Affirmative Action and Elite Formation: An ...

Affirmative Action and Elite Formation: An Untouchable Family History Ross Mallick, Kanata, Ontario

Abstract. A multigenerational case study of an elite Untouchable family reveals

the problems of integration, "passing," and cultural affirmation in the development and democratization process. As a nonvisible minority it is possible to facilitate integration in Indian urban areas by hiding caste, while affirmative action programs facilitate upward mobility at the cost of having to proclaim Untouchable caste identity. These contradictory imperatives illustrate the difficulties facing elite Untouchables in achieving emancipation. Upward mobility has been a prime objective for India's Untouchables both as individuals and communities. However, there is a division in the Untouchable, or Scheduled Caste, community between those few who achieve significant upward mobility and the many whose circumstances are unchanged. As none have risen financially beyond the upper middle class, there are insufficient resources for the Untouchable elite to provide significant funding for community uplift. This has meant an almost total reliance on the Indian government and a few private aid organizations for resources. Inadequate as these are, there is no alternative available. Yet lower-class Untouchables and those who are politically active blame their elite for not helping the community. The issue therefore arises as to whether individual upward mobility and the enlarging of the Untouchable elite through Indian government affirmative action is an appropriate vehicle for community betterment or is merely a cooptive strategy designed to control potentially disruptive social mobilization by educated Untouchables. The dilemma is faced by any disadvantaged community that becomes the recipient of government affirmative action, yet finds that the benefits largely perpetuate the existing middle class and leave the majority of the Ethnohistory 44:z (spring 1997). Copyright O by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc 0014-1801/97/$1.50.

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community unchanged. This raises the question of the appropriateness of affirmative action for community betterment. In India the proposed extension of university and job reservations to "backward castes" has led to rioting and dozens of suicides by high-caste protesters against the policy and thousands of Untouchable deaths through massacres by the high castes. In the West and particularly in the United States, reservation for minorities has led to an ongoing debate about its effectiveness and appropriateness. An analysis of the Indian phenomenon through the history of an elite Untouchable family can illustrate general problems of affirmative action in dealing with elite perpetuation and community uplift. Studying a single elite Untouchable family over four generations reveals the degree to which the urban system is open to Untouchable assimilation, and the extent to which a distancing from traditional caste moorings is possible. Finding a "relationship between the macrosocial level of analysis and the lives of real people" has been a basic concern of social scientists.' In attempting to straddle both levels through a case study of an Untouchable elite family, numerous problems arise. By definition, elite and Untouchable are contradictory terms, and those few families who achieve this combined status are highly exceptional both as part of the Untouchable community and as members of the elite. Generalizations based on studying society's exceptions are problematic. The obstacles facing poor Untouchables attempting significant upward mobility are too obvious to need repeating. Yet the obstacles to integration confronting an elite Untouchable family do point to the difficulties that other Untouchables will face in attempting to follow in their footsteps. This study will attempt to determine whether caste consciousness and discrimination are on the wane in urban middleclass society and, more fundamentally, whether economic development and modernity will reduce caste divisions or politicize them further. Studying the effectiveness of affirmative action in the politically charged Indian environment presents unusual difficulties. Students and faculty say even Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is arguably India's leading postgraduate social science research institution, has become politicized along caste lines. Most Untouchable affirmative action recipients try to hide their caste, yet they must affirm it to obtain benefits. Only those who are publicly active in caste politics are readily identifiable, as there is no definitive color or linguistic caste differentiation. Upwardly mobile Untouchables usually change their surnames, hiding their traditional means of identification. If a positive identification can be made, interviews have to be privately held to prevent neighbors or visitors from finding out. Within the Untouchable community, there is an implicit understanding that caste identity will not be revealed to outsiders. If the issue is raised by upper-

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caste persons, the usual strategy is to keep quiet, as there is little possibility for understanding between the two groups. The classic work on upwardly mobile Untouchables, Harold Isaac's India's Ex-Untouchables, which Barrington Moore uses in his Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt, has been criticized for presenting the upwardly mobile Untouchables as p a ~ s i v e This . ~ interpretation of these Untouchable attitudes is a matter of debate. While Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph argue that "educated, mobile, urban ex-untouchables cut themselves off from their community as far as political leadership is concerned and identify with ideological positions appropriate to their white-collar or professional social standing," Sachchidananda indicates this identification is problematic: "In some cases the educated member of the scheduled castes wants to cut adrift from his traditional moorings, but is unable to forge links with another group in a satisfactory manner."4 Although there was no significant Untouchable upward mobility prior to the twentieth century, this resulted from lack of opportunities for advancement rather than a genuine acceptance of their position. In fact, a close look at Untouchable society reveals what amounts to a counterculture, though this is not always appreciated by outsiders, who often take high-caste perceptions for reality. The contemporary Untouchable rejection of their lot is proven by the rural violence that would be unnecessary against a quiescent population. This rejection of high-caste perceptions is revealed in James Freeman's Untouchable, a biography of an agricultural l a b ~ r e r It . ~ presents an account of how the majority in the Untouchable community live. The literature on Untouchables is confined either to the lower classes or to the first generation of the upwardly mobile who share some degree of life experience and contacts with the poor. The issue of their descendants is left unexplored with the logical assumption that those who have already become middle class will pass their advantages on to their children. A multigenerational analysis of changing values and cultural identity is impossible over any large sample survey because the Untouchable elite has not been around long enough to perpetuate itself over generations. I have therefore chosen to analyze one Untouchable elite family that has had university graduates for three generations, and a fourth generation now graduating from college after emigrating to the United States. (See appendix.) This is the first multigenerational in-depth study of any elite Scheduled Caste family. As the man who began the family upward mobility was reputed to be the first Untouchable university graduate in India, this is as far back in generational terms as one can expect to go in studying the Untouchable elite. Upward mobility for Untouchables is essen-

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tially a twentieth-century phenomenon initially promoted by the British, but continued in India after independence with the mixed motive of controlling and expanding the Untouchable elite. At most 6 percent of the Untouchables have obtained nontraditional, though not usually middleclass occupations, indicating that little upward mobility has occurred for the community as a whole.6 This group, however, represents an unprecedented change in the Untouchable community. Whether it becomes assimilated with upper-caste culture or identifies with community interests will be critical for the socioeconomic improvement of the Untouchables and the future of India. As the Scheduled Castes represent over 140 million people and 16.48 percent of India's population and 2.6 percent of the world population, their co-option or alienation will have important political consequences in India. Constitutionally, Untouchability has been abolished, but in practice integration does not extend outside the cities where segregation is unenforceable, and therefore 80 percent of the population has daily experience of rural Untouchability. While the urban Untouchables need not face daily humiliation, such factors as job reservation, social interaction with poor relations, and the taboo against intercaste marriage tend to emphasize caste identity even in urban neighborhoods. However, the urban Untouchable middle class makes great efforts to overcome this stigma through various strategies of caste concealment, or "passing." "In the anonymity of cities, Untouchables usually can blot out more of their past than those who reside in villages, but the process, slow and painful, often takes generations."' This process of passing and attempting assimilation is a key factor in the lives of the urban Untouchable elite. Early attempts at upward mobility through sanskritization have long since been abandoned by Untouchable elites in favor of westernization or religious conversion, which facilitate successful passing. Less elite Untouchables, however, are more ambiguous in making a distinction between the two processes of upward m ~ b i l i t y .Westernization ~ is predominant only at the highest levels of the Untouchable elite, with various religious beliefs including Hindu practices prevalent among the lower classes and not being entirely excluded by some elite Untouchables as weL9 Untouchable Family History

