Traditional caste, by reorienting itself, seems to be handling
modernity well. It is modernity that appears clueless as to how to
handle caste.
In his two articles in The Hindu (Jan. 8 and 9, 2009), Justice
Markandey Katju has brilliantly articulated what was once the colonial
— now, the modern — view on 'caste.' He asserts, like most do, that
caste is a "social evil," "divisive," and "a curse" that must be
'eradicated' if India is "to prosper." Yet he concedes that, despite
its suspected racial origin, caste had done good to India by helping
in work specialisation, which had made India an economic super power
till CE 1700. But, he says, it is an old story, and the British advent
has changed all that. Asking "could India have developed like North
America and Europe had the British not come?" he answers: "there is no
use crying over spilt milk." He is now relieved that the evil of caste
is being destroyed by technology, people's struggles, and inter-caste
marriages.
In sum, Justice Katju accepts the western anthropological view of
Indian society. But setting out to validate the western view, the
Dravidian and Dalit movements actually ended up repudiating it. For it
is the very caste that such movements fought to snuff out that finally
became the vehicle for their assertion, surprisingly proving the old
saying, "vishasya visham oushadam," that is, if caste were poison, it
is its cure too. Justice Katju, like most scholars — social, economic
and political — seems confused about how to handle the 'traditional'
caste in 'modern' times. While they see it as an evil in politics,
here is a different view of caste that brings out its positive role in
market economics, that is, caste as 'modern' development — yes, modern
economic development — vehicle.
Popular Indian socio-economic discourse today seems to be not fully
familiar with the emerging phenomenon of 'social capital' — an area of
study where culture and economics confluence....