SC/STs and the State in the Indian Constitution

                                         SC/STs and the State in the Indian Constitution



At the outset let me thank Dr BR Ambedkar Research and Extension Center and University of
Mysore for doing me the honour by inviting to deliver this special lecture on the Republic Day.
We generally choose problematical themes for such lectures. By that logic, the theme formulated
by the organizers implicitly suggest some problematic. I am not sure to what extent you are
aware of it, but I am acutely concerned with the problematic associated with all the three
constituent elements of this theme. This day 62 years ago we, as the people of India adopted our
Constitution to give ourselves a republic. The Constitution has been eulogized as one of the
finest constitutions in the world, particularly for its elaborate handling of social justice. Because
it took exceptional note of the people called SC/STs and provided them with protective,
promotional and developmental care. It was expected that a plethora of measures devised for it
would bring them on par with others in course of some time. Indeed it did so, but to a tiny
section of them and unleashed the dynamics that has already aggravated the divide existing
among these communities. Its republican vision promising people secularism, socialism and
democracy is already marred by the consistent antithetical experiences. Over the years the state,
which is constitutionally mandated to be in service of people has only shown its fangs to the
latter. If they are poorer, it bites them; to Dalits, it bites most. The state which was to protect the
SC/STs has become the chief tormentor of them.
This is the most bewildering picture of performance of our Constitution over the last six years.
There is this commonplace notion that our Constitution is good but the people who are
implementing it are a bad lot. There may be some truth in it but certainly not the complete truth.
After all it is the precise role of the Constitution to make the bad lot behave; it the people are
good, there perhaps is no need of any Constitution. By the dictum that the test of pudding is in its
eating, we may have to problematize even our Constitution for the consistently bad results being
produced under its regime. Indeed, we have to problematize everything, all holy cows around us, perhaps in an Ambedkarite
iconoclastic way, to see where the rot lies. That is what precisely I intend doing in brief over the
next hour or so.
Making of the SC/STs
Foremost, it is necessary to understand that SC/STs are the administrative identities and they do
not correspond to social reality. They were born during colonial times in the process of political
reforms towards giving India a responsible self-government. The Morley-Minto Reforms Report,
Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms Report, and the Simon Commission Report were some of the
initiatives that can be directly associated with this context. One of the hotly contested issues in
the proposed reforms was the topic of reservation of seats for the “Depressed Classes”1
 in
provincial and central legislatures. In 1935 the British passed the Government of India Act 1935,
giving Indian provinces greater self-rule within a national federal structure and incorporated in it
the reservation of seats for the Depressed Classes. The Act brought the term “Scheduled Castes”
into use, and defined it as “such castes, races or tribes or parts of groups within castes, races or
tribes, which appear to His Majesty in Council to correspond to the classes of persons formerly
known as the ‘Depressed Classes’. The Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1936,
contained a list, or a Schedule, of castes throughout the British administered provinces.2
Some provinces and princely states were already using Depressed Class - lists, mainly for
extending educational concessions. The 1931 census, the Franchise Committee, and the
provincial authorities had deliberated over the matter and came up with somewhat different lists,
which were revised more than once before being finalized in 1935. The Scheduled Castes were
to be the Untouchable Hindu castes, and were defined as “castes, contact with whom entails
purification on the part of high caste Hindus.”3 The Census Commissioner, J. H. Hutton, set forth
nine criteria to determine which castes were to be scheduled. The most important criterion, he
said, was whether the caste suffered (1) civil disabilities like denial of access to roads, wells or
schools. Five more were religious and social criteria: whether the caste (2) caused pollution by
touch or proximity; (3) was denied access to the interior of ordinary Hindu temples; (4) was
denied the services of “clean Brahmans”; or (5) the services of the same barbers, etc., who
served high caste Hindus; and (6) was subject to the rules concerning acceptance of water. These
six criteria were meant to include castes; the remaining three were meant to exclude them: the
caste was not to be scheduled if (7) an educated member was treated as a social equal by a high
caste man of the same education; or if pressed only because of its (8) occupation or (9)
ignorance, illiteracy or poverty, “and but for that would be subject to no social disability.”4
 These
criteria were adopted to prepare the schedule for the castes in 1936.

While these criteria were found generally applicable in many areas, they posed problem in some.
In parts of the South they broke down because there were too many castes that qualified for
inclusion in the schedule. If mechanically done, there would have been huge population of these
parts included in the schedule. Therefore, it was decided to apply additional criteria of illiteracy
and poverty to bring the number down to a reasonable level. In the northernmost provinces an
opposite problem arose. There some castes tended to qualify these criteria but the disabilities
they suffered were milder and variable. Therefore, again these ad hoc secular criteria, illiteracy
and poverty, were applied for inclusion of certain castes in the schedule.
The process of making schedule was disputed by a number of authorities, especially in U.P. and
Bengal, who expressed dissatisfaction mainly because the criteria were social and religious,
which were not construed then as a legitimate concern of the government. Some argued that the
criteria were fictitious and inappropriate to define and list the scheduled castes by their ritual
status. Notwithstanding these objections, the fact remains that the resultant schedule though
based on a well defined criteria was not error free. While it largely included ‘untouchable’
castes, certain castes in South which were considered untouchables and even unseeables got
excluded on adhoc criteria. Surely the castes like Nadars in Tamil Nadu and Ezhavas in Kerala
may have been these excluded castes. What is notable here is the tremendous progress the
Nadars and Ezhavas have made vis-à-vis the castes within the schedule. In view of this
observation, can it be hypothesized that the stigma associated with the Schedule rather than
helping the scheduled caste has proved harmful to their progress? I do not know for sure but the
insight based on these facts is surely plausible and worth exploring.
Whether or not, these excluded castes were technically ‘out castes’, the empirical fact that they
were similarly placed as the untouchable castes that got into the schedule in 1936 but made such
progress that none from the schedule could make, may point to a very disturbing proposition that
the government ‘schedule’ rather than helping the untouchables has harmed them. The possible
reasons may be hypothesized as follows. The practice of untouchability was a fact but as a part
of the life world of people it was hazy and muddled. Inclusion into a schedule, the castes got
official stamping of ritual inferiority and universal stigmatization. The castes that did not get
included into it in corollary escaped it and in course of time even society forgot that they were
untouchables in past. The castes in the schedule on the one hand developed vested interests in
preserving their status and on the other hand became subject to bitterness by the rest of the
society as undeserving beneficiaries. As a result, the schedule blocked the progress of the
scheduled castes whereas the castes outside its pale could progress without this baggage.
There is a scope to speculate that formalization of untouchability through the administration
action could be detrimental to the subjects intended to benefit from it. It may be explained in
terms of self initiative for building up social capital by communities that were excluded from the