The family under study comes from the caste of Namasudras or Chandals, who are described in the laws of Manu as the "lowest of mankind." The Upanishads imply that they rank lower than animals, and their touch or shadow is considered polluting to the higher castes.1° According to family oral history, they began their upward mobility from agricultural laborers,

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Figure I. "Founding" eldest brother and first university graduate and Untouchable in Bengal Civil Service with his children shortly after the death of his wife from TB.

which their original surname indicated, by migrating to a frontier area where they cleared the jungle for farming. With settlement this land became valuable, and the family started sending their sons to school. In an attempt to steal their land, the zamindar's factor murdered the father, but his fourteen-year-old son was able to sell off the land to someone else and fled with his mother and four younger brothers (a sixth son was posthumous) to Calcutta. When the family moved to Calcutta they were initially unable to find accommodation because of their Untouchability. The eldest brother for the rest of his life hung up a photo of the non-Hindu landlord who gave the family a place to stay. The change to a normally high-caste name from that of Untouchable agricultural laborers was designed to facilitate upward mobility. In 1908, after graduating in law, the eldest brother, with the nomination of Christian missionary professors, became the first Untouchable in the Bengal Civil Service." Though told by a Brahmin at the job interview that he should return to tilling soil, the new British policy of affirmative action in India enabled him to get the job. A generation later two of his sons became the only Untouchables in the Indian Civil Service.lz (See figures I and 2.) The Untouchable alliance with a belatedly sympathetic colonial government was to be the first opportunity for Untouchable

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Figure 2. Three of his sons; the two on the left became the only Untouchables in the Indian Civil Service, and the one on the right became an architect and surgeon who emigrated to North America.

upward mobility. Aside from the emancipatory British motivation, the rise of the nationalist movement provided a colonial incentive to promote division along caste lines through electoral and job reservations, a policy the Indian government continues with similarly mixed motives. With a job in the Bengal Civil Service, the eldest brother was able to use his salary to put his five younger brothers through law school and subsequently send his own sons for a more diversified university education in Britain. Of the six brothers, three joined the Bengal Civil Service, and the remaining three went into private law practice and politics. In 1912 they formed an organization of Untouchables in the province and "started agitations . . . for free primary education, special quotas in educational institutions and greater representation in the Council and local self-governing institutions." l3 They were elected to the Bengal Legislative Council in the 1920s and became ministers in the 1930s and 1940s.'~ (See figure 3.) The experience of humiliation left a mark on the first generation of upwardly mobile professionals that seems never to have been erased. In relating his

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Figure 3. Bengal Governor Sir John Anderson (center)flanked on his right by the Premier Fazlul Huq, who subsequently became Prime Minister of Pakistan. On the governor's left is the Untouchable Minister. Seated to their left and second from the end in the same row is H. S. Suhrawardy, who also became Prime Minister of Pakistan. Those at the back were mostly members of the Untouchable family and other provincial elites. Sir John Anderson subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Churchill's War Cabinet (photo taken on July I, 1937).

experiences to the Simon Commission, one of the ministers criticized a practice that continues in rural India today. "Children of depressed classes were given back and separate seats in schools, and were badly beaten."" "There is no arrangement for these children to drink water. I myself had the experience in my boyhood. We had to wait outside the room where water is kept till a caste-Hindu friend comes and puts water in our hands."16 This practice continued for him in the district and subdivisional courts even after he became a provincial minister. The Bengal governor, Lord Brabourne, in his confidential report to the viceroy stated that the Untouchable minister was "quite able but he, unfortunately, suffers from a severe inferiority complex which results in frequent outbursts of offensiveness towards members of the Services and people whom he fears are laughing at him behind his back."" This view showed a limited appreciation of the minister's life experience and predicament, considering that an Untouchable minister never had to manage upper-caste subordinate officials before. A

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subsequent wartime governor, Sir Thomas Rutherford, refers to them as "a loyal and respectable family," l8 though the upper-caste nationalists had a very different view. The class differentiation in the family was not politically significant at this stage. Cousins of the first generation remained destitute, as do their descendants who follow traditional occupations to this day. "Even those who had been educated and gone into higher professions were numerically so small and socially, as well as politically, so unintegrated with the high caste Hindu educated community, because of their low ritual position, that they could not evolve a separate social identity or totally cut off their ties with the peasant society they came from."19 The identification of the lower classes with the family was similarly close. The Scheduled Caste leader in the Communist Party-Marxist currently ruling West Bengal claimed that though the family came from "humble origins," to the Untouchable peasants they were "like gods." Despite the family having opposed Congress and supported Dr. Ambedkar as the national Untouchable leader, Sardar Pate1 offered a Congress seat in the Constituent Assembly to a minister in the family, who turned him down flat because he considered Congress a landlord party. Instead, he went over to Pakistan, which his political allies then ruled, only to return later to India when Pakistan became a dictatorship. This ended the political involvement of the family, which reverted to upper middle-class professions and other career opportunities. In summing up the achievements of this caste movement that the family had founded, Brian Shoesmith states: A Depressed Class elite had consciously set about achieving political pre-eminence based upon their own efforts, manipulating available political resources that centred principally upon a series of judicious political alliances. In less than a century a caste at the lowest end of the social spectrum had managed to lift itself to a position of major importance. In the Indian context this is a highly significant achievement. . . . The significance is heightened by an awareness of the particular time period in which it occurred. . . . The elite had managed to taste the highest political rewards, but the alliance also managed to satisfy the masses. It provided a focus for communal ambition; the lowest caste member could easily recognise the tangible benefits of this alliance by looking at his caste leaders. . . . The Namasudras because of their organizational skill, their political experience and their determination, were able to exploit a change situation earlier than similar social groups elsewhere in India. . . . However, the decision of the elite to eschew co-operation with the [upper castes] and ally themselves with the British and then the Muslims, was to prove the wrong one;

