Aakar Patel finds it embarrassing to be a Leuva Patidar. When did we become helpless, he ask
My approach to the idea of reservations is slightly unorthodox. To me reservations are justified because of the social oppression of certain communities. This oppression has resulted in a lack of opportunity over generations. This has to be reversed over generations, and space has to be created for those communities to integrate themselves socially and economically into the mainstream.
So far, this view is fairly traditional. But the oppression is also about discrimination. This is where I think reservations serve another purpose: They reverse the discrimination and turn it against the oppressing communities.
If reservations do not sting, and this is my unorthodox view, they are not really working. In India, all the whining about merit when the subject of reservations is brought up is to me a sign that they are working in the way intended.
The Patel/Patidar (and we will look at the meaning of this second word later) demand to be granted the status of OBC, or Other Backward Class, in Gujarat is premised on the notion that the state should look not at communities but at individuals and that it should see the disadvantages not of caste but of economics. This is a logical outlook, but it does not satisfy my criteria of reversal of discrimination, which is admittedly eccentric, and so I do not see it as being meritorious.
The real objective of reservations is what the Mandal Commission achieved elsewhere. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the list of chief ministers before Mandal (i.e., before 1990) is dominated totally by the upper castes. Names like Tiwari and Mishra are scattered on that list, and those of a certain age will remember the way it was. Large peasant communities like the Yadavs were not well represented at the high table of power because the old caste system had extended into democratic politics.
The Mandal Commission report, or rather the implementation of it, changed that. Yadavs were able to mobilize themselves politically around the demand for reservations, and if Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh took power, it was because of their ability to successfully own that moment.
What about the Patels? They did not need the backing of the report to mobilize themselves because from the Kheda and Bardoli satyagrahas of 1918 and 1928, respectively, Patels have mobilized politically much before any of the other peasant communities. Indeed, the reason why their rallies are so big is that they are no strangers to the practice of mobilization.
The Congress was in power in Gujarat for a very long time because of the political backing of the Patels. They shifted allegiance in the 1990s to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some say this is because of Madhavsinh Solanki’s KHAM caste coalition of Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, but it is also true that the Patels were very attracted to Hindutva. When they moved, power went to the BJP and has remained there. It would be totally wrong to compare their lot with that of the north Indian communities that genuinely benefited politically and economically from Mandal.
My view is hardly new: It would have shocked many Indians to hear that Patels are seeking reservations because they are viewed as a well-off community, and they are. They have been economically successful in India and wherever else they have gone. Patels are known among Gujaratis for having a stubborn, hardy, can-do spirit and as people who do not shirk tough physical work, as is the case with our peasant castes.
They are also enterprising, because the mercantile spirit is something all Gujaratis share, and have made a great success of themselves globally. The joke in our family is that a couple of us have to be written off whenever there is an aeroplane crash anywhere in the world. From Fiji to Africa to Europe to the New World, there is hardly a place untouched by our willingness to work and succeed without outside help. This is manifest.
Given all this, it is embarrassing for me as a Leuva Patidar to align myself with this group that now says we are in need of state support. When did we become helpless? We never were and are not. It is embarrassing that we are attempting to take away from those genuinely in need of reservation. Patels have faced no discrimination in history, and there is no evidence that will show we have.
In fact “Patidar”, which is a synonym for the word Patel, indicates that the person is titled with land (i.e., like zamindar). And so with our very name and caste designation we are disproving the claim made by some of us that we are weak and in need. I am quite certain that there were many Patels in that huge rally on 25 August who are poor and in need of assistance. This is India, after all. My question to the others is: Why do we not step in to help them? Why appeal to the government to save us when our community has it within itself to look after our weak? This would be something truly worth mobilizing for.
Aakar Patel is executive director of Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are personal.
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