schedule, which gets replaced by reliance on the state in communities which were included in the
schedule. The theory of caste as the basis for building social capital got credence by the studies
of some castes like Gounders in Tamil Nadu who created Tirupur as the global center for
knitwear industry.5
 The former communities could benefit even from official upgradation of their
social status widening social spaces for their development. Of course, one has to take into
account the initial endowments of these communities that disqualified them to be in schedule but
propelled them soon on to development path.
After independence, the Constituent Assembly adopted the prevailing definition of Scheduled
Castes. The term “Scheduled Tribe” however did not exist and came into being only after the
Constitution was adopted. The first serious attempt to list these communities as primitive tribes
was made during the census of 1931. In the Government of India Act (1935) a reference was
made to the “Backward Tribes” and again the Thirteenth Schedule to the Government of India
(Provincial Legislative assemblies) Order, 1936 specified certain tribes as backward in the
provinces of Assam, Bihar, Orissa, CP and Berar, Madras and Bombay. In the 1941 census these
people were recorded as “Tribes” and separate totals were furnished only for a few selected
individual tribes.6
 In pursuance of the provisions under the Art 343 of the Constitution, the
president made an order in 1950 specifying certain tribes or tribal communities as scheduled
Tribes and consequently another schedule for the tribes along the lines of scheduled castes was
created. The actual complete listing of castes and tribes was made via two orders The
Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, and The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order,
1950 respectively. The criteria followed for the schedule for tribes were: indications of primitive
traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large,
and backwardness. These criteria were not spelt out in the Constitution but were from the
definition adopted in the 1931 Census. The 1950 schedules listed 1,108 castes across 25 states
and 744 tribes across 22 states.
Unlike the defining criterion of untouchability for the SCs, the criteria for the tribal schedule
were vague which were still diluted for the revision of the list based on the subsequent reports:
the first Backward Class Commission (Kalelkar) 1955, the Advisory Committee on Revision of
SC/ST lists (Lokur Committee) 1965 and the joint committee of parliament on the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Bill, 1967 (Chanda Committee) 1969. The
tribal communities had three divisions: first, those enjoying fairly high status within the Hindu
society, e.g., Raj Gonds – so called because they had actually ruled large tracts in central India;
second, partially Hinduized tribes settled in plains and third, those actually inhabited hill
sections.7
 Moreover, there being no stigma of lowliness attached to the tribes, there was no
reluctance of communities to accept the tag of a scheduled tribe. Resultantly, many relatively
well off communities managed to get into the schedule and deprived the genuine tribes of the
benefits intended for them. These communities (e.g., Meenas in Rajasthan, Halba Koshtis in

Maharashtra and most tribes in North East, which were the ruling tribes in past and today are
well educated and westernized) have dominated the list of STs leaving the needy high and dry.
Making of the India’s Constitution
The long colonial rule had established the benchmark for liberal democratic governance in the
country. Its advent, although with colonial logic, had brought in modern institutions of
administration, justice and liberal ethos and significantly impacted traditional social institutions
in India. Later in response to the freedom struggle, it brought in a sense of self-governance by
partially devolving power to provincial assemblies of peoples’ representatives. The Bolshevik
revolution in Russia in 1917 had opened up new horizons before the world people about the
possibilities of self-governance sans exploitation which created pressure on the ruling classes to
yield grounds. By the end of World War II, when the colonial powers were so weakened that
they were no longer in position to directly govern their colonies, they decided to relinquish
power in favour of a representative body of the local people, but not before ensuring protection
of their long term interests by the new rulers. The liberal democratic model, which appeared to
provide governance by popular will but actually left ample scope for the propertied classes to
maintain their control, had become a default model of governance in the non-communist world
and as such it was adopted by almost all newly freed countries. India was no exception.
When India attained Independence, naturally the options before the ruling classes were limited as
the Congress, their representative body, had been projecting its vision of self rule in response to
the aspirations of people and creating noises that raised them further. Liberal democracy meant
constitutional democracy, the constitution being the rule book for the state, a mechanism of
checks and balances. After the World War II formally ended on 9 May 1945, the Labour
government came to power in July 1945 in the UK. It soon announced its India policy and
initiated a process of transfer of power. The process included convening the constituent assembly
for making the constitution.
Historically speaking, the Constitution evolved through a process which began much earlier than
this, as a part of India’s struggle for independence from British rule. Way back in 1895 the
leaders of India’s freedom struggle (Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak) had put forward a
document called Constitution of India Bill, also known as Home Rule Bill, which envisaged
freedom of expression and equality before law for all people. In February 1924 Motilal Nehru
introduced a resolution outlining the procedure for drafting and adopting a Constitution for India
in the Central Legislative Assembly, which had also passed it. In 1927 Lord Birkenhead, the
Secretary of State, challenged Indian leaders “to produce a Constitution which carries behind it a
fair measure of general agreement among different sections”. The Indian National Congress
accepted the challenge and convened an All Parties Conference in 1928 which appointed a
committee under the chairmanship of Motilal Nehru to determine the principles of Constitution