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but in the immediate short term it must have encouraged Ambedkar and other Depressed Class politician^.^^ The view that the Untouchables had a viable political alternative is not shared by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, who argues that "the nationalists, both moderates and extremists" were opposed to genuine Untouchable emancipation. "The prejudices of the society they belonged to and the economic interests of the classes they came from, stood in their way and prevented them from offering any effective social or economic programme for integrating these aggrieved lower castes with the rest of Hindu s~ciety."~' This remains as true of all the major political parties today as it was then. The economic interests and prejudices are too entrenched to be seriously challenged. This is a major reason for the lack of political involvement in mainstream party politics by many of the Untouchable elite. As a minority they cannot win significant electoral power without an alliance, yet no significant potential alliance partner would be willing to emancipate the Untouchables. It is no accident that Untouchability outlasted apartheid and the Untouchables became the last segregated population in the world. The Contemporary Family

Despite the loss of political power, in class terms the family remains the leading Untouchable family in the state. No other Untouchable family in that language group has reached their multigenerational occupational level. This network, however, is negligible compared to what an elite upper-caste family can rely on. As an example, a Brahmin telephone operator in going down the corridors of the state government headquarters could point out all her relations among officers at different levels. The Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer from the Untouchable family who was the first Scheduled Caste Chief Secretary in India (the top state bureaucrat) would have been hard put to find more than one or two Untouchable relations in the building at any level. (See figures 4 and 5.) Significantly, in the quarter century since his departure, no Untouchable has obtained this post, despite nearly a quarter of the state population being Untouchables. However, when the Minority Commission Chairman pointed to the social taboo against intercaste marriage, journalists claimed his appointment as Chief Secretary proved there was no caste discrimination in the state. The positions the Untouchable elite has managed to obtain are negligible compared to those of the ruling castes/classes in India. Whether this tokenism is more positive in providing examples of achievement to the poor Untouchables or corrosive in terms of co-opting possible Untouchable leaders is a frequently debated issue. Of the "founding" six lawyer brothers, the descendants of the provin-

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Figure 4. One of the sons (center) on departure to study law at Cambridge University. Father with garland on his right and his uncle with garland who is Bengal government minister on his left. Other uncles in same row (late 1930s).

cia1 civil servants tended to be more successful in the professions than the descendants of the politicians. The greater power and wealth of the politicians has not been sustained into the following generations to the same extent. Part of the reason for this difference in subsequent generations may lie in the expenses the politicians incurred in promoting their community and their heavy political time commitments. In retrospect a fundamental difference arose in the family between those of the second generation marrying outside the caste as occurred with the civil servants, and the descendants of the ministers who arranged marriages within the caste. The difference seems to have been ideological. Though the ministers were conversant with western culture, mixing on a more equal level with the British community than their brothers in the provincial service, they nevertheless felt that the integrity and emancipation of the community required the elite to continue marrying within their caste. The ministers complained that as soon as the children became successful they married outside the caste, effectively undermining its advancement. This exogamous marriage had the effect of distancing succeeding generations from any cultural or personal ties with the Untouchable community.

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Figure 5. Son as tennis player at Jesus College, Cambridge.

The second generation from the civil service branch had more romantic ideas, and despite the objections of the ministers, few married within the community. This was in part a reflection of the lack of English-speaking university educated women in the community during the second generation. Of the four sons of the eldest of the six brothers, two never returned to India, forgot their native languages, married British women, and went into private medical practice in the West. Their children were totally westernized, and as they in turn married whites, the last traces of Indian racial origin should disappear in the fourth generation. None of the wives or children were told of the caste background, and the parents never visited India. Communication had consisted of a couple of letters a year between wives who had never met. One son who became an architect and surgeon had left India in 1936 when he was seventeen and had never gone back for even a visit. He was the only family member who seemed uncomfortable discussing Untouchability, perhaps because it was over a half century since anyone had raised the subject with him. He did not have any Indian friends and had never been to an Indian community gathering. Though he had

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met Dr. Ambedkar and was familiar with the family history, he had put the past behind him. Given his reticence, I did not ask him if his failure to maintain any Indian language or culture had a connection with Untouchability. The second generation's childhood experiences as Untouchables living with parents posted in rural areas may have left a negative impression. Though the family was by then prominent, the rural town schools they attended were full of ~rejudicedstudents. The unpublished memoir of one of the ICS officers states, "The boys made fun of us, called us by the derogatory caste names and wrote our names and caste in bold letters on the blackboard just before the class started. They acted so superior for no other reason than the accident of birth. In our life religion, caste or rituals played no part. I was hurt and baffled by the strange behaviour of my class fellows. There was little that I could do but follow the good old adage, 'What cannot be cured, must be endured.' " This second generation was the last to live in rural areas or have any real rural experience, as subsequent generations lived in cities where they attended elite private schools. Their father's obsession with western education, which had facilitated the family's rise out of the peasantry, was passed on to his sons. "My father was a true liberal. He was a great believer in education. I remember him saying to me more than once, 'Do not forget that education is the key to success. You must learn English well.' He engaged tutors for us. Later he bought a radio. He wanted me to listen particularly to B.B.C. news so that I could perfect my English pronunciation. To learn English correctly, he used to say, one must speak in English, think in English and even dream in English. . . . True to his belief he educated himself first, then his brothers and later all his children without any discrimination. In my mind's eye I see my father pouring over books, burning midnight oil with one thought in mind-success in life." Of the two sons who joined the Indian Civil Service, both married non-Hindus. This unusual marriage outside the Hindu community was a reflection of the caste taboos by Hindus of their own class, as ~ c officers s were normally considered desirable marriage partners. As with other family members of that generation, the number of love marriages outside the community was unusually high and generally occurred with westernized families, most often of Christian or other minority beliefs, and usually from other linguistic groups. The resulting use of English as a first language is exceptional even for westernized families. Their children in the third generation continued this pattern of mixed marriages, becoming totally divorced from the Scheduled Caste community and mixing socially with members of their own class. Though westernization and cross-cultural integration might appear as inevitable for any upwardly mobile family, this is not the case in India.

