificially and even criminally contrived superstructure of Quota based raj.

To quote the brilliant words of Arun Shourie from his eye opening book on the communal politics of reservations titled 'Falling Over Backwards': 'How far have we descended! Today progressives dress up their casteism as secularism'.

As politicians and political parties have been less and less able to commend themselves on the basis of their performance, they have deployed a standard technique: look for a grievance, for some measure by which it can be shown that the target group has been left behind; when you cannot find the grievance, invent it; stoke the sense of being discriminate against; frighten the group into believing that others are out to take away even more of what is its right ;and present yourself as the only savior. Inevitably, in each succeeding round, two things have happened. On the one side, the grievances that have been stoked have been more and more far-fetched. On the other, the group at which the rhetoric has been directed has been narrower and narrower. In the end, politicians pass laws.

They appoint Judges as much as Vice- Chancellors and IGs of Police. Hence, the ultimate responsibility lies with them. But they have received much help from others - the 'Progressives' who have dominated public discourse, for instance, a handful of 'progressive' judges for another. Arun Shourie rightly indicts these 'progressives' as Aiders and Abettors. For some of them, he says that the right word ought to be Instigators.

Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal of the Mandal Commission has been an Aider, Abettor and Instigator in this sense in which Arun Shourie has used those terms in his essay against 'Reservations' and 'Judicial Populism'. 'Judicial Populism' is quite distinct from 'Judicial Activism'. Judicial Activism, devoid of party politics, can often help in making the Rule of Law prevail over long established social conventions and prejudices. On the other hand, Judicial Populism functions as a hand maid of communal and party politics and only leads to the de-thronement of the Rule of Law, Rule of Equality before the Law and the Rule of Overriding Majesty of Law. Many petty and unscrupulous Judges, interested only in advancing their career prospects, by falling head over heels at the feet of communal politicians, have almost succeeded in destroying these three classical Pillars of Law in India. This ugly phenomenon has been clearly brought out with factual details of men and matters by Arun Shourie.  

The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to 'identify the socially or educationally backward.' [1] It was headed by Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal who considered the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine 'backwardness.' In 1980, the commission's report affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes (known as Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27 per cent to 49.5 per cent [1]. The report, released in 1980, was the source of great controversy, and its implementation in 1990 was the ultimate cause of India's Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh's resignation.

The Mandal Commission raised its superstructure of caste based reservations for the Other Backward Classes based on the lists and figures of castes in the 1931 Census. All the ICS officers who were in charge of the Census of 1931 had uniformly reported that it was impossible to give a precise definition of Caste. To quote the words of the Census Report of 1931: 'The term caste needs no definition in India.' Could it be that we can get a definition of the other two categories that the Census uses - 'tribe' and 'race'? Can we get a definition of caste by looking at what it is not?

'Tribe was provided to cover many of the communities still organized on that basis in whose case the tribe has not become a caste,' the 1931 Census recorded. In a word, a 'tribe' is that thing which has not become the thing that needs no definition.

As for 'Race', the 1931 Census said, 'no attempt was made to define the term 'Race', which is naturally used so loosely as almost to defy definition.' The same Census went on to clarify as follows: 'Nor is it intended to do anything so rash as to define it here, while in the Census Schedule its very looseness enabled it to cover returns which, though not strictly referable to the same category, were quite adequate for the purpose intended, which was primarily to obtain a return of Indians to whom the terms 'Caste' and 'Tribe' are inapplicable and a means of identifying Anglo - Indians whose birthplace might be an inadequate means of identification'.

Even a cursory perusal of the 1931 Census Report will clearly show that there was a great degree of conceptual confusion even at that time regarding the precise meanings and definitions of the terms 'Caste', 'Tribe' and 'Race'. Thus the British officers in charge of that Census followed the slippery procedure of definition by residuals, by presenting many problems, and were very honest and candid about them, quite unlike the fraudulent Mandal of the Mandal Commission who has been guilty of gross and blatant concealment and fabrication of facts and figures, derived tangentially from the 1931 Census.

For instance, the Census Commissioner of 1931 Census took special care to point out that Indians who had been classified as 'Tribals' formed a very heterogeneous group. Even the simplest step ? that of comparing these figures with what had been reported in previous enumerations, the Census Commissioner wrote, 'has been made very difficult by the irritating practice of some missionaries to induce their converts to abandon their tribal name and return themselves nondescriptly as 'Indian Christians', as though they had some cause to be ashamed of their forefathers?. The Census Commissioner openly declared that some religions like Islam and Christianity foreswore Caste in a brash manner even after conversion. They are doing so even today with the willing co-operation of all our Pseudo Secular Politicians.

All the rabidly communal politicians of today, assert with pompous arrogance about the continuing rigidity of the caste system even today being as frozen as in the days of Manu. These politicians would get frozen by the following telling observations of the Census Commissioner of 1931: 'There is apparently a tendency towards the consolidation of groups at present separated by caste rules. The best instance of such a tendency to consolidate a number of castes into one group is to be found in the grazier castes which aim at combining under the term 'Yadava' Ahirs, Goalas, Gopis, Idaiyans and perhaps some other castes of milk men, a movement already effective ever since 1921'.

M W M Yeatts (Thank Periyar that he was not a Brahmin!!), the Superintendent of Census Operations in the Madras Presidency in 1931 and who later became the Census Commissioner of India wrote as follows: 'Several of them 'induviduals and groups' manufacture 'cacophonous combinations'. Sorting by caste is one of the most complicated of all Census Operations. Sorting for Caste is really worthless unless nomenclature is sufficiently fixed to render the resulting totals close and reliable approximations. Had caste terminology the stability of religious returns, caste sorting might be worthwhile. With the fluidity of present appellations, it is certainly not' 2,27,000 AMBATTANS have become 10,000 (!!) 'Navithan, Nai, Nai Brahman, Navutiyan, Pariyari claim about 1,40,000 - all these ever fluid and ever changing terms unrecorded are untabulated - Individual fancy apparently has some part in caste nomenclature. For example, an extremely dark individual pursuing the occupation of waterman on the Coorg border described his caste as SURYAVAMSA (!), the family of the Sun. Many of the claims and appellations used for Castes recall irresistibly the ruse of that hero of W S Gilbert's who christened himself 'DARWINIAN MAN'. Energy expended in pursuing euphemistic Caste synonyms bears a strong resemblance to that involved in hunting a will-o'-the-wisp and is as profitable or useless. Censuses can deal usefully with facts, not with fashions'.

There has been no Caste-wise enumeration since the Census of 1931.The great Mandal of the Mandal Commission used this Census as his Bible which has been rejected by the Supreme Court of India. Even the English Regional Census Commissioners from all parts of India had reported in 1931 itself that they all felt shaky and uncertain about the Caste-wise enumeration. All of them had reported that Caste Lines were getting to be disregarded and new and technological developments were upsetting the very basis of Caste divisions. By stark contrast Pseudo Secular Mafia Men of Mass Media today write with Biblical Authority that such and such exit poll shows that all the Kurmis have deserted BJP or Congress and so on!! Politicians talk the same way. Even some of our Supreme Court and High Court Judges think that India is what it was, in fact what some Text collated over 700 years says it should have been 2500 years ago!!

As early as in 1921, the English Census Commissioner for Baroda State had warned with a clairvoyant vision that in the face of change all round, 'Caste may soon adapt itself and be content to remain as if it were the Election Agent of the new Democracy'. The Mandal Commission was the final culmination of this vicious process.

  Continued

Page : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4