for India. The Nehru Report submitted on 10th August 1928 was in effect an outline of a draft
Constitution of India. It envisaged equal rights to men and women regardless of caste, class,
religion or region, free elementary education, freedom of expression to all, etc. The secular
character of the state was also mentioned as one of its fundamental character. The idea of
framing the Constitution by a Constituent Assembly elected with widest possible franchise, first
propounded by M. N. Roy and Jawaharlal Nehru, began to gain ground. Congress included it in
its election manifesto for 1936-37 elections to provincial legislatures. The British accepted it
only in 1945 after the end of World War II. However, when the Constituent Assembly came to
be formed these ideas were compromised. As an election based on universal adult franchise
would require lot of preparations and time, Congress had to agree to the Cabinet Mission’s
scheme of electing members of the Constituent Assembly by the elected members of provincial
assemblies.
Interestingly, the Constituent Assembly was convoked by the British rulers by executive action
before India’s independence, which even determined its composition. It was the Indian
Independence Act, enacted by the British Parliament on 18 July 1947 that gave
Constitutional sanction to the Indian Constitution in advance of its formulation.8
 The total
membership of the Assembly thus was to be 389. As recommended by the Cabinet Mission,
292 members were elected through the Provincial Legislative Assemblies, 93 members
represented the Indian Princely States and 4 members represented the Chief Commissioners’
Provinces. The Congress working committee made great effort to see the members from the
scheduled castes and Tribes; Women, Christians, Parsis and Anglo-Indians were among the
Congress candidates. Congress won a huge majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly.
Among the elected, majority were the Hindus although Congress had given due
representation to other communities. As to its communal composition, there were 5 Sikhs, 3
Parsees, 7 Christians, 3 Anglo-Indians, 5 Backward Tribes, 31 Muslims and 33 Scheduled
Castes. The caste distribution among the Hindus was: 56 Brahmans, 15 Kayasthas, 11
Vaishnava and Marwaris, 9 Kshatriya and Rajput, 3 Marathas, 3 Reddies, 1 Lingayat and 1
Vokkaliga.9
 There was also an effort to bring in the best available talent irrespective of their
political affiliations and as such there were as many as 30 members who were elected on
Congress ticket but they were not its members.
Initially, the Constituent Assembly was constituted for the united India. Though the Muslim
League had participated in the elections, it boycotted its proceeding to press for its demand for
Pakistan. Ultimately this demand was conceded vide the Mountbatten Plan of partition
announced on 3 June, 1947. Consequently, a separate Constituent Assembly was set up for
Pakistan and representatives of some provinces given to Pakistan ceased to be members of the
Constituent Assembly of India. As a result, the membership of the Assembly was reduced to 299.

The Constitution naturally carried the imprint of the Congress vision articulated through the
freedom struggle as can be seen through various documents. For instance, it carried much of the
content of the Nehru Committee report of 1928 with regard to safeguards relating to fundamental
rights. Ten of their nineteen heads were carried almost unchanged in Part III of the Indian
Constitution and another three appeared as Directive Principles under Part IV. The Nehru
Committee Report was rejected by the Simon Commission of 1927-28 as “abstract declarations”
and so “useless” but its essential demand for individual rights was repeated in the Indian
Independence Resolution of 1930. Although the Government of India Act of 1935, the direct
predecessor of the Indian Constitution, was enacted without any formal bill of rights, it had
safeguards against discrimination in the spheres like employment, owning property, and carrying
on trade or business. Interestingly, what later proved to be the weakest fundamental right—the
right to property—was also included in Section 299. Since the Government of India Act mostly
failed to provide effective remedies against executive despotism, the Congress repeated its
demand for a bill of rights at the Calcutta session of 1937.10 World War II put an end to all such
initiatives, and only the Sapru Committee Report of 1946 demanded fundamental rights as a
necessary standard of conduct for all the organs of state.11 While the Constituent Assembly
picked up the concept of justiciable and non-justiciable rights, propounded in this report, it had
to take refuge in the Irish Constitution to resolve the tension between “individual rights” and
“individual responsibilities or collective rights”. This led to the ultimate adoption of the
justiciable—non-justiciable dichotomy of Parts III and IV of the Constitution.12
While there is no doubt that the Constitution of India is skillfully crafted by the Drafting
Committee into one of the longest and most comprehensive documents in the history of modern
legislature, its content is imbued with the ideological hegemony of the Congress and conditioned
by its class character. On 13 December, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives
Resolution, unanimously adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 January 1947, which
expressed the aspirations and expectations of the people that they had from independence. The
Resolution inter alia said that the Assembly would declare India as an independent, sovereign
republic; guarantee freedoms of thought, expression, belief, faith and vocation; provide equality
and justice to all citizens; and ensure welfare of various sections of the people. It also made it
clear that ultimate power would reside in people. The Resolution had thus provided a guideline
and a framework for the Constituent Assembly to work out the Constitution. In spite of the
ideological differences, almost all the members of the Constituent Assembly agreed with the
Objective Resolution. The Constitution as it emerged essentially reflected the spirit of the
Objective Resolution. It was quintessentially an exercise in liberal democracy not quite different
from the trend existed then. The most distinguishing part of the Constitution was its elaborate
scheme of social justice, which reflected the strategic realization of the ruling classes to convince
the multitude of have-nots that their interests would be taken care by the Constitutional regime.
Despite Nehru’s much publicized love for socialism, the Constitution avoided to touch the

