Arun,
Your expectation of castism in India to slowly fade away is quite right. Let me give a first hand knwoldge of what happened in my life within a space of 25 years. When I was a kid growing up as a high caste in a remote village in one of the liberated (castewise) states in India (Tamil Nadu) it went through a sea of change. Though I am from a high caste family all others from middle lower caste to all the way down to the schedule caste people cannot deal with us on equal basis. It is a complex laddered system. There are potters, washermen, haircutters, carpenters and iron smith and then schedule castes. Within schedule caste there are two castes. Schedule caste are at the bottom. All other categories I mentioned above are in the middle layer and they lived with us in the same village and can deal with us on daily basis as we have to deal with them. Only restriction is that there cannot be any intermarriage between us and the middle castes. However when it comes to schedule caste they cannot live in the same village, cannot draw water directly from our wells and we give a separate cup to them when we give water or coffee. Those coffee cups are then designated permanently as "their" cup and kept outside the house, usually on the compound walls. In villages like mine high caste people are typically landlords and they control everything. Here and there a brahmin or other high caste people also live in villages. The schedule caste people have to work in farms and hence live with whatever those land lords pay them either in terms of money or as sacks of grains. One family may work with different landlords if they can and can also go for daily labor elsewhere.
First I will relate an incident to illustrate how extreme this caste system was. Once there was a schedule caste guy and his daughter got matured. It is a custom in our part of India, if not all over, have a party to announce to others that girl is matured and has reached womenhood. He used the title landlord in his invitation because he rented a farm land from a landlord for couple of years and hence he felt that he is entitled to use that title in his invitation. All the villagers got very upset after seeing him use that title in his invitations and they immediately summoned a village panchayat meeting and decided that what that poor guy did was illegal. So they humiliated him and meeted punishment in the farm of fine and apology. (But my father being progressive he educated and allowed me to read things that are very progressive including exploitation using caste system and religion etc. So I never had any qualms with having friends from all castes.) But this caste system started to slowly crumble when the state government first established a colony with better houses for them, built a road to their village, dug a well for them, brought electricity and gave some preference in education. Now they do not depend on upper caste people as much as they used to be and they either go for work in nearby towns or have their own hand looms or power looms to make their own living. Thanks to opportunities in education and economic progress this caste system has crumbled to a great extent, if not completely, within a span of 30 years. (Of course in big cities caste is less visible. Though this much progress has been made within a span of 30 years still a lot has to be corrected when it comes to marriage.)
Like any other society, higher caste people in India tend to maintain their hold on caste system in order to keep their economic advantage. But it will slowly fade away when economic progress is made and it reaches all layers of the society.
However it is always amusing to read people make predictions based on what they read in corporate media without knowing what is really happening.
As Jay often points out here, India and China have a lot of bent up demand suppressed for several centuries and they have to make progress now to reach a level playing field.
This will make the world more competitive and equal. |