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This pattern is due primarily to the social imperatives of the family's Untouchable origins. It might be assumed that westernization reduces the desire for endogamous marriage, but an Untouchable caste background also promotes this outside marriage. Among people of equivalent class and education, marriages within castes and linguistic groups are by far the norm. A survey of matrimonial ads in the New Delhi English-language press from the most westernized Indian class found 92 percent intimated an endogamous caste preference, while the remainder were almost all "handicapped" in the marriage market in some way and therefore had to cast further afield. Of the Indians settled in the West, only 19 percent did not specify a caste requirement. This indicates that modernity has not greatly weakened the most important reason for caste persistence, the continuance of caste endogamy.22The Untouchable family both in India and abroad is therefore exceptional in its mixed marriages and high degree of western acculturation. When love marriages do not occur, marriages are arranged. As arranged marriages include extensive checking into family and caste background, the usual subterfuges used in daily urban interactions are inadequate protection against the discovery of Untouchable caste origins. The easy way to avoid discovery and pass for high caste is to marry outside the state into another linguistic group. As these families do not know the history of Bengal and may have few contacts with people from the Untouchable family's language group, passing is much easier. The marriage ceremonies are carefully arranged to exclude those whose class or appearance might give a hint of lower-caste background, or at the other social extreme those who are so prominent that their Untouchable caste identity might be known. An ICS officer was excluded by his sister from her daughter's marriage arrangements for this reason. Once the marriage takes place the secret continues to be kept by all family members. Even some happily married Untouchables do not divulge this information to their spouses. The story of a Brahmin mother in London who committed suicide after discovering her husband of many years was Untouchable, whether accurate or not, was discussed among Untouchables in India. To avoid such problems, marriages are arranged with westernized families who would be least likely to raise objections should they discover the caste background at some future date. A fairly typical arranged marriage ceremony took place in a 5-star hotel in the bride's home city at the other end of the country from the Scheduled Caste groom's residence. As only the nuclear family of the groom would come, no selection of invitees was necessary. The groom had a Scheduled Caste father and a Protestant mother; the bride was from an indigenous Christian church. The mixed ethnic groom and the bride

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from yet another ethnic group had only English as a common language. A Catholic priest who was a friend of the groom presided over the ceremony with a reading from the Bible even though it was a civil marriage, thereby retaining the groom and his future children's eligibility for affirmative action programs. The real reason for this legal technicality escaped the bride's family, who probably assumed it reflected the father's Hindu sentiments. Though the groom was technically Hindu, the religious orientation was more that of closet Christian. The 19jo Constitution denied reservations to Untouchable converts to other religions, but this was amended to include Sikh converts in 1956 and Buddhists in 1990. Recently there has been a concerted effort by Christians of Untouchable origin to be included in affirmative action programs just as Sikhs and Buddhists are on the grounds that excluding only Christians and Muslims is discriminatory. As 60 percent of Indian Christians may be of Untouchable origin, the addition of 16 million potential beneficiaries has political ramifications for both Hindu Untouchables and the upper castes. The extension is strenuously opposed by fundamentalist Hindus, because it is the only thing preventing many Untouchables from converting to Christianity. Hindu Untouchables have mixed feelings on the issue, because Christians having had access to better Christian educational institutions would dominate the preferential quotas and further reduce the possibilities for poor Untouchables. The Christian community shows signs of polarization between upper-caste Christians and Untouchable Christians, forcing the church hierarchy to take a stand that affirms the Untouchable caste identity of C h r i ~ t i a n s . ~ ~ In the case of mixed love marriages, the Untouchable caste secrets are sometimes known but not necessarily passed on to their children. The critical distinction in this respect appears to be whether the children are eligible for job and university reservations as Untouchables. As legally Untouchable eligibility for reservation passes only through the male line, the children of women who marry outside the Scheduled Caste community are ineligible. In this case a conscious effort is made to identify the children with the husband's more prestigious community, even to the point of concealing the caste of the mother from her children. In one case, a family member in his thirties who argued against the Untouchables and affirmative action was told by his cousin that his own mother was an Untouchable. However, such comments in the heat of an argument are rare, as his age of discovery indicates. An inadvertent slip of the tongue is more likely. One family member mentioned in passing about his applying under the quota. When his brother-in-law inquired what quota it was, he quickly said the state quota, and the slip passed without his brother-in-law picking

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up on the family caste identity. Though the brother and sister were both eligible for the Scheduled Caste quota, only the brother's children would berbecause the sister had married-into a high caste. There was therefore no advantage in mentioning caste to her husband or children, and so the secret was kept. Because identification with the non-Scheduled Caste spouse is more advantageous socially, this is emphasized. Only if the children are eligible for affirmative action programs does the caste identity become significant. However, even if a child has to be informed for reservation purposes, family and caste history is not taught, perhaps because dwelling on the caste might be psychologically negative. With the passing of the second generation, no oral history will be available within the elite family. The history books mentioning the family are not known by the family to exist, which reflects the limited circulation of scholarly publications. Given the job reservation policy of the government, it might be assumed that top central government services would be the prime career objective of family members. Their native English fluency and private school education would give them a natural advantage over almost all Scheduled Caste candidates and many upper caste ones as well. However, very few have bothered to appear for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exams, preferring the private sector and independent professions instead. This probably reflects recent shifts in their class away from the public sector, which has fallen into popular disrepute. Three families have started their own businesses, though in two of these cases the spouses responsible were Parsi and Punjabi with family or community entrepreneurial traditions that they brought to the Untouchable family. This shift to entrepreneurship may reflect the deterioration in conditions of public service which have been significant both in terms of power and income. The education of children abroad that was possible for the middle-level provincial civil servants of the first generation in the colonial period became impossible even for ICS officers of the second generation making the top government salary in the 1970s. Government job reservation is still the main avenue for upward mobility by Untouchables, but at a certain upper-middle-class level it is no longer an attractive career option. This would seem to indicate that these elite families have risen above the need to rely on job reservation for careers and can compete on equal terms with high caste members. However, where affirmative action is most critical even for these elite families is in university placement. Because all private sector and professional jobs require university education, admissions in a highly competitive selection process means that a Scheduled Caste certificate can be a valuable asset. As the fourth generation grows up, the mixed marriages of the second and third generations have resulted in a legalistic division between

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those on the female side who have lost Scheduled Caste reservation eligibility and those on the male side who continue to be eligible. There is evidence that this legalistic division has also split the younger generation along "caste" lines. While the male branch avails itself of university placement reservation, the female lineage protests against it. Thus a fourthgeneration student of a Brahmin father and Scheduled Caste mother joined her colleagues in lying down in front of buses during protests against the extension of reservations to the Backward Castes. When the incongruity of the position was pointed out to her Scheduled Caste mother, the response was that when one's own interests are at stake, beliefs tend to be accommodated to it. After her children had emigrated to the United States, her son, on graduating in Computer Engineering from MIT, listened at the commencement exercises to a defense of affirmative action from the university president. Though the ICS officer liked the speech, he noted his graduating grandson lacked a conception of how poor people lived in either India or America. With the grandson's life experience and Brahmin surname there was no reason not to adopt an idealized view of India prevalent among many in the East Indian diaspora. If affirmative action and caste continue to be politicized, this division will probably be the pattern over subsequent generations as the descendants divide politically along lines of caste reservation eligibility. The incorporation of upper-caste prejudices against Untouchables by those who are unknowingly half-Untouchable themselves is a rather bizarre twist, though perhaps an inevitable result of the mixing and passing practiced by some of the Scheduled Caste elite. The degree to which these cultural and political divisions were inevitable is difficult to determine. Traditionally, developing modernity has been seen as increasing westernization. Though this linkage has been rejected by those pointing to the persistence of traditional values within modern Indian institutions, these upper-caste traditions are opposed by Scheduled Caste elites.24The rejection of sanskritization leaves few cultural avenues to adopt except westernization. However, even this route is not without problems. With the Indianization of the Christian church, caste divisions are increasingly being felt, as some Brahmin Christians revert to their caste names to differentiate themselves from lower-caste converts. Caste divisions are also found within the Muslim and Sikh community, even though Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism do not advocate a caste system. Dr. Ambedkar's mass conversion to Buddhism still identifies the adherents as Untouchables, as Buddhism was virtually nonexistent in modern India prior to the Untouchables' conversion to it. The option of religious conversion in an increasingly politicized caste situation offers limited benefits if Untouchable converts become ineligible for affirmative action programs. This government barrier