distributional aspects of the society. The dominant class character of the Constituent Assembly
itself was deterrent enough to guard off any tendency to impart economic character to the
Constitution.
This was briefly exposed by Babasaheb Ambedkar in one of his first speeches in the Constituent
Assembly. He was invited out of turn by the Chairman, Rajendra Prasad to make his observation
in connection with an amendment proposed by MR Jaykar to the Objective Resolution moved by
Jawaharlal Nehru. Dr Ambedkar made a brief speech in the Constituent Assembly on 17
December 1946 wherein he echoed one of the principles propounded in his States and Minorities
for the nationalization of land and industry:
“Sir, there are here certain provisions which speak of justice, economical, social and
political. If this Resolution has a reality behind it and a sincerity, of which I have not
the least doubt, coming as it does from the mover of the Resolution, I should have
expected some provision whereby it would have been possible for the State to make
economic, social and political justice a reality and I should have from that point of view
expected the Resolution to state in most explicit terms that in order that there may be
social and economic justice in the country, that there would be nationalisation of
industry and nationalisation of land, I do not understand how it could be possible for
any future Government which believes in doing justice socially, economically and
politically, unless its economy is a socialistic economy. Therefore, personally, although
I have no objection to the enunciation of these propositions, the Resolution is, to my
mind, somewhat disappointing. I am however prepared to leave this subject where it is
with the observations I have made.”13
It is surprising that while he chose to point out the basic lacunae in the Resolution, he voluntarily
added that he would not insist upon it. As a matter of fact, he would not bring it up ever again in
the constituent assembly. Being totally left out from the political parleys for transfer of power
and without any strength of his party in any provincial assemblies, Babasaheb Ambedkar did not
have any hope of entering the Constituent Assembly. In the circumstance the Scheduled Caste
Federation, his party had decided to submit a memorandum to the Constituent Assembly to be
considered for the future constitution. This memorandum, which had radical provisions for what
is called state socialism (with provisions such as nationalization of land and key and basic
industries; parcelling the lands to village cooperatives with capital being provided by the state,
compulsory insurance to all with the insurance lying in state sector, etc.) was later published in
May 1947 as States and Minorities, with Ambedkar’s preface dated 15 March 1947. While there
was no possibility of such a radical plan being adopted through the legislative process, why
Babasaheb Ambedkar should make it in the first place and still not even mention it shall remain a
mystery!

When the Constitution was being framed India presented an impossible picture of fragmented
polity: it was befogged with the communal divide between Muslims and Hindus, was faced with
integration problems of 565 princely states, communist led peasant struggles with all potential to
flare up into a conflagration, in addition to pulls and pushes from numerous castes, communities,
linguistic and cultural groups. But the biggest long term threat was from its organic proletariat
comprising one-sixth population which was totally excluded on account of the caste system.
Although fragmented into castes, this huge mass of proletariat could turn into a veritable volcano
with a spark of class consciousness. It was therefore necessary for the ruling classes to devise
suitable containment policy such that it would neutralize this threat and still not compromise any
of its class interests. The Constituent Assembly while proclaiming equality skilfully kept castes,
the most menacing contrivance of inequality, untouched. It banished untouchability but not caste,
its source. The alibi was to use caste to extend social justice to the caste-oppressed groups like
SCs.
The real objective was to keep the proletariat caste bound so as to insure that they never realize
their class status. The second objective was to keep them bound within the constitutional system.
This dual objective was achieved through a plethora of constitutional provisions in their favour.
Since they had existed in some form during the colonial times, it was easy for the constituent
assembly to continue them. The task was rather to rationalize and enhance them. It is interesting
that there was a kind of unanimity about these provisions in the Constituent Assembly. These
provisions fall under the following three spheres:
1. Protective Measures - Such measures as are required to enforce equality, to provide
punitive measures for transgressions, to eliminate established practices that perpetuate
inequities, etc. (Article 17). A number of laws were enacted to operationalize the
provisions in the Constitution, such as Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocity) Act, 1989, the
Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act,
1993 and the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis Act, 1993, etc.
2. Promotional Measures (affirmative action) - provides preferential treatment (reservation)
in allotment of jobs and access to higher education, as a means to accelerate the
integration of the SC/STs with mainstream society. Some of the constitutional provisions
are: Article 46: Promotion of educational and economic interests. Article 16 and 335:
Preferential treatment in matters of employment in public services. Article 330 and 332:
Reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. The general rule which
exempted the scientific and technical posts from the purview of positive discrimination
was applicable to the autonomous bodies too.14

3. Developmental Measures - Provides for resources and benefits to bridge the wide gap in
social and economic condition between the SC/STs and other communities. Under it
numerous measures can be counted such as freeships to the students to the special
component plan.
Generally, Babasaheb Ambedkar is acknowledged as the chief architect of the Constitution.
While it is true that he had borne much of the load of drafting the contentious clauses and
piloting them in the constituent assembly and making it one of the most comprehensive
legislative documents in the world, he should not be held responsible for its contents. Even going
metaphorically, the architect does not own up the vision or the content of the house; he merely
shapes it up with his skills and knowledge. The constitutional contents were predominantly
calibrated by the strategy of the class of emergent bourgeoisie, expressed through their
representative party--the Congress. While this strategy was enabled by the framework of liberal
democracy, based on the representative structure, it would not be good enough to insure the buy
in of the depressed classes. The colonial regime, with its own logic, had already introduced many
measures for their development. While there was no option to rethink them, mere continuation of
them also would not suffice in view of the rising aspirations of people in general. If these classes
of organic proletariats were not duly accommodated, they could pose biggest threat to the
structure in course of time. None other than Mahatma Gandhi, the strategist extraordinaire of the
Congress was acutely aware of it. Although he couched his arguments in moralistic terms, they
were basically driven by this strategic necessity. It was the masterstroke of his strategy to get Dr
Ambedkar elected to the Constituent Assembly, when his membership was annulled as a result
of the partition Plan in June, 1947, and then to make him the chairman of its most important
committee, the Drafting committee. He knew there was little that Dr Amabekar could do but
would contribute immensely in rationalizing the contents the Congress decided and defend it in
the constituent assembly with his intellectual prowess and erudition. More than his scholarship
and intellectual prowess, he wanted Ambedkar’s name to go as the creator of the constitution,
which he saw being crucially important for the downtrodden masses upholding it. The
sentimental manner in which Dalits view and uncritically uphold the Constitution as the creation
of their leader proves the strategist extraordinaire in Gandhi right. Despite Dr Ambedkar’s public
denouncement and disowning statements15
, and their own bitter experience, Dalits would stake
anything to defend the Constitution.
Continuation with the reservation policy for the scheduled castes had an important embedded
opportunity. Insofar as the policy took cognisance of caste, albeit with the veneer of social
justice, the castes would be kept alive. It is a mute point that in the prevailing situation whether
there was any option than making exception of scheduled castes for extending constitutional
provisions. Perhaps there wasn’t. But in the policy formulation the same could have been
confined only to the scheduled castes as victims and transformed it into a challenge to the rest of
the society to expiate its crime or in other words the policy could have been termed as the

