On modern Hinduism much of the debate has been on the perpetuation of the caste system as a form of social inequality. This fills centre-stage commentary on caste as a basis for Hindu stratification that is built into the foundation of dharma. The construction of caste in the body politic gained significant attention in media and scholarly literature in the early 90s and has continued to occupy vast amounts of space as articles in journals and online publications. Writers have tended to see caste through a Marxist prism and almost all work has been coloured by varied tinges of leftist bias.
In consequence, caste was and has become an intersection where embattled religious temper meets the studied acknowledgement of its political processes. Some Hindus the world over are outraged by caste as seen through the lens of contemporary politics while those who look into it from a more social scientific perspective rethink it as a tool for construction or expansion of identity and difference. Hindu dharma does view it from a lens of independence and does not sanction it even though we see textual data deliberately thrown in without context in several books.
In unfurling the web of caste, it is crucial to note that caste is also a dangerous tool for the communists. Disregarding its spiritualism and a nuanced articulation of its interconnection with the science of dharma, these folks have lambasted it as a Brahminical conspiracy war waged by evil upper-caste, heterosexual, North Indian men who wield enormous power over Bharat and therefore stifle dissent. Even Bharat Mata has allowed the communists to function in our democracy, so how the woke subsidiary of caste has bequeathed to us the element of authoritarian surprise is best left for them to decipher.
One of the goals of caste in their scheme of things is to us what Oppenheimer did to the Bhagavad Gita. He—literally—completely destroyed it. In emplacing a quote in what was a palpably horrid context, he induced the wrath of Hindus globally and deservedly so. While Christopher Nolan may have beautifully and creatively juxtaposed his version of it onto sex shots in his eponymous film, the truth is the real nuclear bombs we need to be building are within us—those that destroy our ego, selfishness and wanton desires.
Indeed, the Left’s version of caste should be seen as a receptacle of one such bomb with which the Right needs to attack. As is well known, there is a wide array of documentation on how the Right has tried to subvert the left’s ideological inclinations through repeated attempts at chiselling its side of the story. More of it would mean less nuance. Unfortunately we Hindus have tended to be noisy when it comes to our neck of the woods. The time has come for us to reclaim the night and start walking the streets waving our saffron flags—but with less tiresome, jaded and outmoded ways of overcoming religious grief.
The point of understanding caste in the social arena is to understand its implications in the propagation of Hindu dharma. The politics of caste serves its purpose when it is used for vote-banks but a more gentler reading of caste from the vantage point of spiritualism would require an approach without the way in which the Left has critiqued it through its toxic and insidious filter. With this in mind, a note on caste is important, for it is here that the Achilles’ heel of Hinduism lies.
Of course, the role of the comprador intellectual is as bad as the role of the radical Brahmin. I am referring to the occasional loony who does think Himself a great big superior bigot. They do exist. I am not one of them; but truth to be told, it is within the ambit of this discourse that the comprador slices caste to couch “us” as the very thing we are not, and for this idea alone, to locate caste as part of weird mental gymnastics where there is a push and pull for political power is to accept a truism: caste in reality is political piffle.
In particular, caste-as-practice today shows there is a mode in which caste operates and that it is a place for enticement, envisionment and entertainment. Enticement because people want to know who is upper-caste and want to bring them down. Anybody who has an iota of a so-called casteist predisposition is immediately told to step down because he or she has spoken of his accident of birth. Envisionment because the political classes inhere their own clouts and caste-based policies to bolster their numbers. And entertainment because everybody likes a good scoop—so it all boils down to enactments of a—literally—higher order.
In this vein, the postcolonial discussions on caste have been dovetailed to suit the demands of the state, the nation and its apparatuses. As such, this positioning of caste-as-theory in the realm of social media has buttressed notions of how some Dalit groups fancy themselves as upholders of righteousness when they are in fact nothing but agents of change who are out there to call for the unbundling of socialist potential. This zeal to drive home the point that Hinduism is the stage on which caste was born is what underscores their point time after time. Hinduism therefore becomes a euphemism for caste.
As a person of colour, I have straddled the domains of inquiry in the academy. I am not a scholar nor an academic but I am certainly a seeker of self-revelation who has been through the trials and tribulations of a student who was subsumed under the umbrella of anti-Hindu sentiment. I do not gloss this over as a matter of inconsequence but I say this to simply suggest that I know what it means to be caught in the thorns of the neocolonial imagination as I have experienced it. Caste is one such thorn and the way in which the Left continues to fracture it needs to be nipped in the bud.