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to conversion through withdrawal of reservation privileges is a major objective of the affirmative action program, which seeks to arrest the erosion of Hinduism through lower-caste conversion to other religions. However, maintaining the legal integrity of the Hindu community does not resolve the religious and cultural dilemmas facing the Untouchable elite who cannot accept Hindu brahminical values, yet have no clear cultural or religious alternative. If passing for high status through religious conversion does not work, then only secular westernization would seem to offer an outlet, however undefined it is institutionally. This secular westernization seems to be what the Untouchable family has gone through. They are Hindu legally, but follow none of the practices normally associated with it. In cultural terms they are hardly distinguishable from their class counterparts in the West. Even when a conscious attempt was made to "Indianize" a couple of fourth-generation children by sending them to a progressive elite Hindi school, rather than the English mission schools of their parents, the impact was unnoticeable. As teenagers they demanded heavy metal music and stone-washed jeans, which their parents had to buy for them on their trips to America. The ethnic and religious mixing that has taken place has left no single cultural heritage. As Indian culture is primarily linguistically and religiously based, rather than national, there is no Indian culture that can be defined as universal to virtually all Indians. The attractions of a secular western culture therefore seem imperative. The dispersal of the family has resulted in several members in all of the largest Indian cities. The mixed marriages have created an indeterminate linguistic identity or rather no linguistic identity at all. Whereas the first two generations learned their regional language first and English in school, in the third and fourth generations English is the first language followed by Hindi in school, and a regional language, if it is learned at all, is usually only at a conversational level. The elite members have effectively lost a regional cultural base, just as the family members abroad have lost or never acquired their Indian cultural heritage. The family members in India and the West are not as distinguishable from each other culturally as one might expect. Given the long family history of westernization and its promotion of western education among the Untouchable community, this is perhaps understandable. While this westernization made it easy for me to understand the family, it was only gradually that I found out how atypical it was of Indian families, and then how much of this culture was predetermined by their Untouchable caste origins. The complex motivations behind the cultural values of the family only emerged through visits over a number of years, first as a tourist in India and then as a doctoral student undertaking research

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on government development policy. The family contacts proved invaluable for the development research but resulted in publications critical of the more laudatory academic consensus that has since emerged. This raises the question of how much academic research is the product of informant perspectives on Indian society. That Untouchable informants may have skewed my perspectives to the negative portrayal of government policy implementation could also apply to academics whose contacts follow the more usual access provided by upper-caste intellectual elites who project more positive images of their country. With the advent of feminism and multiculturalism in the West, these differing perspectives are given freer reign, but in India, where Untouchable academics are virtually nonexistent, a balanced perspective is not readily available. Thus India can be doubly obscured, both by the perceptions Westerners bring to the field, and the perspectives of usually upper-caste informants. It is therefore important to widen a perspective of India by including Untouchable views of their world. This would bring in such issues as unfavorable comparisons with the former apartheid regime in South Africa and whether sanctions should be applied against India for human rights violations. When I tried to get an account of the massacre of hundreds and probably thousands of Untouchable men, women, and children published in academic journals over the years, I found how resistant the academic community was to Untouchable perspectives. The editor of one major journal of Asian studies wrote "that after all this time . . . we have yet to obtain one solid outside referee report on your manuscript. We have solicited several referees and some have even accepted the task, only to have the ms returned to us in a few weeks with a terse statement that they felt unable to provide the promised report." In over a decade of trying to get the massacre published in academic journals, the resistance of the scholarly community to the presentation of unflattering Untouchable views was an education for me that I had not initially expected. However, I subsequently discovered this was hardly a new problem: their caste association had complained to the Simon Commission in 1929 that "it has been seen in more than one case that British members of the Indian Civil Service, on account of their living in this country for a long time, and by coming into contact with only a section of the people, are mentally captured by the ideas of those few people who are in the position of social aristocrats." 25 The in-depth multigenerational analysis of the elite Untouchables offers clues to the persistence of caste in India and the limitations of class mobility in overcoming it. In contrast to America, the lack of a color difference or other visible features of Untouchability makes advancement through passing for high caste a viable though difficult strategy for personal

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mobility.26Since the family does not fit the negative stereotype of Untouchables, they are assumed to be high caste. When a retired ICS officer in the family had a conversation with a high-caste businessman, the businessman remarked that the rcs officer's sort of people were not in government services nowadays because they are full of Untouchables. These views are often held even by Indian students at elite western universities who are least threatened by affirmative action, given their contacts and class background. The lack of visible identification means that elite Untouchables are privy to all the derogatory comments about Untouchables that arise in high-caste conversations on the subject. People who would have been too polite to say it, had they known the Untouchable origins of their guests, frequently make such comments, assuming a shared high-caste origin. As it can take generations to hide the evidence, it is not easy for the new middle class to pass as high caste. The active political involvement of the first generation made this passing impossible and undesirable, given their community-oriented values. The universal repudiation of party politics in subsequent generations made this passing increasingly viable. Passing, however, was not the only reason for this lack of political involvement. A lack of respect for politicians and their parties and distancing from the community were more critical. Also, the established political parties prefer pliable politicians from the Scheduled Castes to fill the reserved seats, making this lucrative career path unappealing to a family with other career options. No national political party is prepared to emancipate the Untouchables, given the overwhelmingly powerful class and caste forces opposed to it; hence, mainstream party politics is an unpromising venture for politicized Untouchables. This realization has led in part to the family's dropping out of politics. The distancing of the family from the community despite its militant history has often led to adverse community comment. This in part reflects a lack of comprehension by lower-class Untouchables of the difficulties senior civil servants would face in attempting to hire community members in the public sector.27As elite Untouchables, they are particularly vulnerable to charges of favoritism and have to be extra careful about their conduct. The ICS officers saw themselves as pioneers who had to maintain an unblemished record, because any mistakes would reflect badly on the prospects of other Untouchables who followed. Their view that the upper castes could be corrupt and make mistakes because there were enough of them in positions so as not to be typecast did not apply to the handful of senior Untouchable civil servants. The perception that the family was obliged to do better than others indicated a very competitive scholastic application that seems exceptional even in the highly competitive Indian educational sys-