countervailing measure to make the rest of the society behave by overcoming its disability (and
not that of the scheduled castes) of being incapable of treating its own members equal. What
instead came through the policy was association of secular backwardness with certain castes. The
caste system with its graded inequality caused deprivation or granted privileges in a continuum.
Backwardness therefore could not be theoretically associated only with some castes.
Backwardness as a multi-dimensional outcome moreover cannot be solely attributed to a single
factor like caste. Therefore, prudence demanded that since the scheduled castes were historically
excluded as outcastes and a fairly homogenous people, they could be made an exception purely
for their social treatment resting onus of that on the larger society.
Making of the Indian State
The Indian state was supposed to be based on India’s Constitution. Whatever the limitation of the
Constitution, it was an excellently executed liberal document. It distinguished itself by two
things: its preamble that gave its vision and its section IV which provided the direction to state
policy. The preamble of the Constitution emphasizes its republican character and explicates its
vision to be a perfectly egalitarian society. It says including its amendment:
“We the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign
Socialist Secular Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens: Justice, social,
economic and political; Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; Equality
of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all Fraternity assuring the
dignity of individuals and the unity and integrity of the Nation.”
And the Directive Principles of State Policy outlines measures the state should incorporate into
its policies so as to accomplish this lofty vision.
There was no attempt to remodel the state as per the new republican vision. The entire state
machinery was inherited from the colonial regime and continued unchanged. It inherited colonial
bureaucracy, colonial laws, colonial rules, colonial procedures and colonial operative ethos
which were oriented to treat people as subject. With its alien attribution gone off it assumed
rather unimpeded powers over people and behaved as such. In effect, it proved perfect antithesis
of the Constitutional vision. The duality of the Indian constitution and the state replicated the
traditional doublespeak of the Indian ruling classes. While the Indian Constitution professed all
liberal ideals in the world, the Indian state supposed to be ordained by this Constitution trampled
them all with impunity and became perfectly illiberal and tormentor of people. The state came
out in its true character which is only noted in the Marxist school. According to Marx, the state is
an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of
“order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between

classes.16 Muffled by the imperative of long term ruling class interests, the Indian state can be
seen as the veritable exemplar of the Marxian definition.
The translation of the constitutional welfare goals into practice have in fact remained a mere
constitutional chimera being far off even after six decades of independence. Within the existing
socio-politico-economic power structure based on the capitalist model of modernization /
framework of market economy which the democratic and constitutional state of India has
adopted, it has widened sharpened disparities, frustration, estrangement, deprivation,
exploitation, poverty, insecurity, oppression, unemployment, starvation, corruption and injustices
of all sorts, affecting adversely the social, political and economic conditions of the vast majority
of lower strata. The weaker sections are not only deprived of the development programmes in
most cases, they are kept out of development process. Poverty question is a power question; it is
rooted in the model of development that produces it and gets in turn reproduced.
State of the SC/STs
In order to examine the behavior of the state vis-à-vis the constitutional provisions in respect of
the SC/STs, there perhaps is no better way than looking at the outcome over the republican
period under three spheres of constitutional policies as outlined above.
Protective Measures
The caste system was based on the notions of purity and pollution supposedly based on Hindu
scriptures. But it is grossly erroneous to treat contemporary castes as the same. The operation of
castes today is a combination of several factors possibly unconnected with any scriptural dictum
of purity and pollution. The Constitution has banished untouchability as crime and law was
enacted to deal with it. But the state willed otherwise and the untouchability is still rampantly
practiced all over. Many surveys such as various state level surveys during 1990s, Action Aid
Survey of 565 villages in 11 states in 2001-200217 and the recent survey of 1589 villages in
Gujarat by Navasarjan Trust and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights18 survey
have clearly found the instances of untouchability being practiced to a significant extent. The
infamous two tumbler system is still extant in some parts of south India. It is not the matter with
the backward parts, even in the capitalist Punjab and Haryana the practice is encountered. If one
equates untouchability with the discriminating attitude, it prevails everywhere, even in the most
globalized sectors of India in the metropolis.
The most concrete manifestation of castes however is caste atrocities. The atrocities are arguably
the best proxy for casteism. The government has developed a good system of compiling data on
caste atrocities with neat classification, which makes them amenable to statistical analysis. Caste
atrocities like castes are not based on scriptural notion but have to do with the changes in power

