For decades, this question has been asked to a large population of Bharat. “Discrimination” is the only purpose and outcome of this question. People from the advanced caste have used this to identify the people from the backward caste to provide them with ‘their’ kind of work and to treat them differently. Though the caste system has always been karma-based, but we have somehow managed to categorize it, basis birth, and recent incidents are pointing toward the return of this era.
During a recent debate in the Lok Sabha an uproar followed when Anurag Thakur asked the caste of Rahul Gandhi. Akhilesh Yadav objected that how can anyone ask someone’s caste? After all these incidents, the video of Rahul Gandhi asking the name of a journalist and the name of his owner during the Bharat Jodo Yatra and Akhilesh Yadav asking the caste of a journalist went viral on social media.
Rahul Gandhi, who has been demanding a caste census, has raised the slogan of “Jitni Abaadi, Utna Haq”. Before this, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that minorities have the first right on the country’s resources. If we look at history, the ancestors of the Congress Party never supported caste and reservation. Pandit Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and his son Rajiv Gandhi have always opposed caste politics and reservation.
The changed character of the Congress Party is a matter of serious concern. From time to time, interference and rhetoric of foreign organizations in the internal affairs of India has come to the fore. Recently, Kamala Harris in America stated that if Trump is elected, he will change the Constitution of the country.
Now if we analyze the pattern, when the top leadership of Congress has stood against caste-based reservations for years, then perhaps the new demand for caste census is a new step towards making way for Muslim quota to take minority appeasement to the next level?
One June 27, 1961, Jawaharlal Nehru in a letter expressed his views on caste-based reservation. He declared that “’I do not like reservation in any form. Especially reservation in jobs. I am against any such step that promotes inefficiency and takes us toward mediocrity.” Nehru misrepresented one of the greatest measures of social justice in Bharat that was the finest dream of Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as promoting “inefficiency” and “mediocrity” and it only exposed his inherent casteism.
Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi put the report of the Mandal Commission—ordered by the Janata Party government that came to power in 1977 on the backburner. In fact, she coined a slogan to counter caste-based parties: “Na jaat par na paat par, mohar lagegi haath par (Vote for Congress and not on caste and community lines)”.
Indira’s son Rajiv Gandhi also ignored the Mandal report. When V.P. Singh implemented the OBC reservation, Rajiv termed it as an attempt to divide the country on caste lines. In an interview to Navbharat Times on March 3, 1985, Rajiv Gandhi declared that “buddhu” (morons) should not be encouraged in the name of reservation. It was a cruder and uncivil way of carrying forward the views of Nehru and Indira. In September 1990, Rajiv as the Leader of the Opposition attacked VP Singh and compared the then PM with Britishers who divided the country on caste and religion.
Appeared ‘The Chosen One’
Rajiv’s son Rahul Gandhi has started picking up on the call of caste census only in 2022. When the Congress-led UPA Government conducted a caste census in 2011 and sat on the report without making the findings public, perhaps Rahul Gandhi was in slumber. He easily forgets that Congress ensured that SC/ST reservation, as mandated by the Constitution, was removed from Aligarh Muslim University (1981) and Jamia Millia Islamia (2011) in favour of Muslims, even though both are government funded. This is one among multiple acts of hypocrisy and casteism that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has shown.
In 2011, it was Congress allies like RJD who pushed the UPA to conduct a caste census, overturning the Congress stated policy position of decades of not doing one. In 2011, too, senior Congress leaders like P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, and Pawan Kumar Bansal objected to a caste census and a group of ministers (GoM) never reached a conclusion over it. It took five years to complete the survey at a cost of over Rs 4,000 crore but it was riddled with technical flaws and never became public. Interestingly, the Congress leaders also cited the dynasty’s stand against caste census.
Hypocrisy and Flaws
Rahul Gandhi centred his election campaign for Lok Sabha on a single tone-deaf call that BJP will scrap reservation and change the Constitution of India. The people of India gave more seats to the BJP than all the I.N.D.I Alliance combined. Rahul didn’t learn his lesson.
In fact, Congress over the years despite its opposition to caste census and inherent casteism has mastered the policy of creating Muslim quota. In the past, the Congress adopted two models to provide reservation to Muslims. The first one was in Karnataka where former CM Veerappa Moily announced 6 per cent reservation for Muslims, Buddhists, and Scheduled Castes who converted to Christianity within OBCs in 1994. The second model was implemented in Andhra Pradesh, where former Congress CM YS Rajasekhara Reddy introduced 4 per cent reservation for Muslims.
The Congress’ 2009 Lok Sabha election manifesto specifically mentioned that the “Indian National Congress has pioneered reservations for minorities in Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh in government employment and education on the basis of their social and economic backwardness. We are committed to adopt this policy at the national level”.
Against Dalits’ Empowerment
Under the UPA Government the appointment of National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, under the chairmanship of Justice Ranganath Misra in 2004 is a case in point. A close reading of the recommendations of the Ranganath Misra commission indicate that a section of the Congress party planned to end SC/ST reservation. Be it the de-scheduling of the Scheduled Castes, or its recommendation on fixing a deadline to end the SC/ST reservation, on many counts Misra commission stepped out of its mandate.
It is alarming that the misdeeds of the more than six decades of Congress rule have been forgotten by Rahul Gandhi. He has easily whitewashed the fact that on one side the party leadership remained opposed to the empowerment of underprivileged, and on the other they also kept opposing the caste census. It does not seem pertinent that the advisors of Mr Gandhi told him to disown the party policy. What seems more likely is Mr Gandhi has been told to make a pitch for caste census only to make way for Muslim quota and take the policy of minority appeasement to its next level. The accompanying ideas of redistribution of wealth, and how Congress thinks that ‘Muslims should have first right to resources’ is corroborative evidence that Congress is determined to take away the reservation benefits from SCs, STs, OBCs, to give it to Muslims and others for their vote bank. The last decade of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas’ has certainly not helped the revival of divisive Congress policies and so the caste census seems to be the only hope to divide Bharat further.
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