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tem. The isolation and lower-class origins of the family may have given this edge, as autobiographical sketches of other upwardly mobile Untouchables seems to indicate this grit is typical of the group. The case study of an elite Untouchable family reveals the difficulties of assimilating into the Indian middle class, despite the educational and economic resources that come with this class position. Theories that modernity would bring secularization, while true for this family, have not occurred for the nation as a whole. Not only is the family excluded culturally from their own caste, but they also lack the ethnic and religious anchors normally available to families of equivalent status. This cultural isolation perpetuates itself in marriages with equally secular and westernized elite families. This does not make these mixed marriages and families any less successful, but it does give an edge to their absorption of western culture that would not otherwise be there. This adoption of western culture is unusually extensive. A third-generation member had never learned the local language despite a lifetime in the state, and learned Hindi only through school and talking to servants. Indian language skills were surprisingly minimal. Even second-generation members often were more fluent in written English than in writing native languages, though English was learned only as a second language in school. The ignorance of the third and fourth generation about family history is almost total, even by those who know of their caste origins. When I pointed out the street in Calcutta named after their father's uncle, it turned out they had never heard of him, even though he was the first Untouchable elected to the Bengal Legislative Council. Non-family members of the same caste are much better informed about the family history than they themselves are. Among relatives the near-destitute peasants know more about the family than the elite members, being able to trace the family tree to people the elite are unaware of. In their mud hut one family showed a vernacular book on their caste containing pictures of their elite first-generation family members. The elite third-generation family member I was with could not read the vernacular script, and no elite member possessed a copy of the book. These poor relations who had a great-greatgrandfather in common with the elite member, however, had one family member who had become a doctor employed by the government at a village primary health center. When I remarked at the condition of the doctor's office, the elite member observed that this doctor was probably better than his uncle who was a doctor in the West even though he made less money, with the implication that the difference was only a matter of emigration and licensing. Despite the passing attempted in the Untouchable elite, the continuing politicization of caste may make the Untouchable elite just as vulnerable

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to mob reprisals as Muslim and Sikh elite families. Though Untouchables are frequently killed in the villages, urban areas have generally been free of pogroms against them. In this sense, the passing for high caste offers extra security in the event of a caste Hindu backlash. It also enables the hiring of high-caste servants, which would have been unthinkable during the first generation, when caste concealment was not possible. This caste concealment, however, does not apply to other members of the Untouchable castes. Among the tiny Untouchable elite, everyone seems to know of everyone else, though they refrain from mentioning these secrets to the upper castes. One neighbor known to be active in Scheduled Caste politics refrained from visiting the family for fear it would alert people in their New Delhi middle-class neighborhood to their caste identity. Conversation becomes carefully graded according to caste composition of the audience, and the level of conversational intimacy that can be tolerated. At the same time this caste identity prompts Untouchable elite members to exchange favors and information, and if need be appeal to Untouchable ministers for assistance when facing job harassment, which is often attributed to upper-caste prejudice. In one case of harassment a third-generation family member was ordered by her boss to sign a negative assessment of a Scheduled Caste clerk to prevent the promotion he was entitled to. When she refused to be implicated in an attempt to use one Scheduled Caste employee to discriminate against another, the boss threatened that she would "suffer the consequences." However, unbeknownst to the boss, her father was a retired rcs officer who knew the Untouchable central government minister who happened to be in charge of the department. A casual inquiry from the minister as to how she was doing was enough to stop him carrying out his threat. Subsequently, she left to join a United Nations agency. As her boss was highly educated, had extensive foreign living experience, and an international reputation in his field, it cannot be assumed that prejudice will disappear with education and expanded life experience. In fact, older Untouchables remark that the British were less prejudiced against Untouchables than Indians, who often lack an interest in the advancement of individual Untouchables that European missionaries and civil servants sometimes One Untouchable ~ c officer s related the story of how he had left a civilian job in the army during the war to join the rcs, but the army came to the ~ c training s camp to arrest him for desertion. However, the rcs trainer, Sir Theodore Tasker, took the case all the way to the Secretary of State for India in London, who dismissed the charges as frivolous. (See figures 6 and 7.) The unanimous view of all those present, including those of high caste, was that Indians would not take up such cases, because their attitude would be that there were plenty of people to replace him.

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Figure 6 . Last batch of the Indian Civil Service, 1943. Sir Theodore Tasker with Untouchable on his left. The same officer related how he had got low marks in the oral ICS exams, because his uncle as a minister had kicked the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, Sir Robertson, out of the minister's office. When he got high marks the following year, and subsequently joined the service, the ICS officer received an unsolicited letter of apology from Sir Robertson. This was also something that was not done by Indians. Though hardly a prevalent practice in the West, the fact that Untouchables saw it as distinctively better was significant. The British nostalgia for the Raj finds some fellow feeling among the Untouchables. When I asked one Untouchable ICS officer in public whether it was better serving under the British or independent India, his failure to reply brought laughter from subordinate officers. Later, he privately told me that though the Indian politicians were more interested in economic development, the British were more just. The memoirs of one Untouchable ICS officer provides a string of discriminatory incidents that are unlikely all to be attributable to coincidence. In the ICS camp he was given an intelligence test that he did very well on but no one else took. Their Indian horse riding instructor without authority gave him an unbroken horse to ride that no one else could manage, and when he tamed it, the British colonel wanted to give him first place but the instructor refused, so they compromised on a joint first. The incidents of the first few days in training reflect only the beginning of a life in the

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Figure 7. Funeral of "founding" eldest brother with family members.