relations in the countryside, the terrain where they happen. The data on atrocities show a drastic
change since late 1960s in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. The atrocities until then
happened at individual level, both on victim as well as perpetrator side. But later they
increasingly started happening in collective mode—many people coming and attacking a group
of Dalits in a very planned and calculated manner so as to teach the entire dalit community a
lesson. Kilvenmani in Tamil Nadu marks the beginning of this new genre of atrocities. It took
place in the context of agriculture wage struggle led by the Communist party, in which the
landlords attacked the entire Dalit locality and burnt some 44 people, mainly women and
children alive on 25 December 1968. A spate of atrocities followed thereafter everywhere and
flared up in Bihar in 1980s into a virtual caste war. All these atrocities are explained by the
changes in political economy and not on the basis of any scriptural basis.
If one analyzed this phenomenon carefully one would find that the state policy has directly is at
its root. The so called Nehruvian modernization project undertaken immediately after the
independence, marked mainly by the land reforms followed by the Green Revolution pushed out
the traditional upper caste landlords from villages and created in their place a class of rich
farmers in villages from among the Shudra castes. It transformed traditional production relations
into capitalist relations by creating input, output, credit, implements, and labour markets in
villages. Consequently, it uprooted the old jajmani relations signifying the interdependence of
castes, reducing Dalits as landless labourers dependent on the farm wages from the Shudra caste
farmers. The economic contradiction between labour and capital, the social contradiction
between the outcaste and caste, accentuated by the cultural assertion of dalits and political
ascendance of the Shudra castes but their relative lack of cultural sophistication (compared to the
traditional upper castes) began manifesting into clashes expressed through the familiar faultlines
of castes. This perplexing phenomenon of rising casteism with the spread of capitalism can be
explained by the inverse developmental relation between the state and class in India: while
elsewhere the emergent class of bourgeoisie created their state, in India it is the state that created
the capitalist class. As a result, the creolized class that came into existence would pursue his
accumulation objective without discarding its previous feudal advantages.
Alarmed by the rising incidence of atrocities the state enacted supposedly a stringent Act in the
form of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. But even
it proved useless in preventing atrocities. The next fillip to the atrocities came since 1990s, with
the next wave of change in the economy. This wave was marked by the advent of neoliberal
reforms, popularly called globalization. These reforms through their multidimensional operations
created crisis in countryside (best manifested by the alarming incidence of farmers’ suicides),
which began manifesting into atrocities. There has been a consistent rise in atrocity statistics
since 1990s in absolute number as well as in the intensity of atrocities represented by more
serious kinds such as rapes and murders. The phenomenon may be explained by the general

crisis in the middle level of agriculturists and relatively stable economic condition of Dalits
coupled with their rising cultural assertion. It is not that Dalits are not affected adversely by these
reforms but as the lot without stake could take any job in growing informal sector and look
relatively well off. It has thus accentuated the existing power asymmetry leading to caste
atrocities. My book on Khairlanji19 has explained these processes in greater details.
There are still heinous practices of manual scavenging extant despite there being a specific law
to curb it. The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines
(Prohibition) Act, 1993 has been totally ineffective because of the indifferent attitude of the state
machinery. Last year the Savanur20 and Gulbarga21 incidents in your own state itself have
effectively brought these facts to limelight.
With regard to dealing with the caste atrocities, the record as commented by many has been
anything than dismal. The police machinery, hand in glove with high caste perpetrators, would
not register the crime; if registered, would not investigate it; if investigated, would not present; if
presented, it would not be pleaded in the courts by prosecution, and ultimately the case will fail.
It is said that only the 10-20 percent of the actual number of atrocities enters the police record
and still the total number of atrocities per year have been hovering above 35,000. The dismal rate
of convictions that has been less than 10 percent until recently testifies to the bias in state
machinery against the victims.
In any case the state has thus been directly causing the rise in caste atrocities and is also guilty of
dereliction of responsibility in curbing them.
1. Positive Discrimination
The most celebrated policy of positive discrimination in favour of the SCs and STs has also been
lackadaisically operated. Even after six decades the reservations in public sector jobs haven’t
reached the prescribed percentage in the Class A and B, where only it gains some meaning. The
Class C and D being largely low paying working class jobs, dalits will be naturally found in them
in significant proportion. It is interesting to note that having agreed to grant reservations equal to
the ratio of SC/ST population to total population, the government still goes by the old 15 and 7.5
percent as against the current ratios of 16.23 and 8.2 percent respectively. The reservations in
jobs have been rendered meaningless since last two decades. Because of the onslaught of
globalization there has been negative growth in the public sector jobs. The statistics reveals that
the total number of public sector jobs had reached the peak in 1997 with the euphoria of reforms
but have been on consistent decline since then. If there is no net job creation in the public sector,
there is no reservation!

