DYFI CUC organised the eleventh study circle of this year today. Last week we had started our readings on caste and class, and this week (on Ambedkar Jayanti!) we continued. We read nearly all of BT Ranadive’s Caste, Class and Property Relations. 

The essay has had three primary strands so far:

1) Caste in feudalism and colonialism; how the existence of caste was beneficial for the British

2) Caste as understood and grappled with by the leaders of the freedom struggle, and how their class position meant that they did not seek an annihilation of caste, but moved through cultural revivalism (even support for the caste system) and merely social reform. Yet, they were able to build a mass movement under bourgeois leadership. 

3) Phule and Ambedkar’s complete rejection of caste, and how the project was co-opted by feudal and capitalist interest, and thus did not reach its logical conclusion in agrarian revolution and upending land relations. Periyar’s life is an example of what happens when the anti-caste movement delinks itself from the anti-imperialist movement.

Ranadive also speaks of how the communist party was the only party to link the question of caste with that of land relations; how the formation of new classes through industrialisation meant that the unity of the toiling masses was impeded by the existence of caste. He stresses the importance of attacking casteist ideology, and the folly of thinking that caste will disappear when class disappears. 

At the same time, without a change in the production relations, caste can never be fully annihilated. In Ranadive’s own words on the Congress leadership,

“Unable to think of a basic liquidation of land relations the national bourgeoisie adopted social reforms as their watchword in the struggle for national unity. Education, social mixing, inter-caste dinners, statement in public meetings that ‘We are Indians first and last’ beyond this the class alliance of the bourgeois leaders did not permit the national movement to go.”

Our discussions focused on the land redistribution that was supposed to take place in India, how there never was substantial land redistribution, how in places like Bengal, where it did take place, the incidence of caste atrocities was lower. We spoke of the changing nature of the demand for reservations in the background of the public sector being throttled. Upper caste resentment is being weaponised to divert attention from the fact that jobs and public education are themselves receding. 

Next week, we will complete this essay, and then vote on what to read next.