Indian Civil Service that may have appeared "heaven born," but for the Untouchables in it comes across as a professional minefield of corruption and banality requiring a constant effort to protect oneself from enemies attempting to compromise them. The Untouchable elite is nonideological when it comes to reciprocating favors. Untouchability rather than political affiliation is considered more important. The small size of the elite, difficulties in achieving upward mobility, and the mutual feeling of prejudice against them makes mainstream party affiliation more often a tool for career advancement than heartfelt commitment. The differences of ethnicity and politics that sharply divide the rest of Hindu society are not significant at this Untouchable elite level. The family has maintained contacts and received professional assistance from Untouchable central government ministers under different regimes. Though the family allied with Dr. Ambedkar in opposition to the Congress, the Congress Untouchable politician Jagjivan Ram was friendly with the family from the 1920s.~~ His intercession with Indira Gandhi enabled a family member to become chief secretary. Though he was the senior ICS officer in the state, high-caste politicians had opposed the appointment. The inclusion of an Untouchable in the central cabinet is a virtual given in Indian politics. While this has achieved little if anything for the

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poorer members of the community, it has provided those Untouchables who have already joined the elite with access to political protection. This has been used on a number of occasions by the family as well as by other elite Untouchables with similar access. Whatever else these ministers may or may not have achieved, they seem able and willing to help individual elite Untouchables who have career difficulties. This role, while helpful to the individuals, also maintains the integration of the Untouchable community with the political system, which is undoubtedly a major motivation for the appointment of Untouchable ministers and the retention of affirmative action pr0grams.3~ The functional aspects of the affirmative action programs for maintenance of the political system are often overlooked by those who oppose reservation. The perpetuation of an Untouchable elite through reservation is a subject of criticism by the high castes, and these elite family examples are often used as an argument against reservation. The writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri points to this family in objecting to the policy. The most eminent leader of the caste which is normally composed of peasants and labourers and regarded as the lowest and most depressed in Bengal, who hated Gandhi and higher castes with equal intensity, and who pressed the claims of his caste most stridently from 1931 onwards, was a front-rank advocate in Calcutta High Court and a very wealthy man. On formal occasions he even wore the full English morning dress. One of his nephews (still Scheduled) is married to one of my nieces (still un-Scheduled). QED.3l This often-repeated upper-caste view, however, is not shared by lowerclass Untouchables. Since the Scheduled Caste quota is rarely filled due to various administrative manipulations by the upper castes, elite Untouchable perpetuation does not deprive lower-class Untouchables of jobs. This may change if the quota system is effectively implemented, but it has not yet happened to any significant degree. Few non-elite Untouchables would have the education to compete for the jobs in any case. If positions are filled at all, it is because a small fraction of the Untouchables have reached a competitive level. What the lower-class and politically active Untouchables do object to, however, is the lack of effort those who obtain elite jobs through the quota make in improving and organizing their community. In what can be taken as a criticism of the family one historian states that "although the more talented among them [the family's caste] took advantage of the opportunities for higher education and employment reserved for the scheduled castes and were often co-opted by the upper-class Hindus, the vast majority of the Namasudras remained virtually ~ n l e t t e r e d . " ~ ~

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From the perspective of the Untouchable elite, however, the alternatives are less clear, with social penalties and family sacrifices resulting from acts of rebellion. The upwardly mobile Untouchable elite A

A



goes through a phase of estrangement from its own people. This is so because a Chamar [untouchable caste] official usually finds his role models on the "othern-the caste Hindu-side. If he therefore neglects or forgets or offends his own people, he disappoints them and feels guilty. He is charged with becoming a cultural amnesiac. As he acquires greater social experience and perspective, however, he finds himself alienated from the larger caste-Hindu counterpart and its "secular society" and from his own "less educated people." He discovers that whatever he is in the office is only an incomplete achievement, for it can lighten but not remove the Chamars' social burdens. He also finds that his own people isolate him in subtle ways. These strains thus demand that he be tactful toward the caste Hindu as well as the Chamar; that he control and manipulate his power and influence; and that he constantly evaluate his competing social respon~ibilities.~~ While the divisions in the Untouchable community are undoubtedly present, the charge of co-option is a difficult concept to define and deal with given its political overtones. There is no reason why Untouchable elites should define their personal identities as Untouchable, just because those in their community or the upper castes define them as such. Many have attempted to opt out by converting to Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. The claim of a community obligation because an accident of birth made them eligible for the Scheduled Caste quota is debatable. To take advantage of the opportunity provided by the quota would only be human. Conclusion The usual criticism of affirmative action is that it should be based on lowerclass status, not an all-encompassing caste criteria that includes an elite that may have more educational and economic advantages than some uppercaste people of lower class. However, as Marc Galanter points out, since the Indian government could not accurately identify the victims of the Bhopal accident entitled to compensation, the nonfraudulent identification of beneficiaries below some arbitrary lower-class criteria is an administrative impossibility.34The very exclusivity of the caste system makes the identification and verification of the Scheduled Castes relatively easy. It is difficult to see how, in a hierarchial system like India's, Untouchables would be able

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to have significant upward mobility without reservation. Extension to the Backward Castes has more serious political ramifications, as these castes are often the dominant rural elite and less easily manipulated than the Untouchables. Politicization along these caste lines could be a serious threat to the political system. On the other hand, the extension of job reservation could enable the entry of the elite rural classes into urban employment and in the long run reduce high-caste elite perpetuation, which has continued in India for thousands of years. In this sense, extending reservation till it accurately reflects population proportions would provide greater political integration, though it could cause increased violence in the short term. Unless a change is made in the upper-caste control over urban employment, it is difficult to see how a democratic system can be maintained on such a narrow social base. Eventually, the 85 percent who are largely excluded are going to become increasingly insistent on a fairer share. The Scheduled Caste reservation policy was too co-optive and limited to be a serious threat to any group. The Backward Caste movement, however, threatens the whole structure of elite dominance. This group is too large and powerful not to make their elite incorporation essential for the survival of democracy. Ironically, these Backward Caste groups, which include some of the worst exploiters of the rural Untouchables, may be even less sympathetic to Untouchable demands than the urban upper classes, whose interests are least threatened by them. In this situation it is difficult to see how the Untouchables will ever be able to achieve emancipation. Those who as individuals and families manage to enter the middle class will continue a rather ambiguous role playing, without ever entirely shaking off their Untou~hability.~~ The Scheduled Caste elite "are forced to oscillate between the two poles of rebellion and silence." 36 The family has followed both strategies at different times without finding either wholly satisfactory. Affirmative action is not the solution to community problems and will not achieve Untouchable emancipation, as has long been recognized by the Untouchable leaders. A family member on the central government's Scheduled Castes and Tribes Commission stated that affirmative action helps a minority. Only the transfer of assets sufficient for an independent livelihood, principally in the form of land, can lead to the emancipation of the Untouchables who are overwhelmingly rural and dependent on landlords and moneylenders. When Dr. Ambedkar joined the central cabinet at independence, and drafted the Indian constitution legally abolishing Untouchability, he is reported to have told Nehru that land reform must be undertaken immediately before the government lost its autonomy from the dominant landed interests. Nothing serious was ever done, and Ambedkar eventually left the government in frustration. No significant political party