With regard to reservation in education, it particularly applied to elite/professional institutions
where because of the acute competition Dalit students ordinarily would not have found a place.
Moreover, unlike in jobs, the percentage fulfillment of vacancies in educational institutions has
been better. These reservations indeed have catalyzed spread of education among Dalits But with
increasing privatization and commercialization of professional education, even this reservation is
losing its meaning. The ethos of globalization has raised the cost of education so high even in
public institutions that it is ordinarily not possible for an average SC/ST student to dream of
educating in these institutions. Generally, it became the domain reserved for the well to do
SC/ST persons, which is creating its own problematic for the community. Globalization has
created a multi-layered education supply according to socio-economic standing of people,
creating thus a neo-caste system in the sphere of education right from nursery to doctoral
degrees. The recent ploy to subvert the Constitutional mandate to provide free compulsory
education to all children up to the age of 14, in the form of Right to Education Act has
formalized the neoliberal development in education. While the best quality education became
available in the country for handful elite, the masses are left with useless education to swell the
statistics. The entire rural area, with nearly 70 percent of population and with preponderance of
Dalits is virtually cut off from education of any consequence. The jobless growth and
informalization of jobs has drained off motivation in Dalits for education.
Generally the reservation policy, the way it is formulated, leads to create an increasingly smaller
class of beneficiary at the cost of rest of the community. Since caste is the only basis for being
eligible for reservation, the people who have already benefitted from reservation stand better
chance in grabbing it. At the very theoretical level, it is directly opposite to the intended outcome
of the policy. It has already created a rift among the Dalits which is threatening to demolish
whatever little they accomplished in forging their political identity. Since reservations are based
on sole criteria of caste, this anomaly is also noted in caste terms. The smaller sub-castes of
Dalits have accused a populous caste in the region of having grabbed their share of reservation
and demanded apportioning of them to various castes. This process has created war like situation
among the Dalit castes, as exemplified by Mala-Madiga conflict in Andhra Pradesh, effectively
absolving the state or Constitution of its misdoing. Notwithstanding that much of it has been
politically prompted to aggravate division among already fragmented Dalits, the fact remains
that ruling classes have forged reservations as weapon to divide Dalits asunder. In the context of
this problem, I had written by way of intervention proposing a simple solution22 to change the
basis of reservation from caste to a family unit over the dalit domain. It was repeated at few
times and earned praise from the intellectual circles but the Dalits for whom it was meant, just
ignored it.
Reservations originally meant to be an exceptional policy for the SC/STs as the ‘exceptional’
people has been forged into a weapon by the political class. As Macaulay conceived creation of asmall English educated section imbibing western culture and values for effective governance of
the native population in colonies, reservations worked the same way to create a small section of
Dalit elite which would uphold the state and the status quo. It will thus hold majority of Dalits at
bay, effectively blocking their radical demands. Indeed, reservations, meant for a minority of
Dalits, who have come up to certain level so as to compete, have completely hijacked the entire
agenda of Dalit masses that may be seen comprising basic issues such as land, health, quality
education, and secure employment. At the level of Constitution itself reservations having been
deliberately taken as a remedy for backwardness, the ruling classes could easily and skillfully
proliferate their misuse. Firstly, they extended the same to the so called backward castes, when
as a broad caste group they had already become economically and politically strong. Now, they
are fooling people by promising them to every conceivable community in the country. In a
country with pervasive backwardness, to identify caste as the marker itself is grossly
mischievous. The interesting part of this development is that when practically reservations have
come to an end, the reservation discourse is reaching its crescendo.
The only reservations that have worked well as far as implementation is concerned are the
reservations in political representations only because they were primarily meant for the ruling
classes. Contrary to ignorant notion of most people, these reservations (and not others) were
meant only for 10 years, which means they should have ended by 1960. But before they come to
an end, they get extended by another term of 10 years, by the political class with exceptional
unanimity, without any demand from any corner ever being there. These reservations, which
have their roots in the infamous Poona Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar, have only produced
stooges (in Kashiram’s language23) and have rather taken away winds from dalit politics.
Babasaheb Ambedkar himself was seriously skeptical about it after seeing its aftermath during
his own life time.
2. Developmental measures
In terms of development, there are a plethora of schemes that the government operates in order to
bridge the gap between the SC/ST and the non-SC/ST population. Looking at the results over the
last six decades, one can only lament at these efforts as misplaced. While the statistics might
show positive trend in development indices of the SC/STs, the gap between them and the others
does not show the same. Most of these schemes have their genesis in wooing dalit voters in
elections. In the context of the fact that 78 percent people live off Rs 20 per day such effort any
way lose its meaning.
The most celebrated programme of the government in this regard has been the special component
plans. The strategy of Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) which was evolved in 1979 is one of
the most propagandized intervention through the planning process for social, economic andeducational development of scheduled castes and for improvement in their working and living
conditions. It is an umbrella strategy to ensure flow of targeted financial and physical benefits
from all the general sectors of development for the benefit of SCs. Under this strategy, it entails
targeted flow of funds and associated benefits from the annual plan of States / Union Territories
(UTs) at least in proportion to the SC population. Presently, 27 States / UTs having sizeable SC
populations are implementing Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan. Although the SC population,
according to 2001 Census, was 16.66 crores constituting 16.23% of the total population of India,
the allocations made through SCSP in recent years have been much lower than the population
proportion. The data on total State Plan Outlay flow to SCSP as reported by the State / UT
Governments for the last few years, especially since the present UPA government is in power,
indicates rising allocations, which however still fall short of the prescribed level. It went up from
11.06 percent in 2004-05 to 14.80 percent in 2007-08.24 These bland percentages do not reveal
the true story. Firstly, the allocations in government parlance do not mean actual expenditure and
secondly, as the experience with Common Wealth Games and many other projects shows, there
has been persistent mischief in booking general expenditure under these heads.
Recently, the government has launched a new developmental measure in terms of reserving 4
percent value of all government contracts for Dalit entrepreneurs. The government which has
been utterly insensitive to the needs of common masses has rushed with exemplary enthusiasm to
support what is being clamored by a handful of Dalits as ‘Dalit Capitalism’. Dalits trying out
entrepreneurship is not a new development. The very making of the Dalit movement itself could
be traced to this phenomenon among the migrant dalits to urban centers. As regards prevalence
of rich individuals among Dalits also is not a new phenomenon. For varied reasons certain
exceptional individuals in every reason had amassed wealth and were extraordinarily rich. This
may have naturally increased with spread of education and information among dalits in modern
times. But to attribute it to globalization or to colour it new way of dalit emancipation surely
smacks of serving the intrigues of global capital. Be it as it may, the state attitude certainly
reveals its intention to promote elements that would take pride in its anti-people policies and
isolate the masses.
The above discussion may fall under the category of ‘omissions’ by the state. There are the
things that the state does in commission mode too. The state has actively helped the
ruling classes in maintaining Dalits in dependent mode, confining them to constitutional
frame. Whenever Dalits tried to articulate their independent struggle and tended to drift
away from the constitutional frame, it showed its hypersensitivity in dealing with them.
The age old strategies of cooptation or repression were deployed every time it happened.
The disillusion with the government and the parliamentary politics of the Republican
Party had set in among Dalits way back in 1970s which manifested into a rebellious
phenomenon of Dalit literature and their political movements like Dalit panthers andDalit Sangharsh Samiti (DSS) in this state. These movements partly due to their own
weaknesses but to a large extent to the intrigues of the ruling classes splintered into
degenerate and opportunistic outfits. This sad aftermath pushed the sincere elements of
dalit youth towards the radical left politics in certain states since 1980s. Since this politics
defy constitutional boundaries and hence does not make itself available for cooptation,
the state of late has taken an unconstitutional offensive to crush it. This has been the
strategy to terrorize dalit youth so as to push them back into the morass of constitutional
politics. Any Dalit, speaking a radical language is targeted and harassed. The
spontaneous initiative of Dalit youth in the wake of Khairlanji was similarly crushed by
the state.25 In recent times, scores of Dalit youth known to be active in literary, cultural
and social movements have been arrested in Maharashtra labeling them as Maoists.26
They are incarcerated in jails for years fighting dozens of false cases, destroying their
families and their own careers. The label works well with the mainstream dalits in
conveniently ignoring them. It is not the question of Maoists being right or wrong; the
business of passing such value judgements really belongs to history. But what is
important is to condemn the state which comes down heavily on the movements of
‘precariats’27 at the behest of the ruling classes and problematize the constitution that
permits it.
This brings me to the end of my speech. Much of what I said here may have disturbed the
sensibilities of many people basically because it was unfamiliar. I have faulted not only the state
but the formation of the SC/ST itself as well as the Constitution. As promised, I tried to do my
job in truly iconoclastic spirit, sparing no holy cows. Indeed, I believe the time has come to do
ruthless introspection and plain speaking. This brief analysis may indicate that there is no
solution within the system for the scores of Dalits, Adivasis, and other such poor people. It is not
only in India but in the entire world; the plight of the poor is more or less the same. They are
slowly realizing that the trap of liberal democracy has been the basic culprit. It creates illusion of
high sounding values but in reality preserves the status quo in favour of the ruling classes. The
challenge therefore is to smash this trap as only then the real emancipation of people, including
SC/STs may be possible.
                                                                