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in India, whether capitalist or communist, is prepared to undertake land reform, as the dominant landed interests are too powerful a component of their classlcaste base. The emancipation of the Untouchables is not on the agenda, because perhaps the majority of the population obtain some material or psychological benefit from the continuance of Untouchability. A party would need a political death wish to attempt emancipation. The National Front alliance promoted extension of reservations to "Backward Castes," which are in reality often the dominant landed rural elites seeking urban government employment outlets for their children. A platform of land reform and Untouchable desegregation, however, would never be tried, as it would threaten these interests. Nor is foreign pressure likely to be applied. The dominant northern pressure that led to the desegregation of the American South or the international sanctions that facilitated change in South Africa will not be forthcoming in India. Even though Untouchability is on a far larger scale than apartheid, the power of landed and Hindu caste interests over the state, and disinterest in Indian minority rights, means the "new world order" will not apply in this instance. If change is to come, it will be through the power of the Scheduled Caste vote, which is too large a bloc for politicians to ignore and now too politically aware for the mainstream parties to take for granted. In 1995 an Untouchable woman schoolteacher headed a Scheduled Caste government in India's most politically important state of Uttar Pradesh. Though short-lived, the minority government indicated the increased influence of Untouchables in politics. The 1996 general election led to a national government that marginalized the upper castes from cabinet office for the first time.37The proposal to extend affirmative action to the private sector, if implemented, could mark the entry of the lower castes into the only significantly expanding areas of employment. Whether any of this will serve to include or marginalize Untouchables from greater participation in nontraditional occupations remains to be seen, for the Hindu fundamentalist backlash is also gaining ground. As new subordinate groups take control of state power, many of the old discriminatory practices may be repressed by the government, but attitudes will not be as easily changed. Notes I Larissa

Adler Lomnitz and Marisol Perez-Lizaur, A Mexican Elite Family: 1820-

1980 (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 3. z Harold R. Isaacs, India's Ex-Untouchables (NewYork, 1965); Barrington Moore,

Injustice: The Social Base of Obedience and Revolt (New York, 1978);James M. Freeman, Untouchable: A n Indian Life History (Stanford, CA, 1979), 157.

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3 Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, 1967), 154. 4 Sachchidananda, The Harijan Elite (New Delhi, 1977),10. 5 For a more theoretical view of Untouchable perspectives, see Joan P. Mencher, "The Caste System Upside Down, or the Not-So-Mysterious East," Current Anthropology 15: 469-93. 6 Marc Galanter, "Pursuing Equality: An Assessment of India's Policy of Compensatory Discrimination for Disadvantaged Groups," in Social and Economic Deuelopment in India, ed. Dilip K. Basu and Richard Sisson (New Delhi, 1986), 136. 7 Freeman, Untouchable, 397. 8 Owen Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability (NewYork, 1969), 7. 9 R. S. Khare, The Untouchable as Himself: Ideology, Identity, and Pragmatism among the Lucknow Chamars (Cambridge, UK, 1984), 131. 10 Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight's Unwanted Children, Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1992, 65. 11 Dennis Walker, "Matua Untouchable Writers: Religious Protest and Indianist Accommodation," unpublished article (1993), 8. 12 The Indian Civil Service does not refer to the 17 million or so people employed by the public sector, but an elite cadre of the top colonial administrators who at independence numbered about four hundred Indians and six hundred Britishers. With the departure of the British, the Indian ICS officers held some of the top government positions until their retirement, the last one retiring in the early 1980s. 13 Tajul-Islam Hashmi, "The Communalisation of Class Struggle," Indian Economic and Social History Reuiew 25 (1988): 187. 14 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, "Social Protest or Politics of Backwardness?" in Dissent and Consensus: Protest in Pre-Industrial Societies, ed. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, Hari S. Vasudevan, and Rajat Kanta Ray (New Delhi, 1989); J. H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1968); Brian Shoesmith, The Evolution of Political Consciousness, B.A. honors dissertation, University of Western Australia, 1976. 15 J. R. Kamble, Rise and Awakening of Depressed Classes in India (New Delhi, 19791, 72. 16 Lord Simon, Chairman, Report of the Indian Statutory Commission. Vol. 17, Selections from Memoranda and Oral Evidence, 21 January 19zq,q8. 17 Lord Brabourne, Governor's Half Yearly Report on Ministers to Viceroy Lord Linlithgow, zo June 1939, India Office Library (London),125. 18 Sir Thomas Rutherford, Governor's Half Yearly Report on Ministers to the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow, 16 September 1943, India Office Library (London),11. 19 Bandyopadhyay, "Social Protest," 182. 20 Shoesmith, Evolution of Political Consciousness, 45, 47,49-50. 21 Bandyopadhyay, "Social Protest," 220. 22 Nasir Iqbal, "More Educated Are More Caste Conscious: Delhi Survey," Dalit Voice 10 (16-31 March 1991): 8. 23 A. M. M. Vetticad, "Mother Teresa: Cause with a Difference," India Today, 15 December 1995,17. 24 Alan Roland, In Search of Self in India and Japan (Princeton, N J , 1988), 90-91. 25 Simon Commission Report on India (Indian Statutory Commission). Volume

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17, Selections from Memoranda and Oral Evidence by Non-Officials (Part II), 93 (reprinted New Delhi, 1988). Cited in A. K. Biswas, "Profile of a Persecuted People," paper presented at the Nineteenth Indian Social Sciences Congress, Allahabad, 11-14 March 1996,14. Edward B. Harper, "Comparative Analysis of Caste: The United States and India," in Structure and Change in Indian Society, ed. Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago, 1968), 70-71. Joan P. Mencher, "On Being an Untouchable in India: A Materialist Perspective," Beyond the Myths of Culture (New York, 1980), 287. Kathleen Gough, "Harijans in Thanjavur," in Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia, ed. Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma (New York, 1973), 242. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, vol, 2, ed. Vasant Moon. Education Department, Government of Maharashtra (1982), 713. Geoffrey Hawthorn, "Caste and Politics in India since 1947," in Caste Ideology and Interaction, ed. Dennis B. McGilvray (Cambridge, UK, 1982), 211. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch! India 1921-1952 (Reading, M A , 19891,462. Prafulla K. Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men (Kalyani, ~ q q o )208. , Khare, Untouchable as Himself, 131-32. Marc Galanter, Lecture at Ambedkar Centenary Celebration, Columbia University, New York, 14 April 1991. Nandu Ram, The Mobile Scheduled Castes (Delhi, 1988), 119. Ramashray Roy and V. B. Singh, Between Two Worlds: A Study of Harijan Elites (Delhi, 1987), iii-iv. Barbara Crossette, "Caste May Be India's Moral Achilles' Heel," New York Times, 20 October 1996.

Appendix. Family tree (only some o f those mentioned in text are included). Murdered Landowner L I

Lawyer & Provincial Civil Servant

Dentistry Student

Lawyer & Minister

6

Lawyer & Provincial Civil Servant

Lawyer & Provincial

Civil Servant

A

Lawyer & MLA

Computer Engineer at Wall Street bank

GENERAT~ON / Lawyer & Minister