                                                      Notes and references


1
 This was the official term used for the lower strata of Indian society from mid-19th century.
2
 See, Lelah Dushkin, Scheduled Caste Policy in India: History, Problems, Prospects, Asian Survey, Vol. 7,
No. 9 (Sep., 1967), pp. 626-636.
3
 See the discussions of the problem of defining and listing the Scheduled Castes in Census of India, 1931.
Vol. I, India, Part I, Report, Appendix I, p. 472. This appendix, slightly abridged, appears in Appendix A of J.
H. Hutton, Caste in India, 4th Edition (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 192-222.
4 Mohinder Singh, The Depressed Classes (Bombay: Hind Kitabs Ltd., 1947), p. 2; Government of India
Ministry of Home Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for
the Year 1951, p. 10.
5 R.Vaidyanathan, Caste as Social Capital, http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/column_caste-as-socialcapital_1387350. Last accessed: 23 january 2012.
6
 L.P. Vidyarthi and Binay Kumar Rai, The Tribal Culture of India, Concept Publishing, New Delhi, 1985, p.
415.
7
 G S Ghurye, 1963, The Scheduled Tribes, Popular Prakashan, Bombay
8
 Kodanda Rao, Critique of the Indian Constitution,
http://www.yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/critiqueoftheindianConstitutionjul60.htm.
9
 L G Hovanur (Chairman), Report of the Karnataka Backward Classes Commission (Hovanur Report), Ch
XVIII: Communal origin and communal composition of the constituent assembly,
http://lghavanur.org/chapter18.html. Last accessed: 23 January 2012.
10 Singhvi, Abhishek “India's Constitution and Individual Rights: Diverse Perspectives”. George Washington
International Law Review, The. FindArticles.com. 07 Oct, 2011.
11 See Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee, 256-57 (Tej Bahadur Sapru et al. eds., 1946.
12 W.H. Morris-Jones, The Government and Politics of India 83-84 (2d ed. 1967); Ray, supra note 15, at 100-01.
13 Vasant Moon (Comp), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Education department, Maharsahtra
Government, Mumbai, (From Dr. Ambedkar's entry into the Constituent Assembly to the presentation of the
Draft of the Indian Constitution to the Constituent Assembly Vol. 13, p. 9.
14 Government of India, Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms, Office Memorandum No.
9/2/73-Estt. (S.C.T.), 23 June, 1975.
15 To the question that he was a maker of the constitution, Dr Ambedkar himself had replied saying: “Now, Sir,
we have inherited a tradition. People always keep on saying to me: “Oh, you are the maker of the
Constitution.” My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.” See Vasant
Moon (Comp), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Education department, Maharashtra
Government, Mumbai, Vol. 15, p. 860.
16 Cited by V. Lenin, The State and Revolution,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm. last accessed: 23 January 2012
17 The salient findings of the survey were: In 73% of the villages, dalits cannot enter non-dalit homes; in 70% of
the villages, dalits cannot eat with non-dalits; in 64% of the villages, dalits cannot enter common temples; in
53% of the villages, dalit women suffer ill-treatment at the hands of non-dalit women. See Sukhadeo Thorat,
Untouchability in Rural India (Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006.
18 Understanding Untouchability: A comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1589 Villages,
http://www.indianet.nl/pdf/UnderstandingUntouchability.pdf. Last accessed: 23 January 2012.
19 Anand Teltumbde, Khairlanji: A Strange and Bitter Crop, Navayana, New Delhi, 2008. Also, Anand
Teltumbde, The Persistence of Caste, Zed books, London, 2010]
20 On 20 July 2010, some manual scavengers of Savanur, a small town in Haveri district of north Karnataka
performed a novel act in protest against their helplessness. They smeared themselves with human excreta in
public before the municipal council office.
21 On October 15, 2010, one Dharam Kumar, a Dalit manual scavenger from Gulbarga district in northern
Karnataka, poured and smeared human excreta over his head and body in front of the office of the Gulbarga
City Corporation to draw attention of the city corporation officials to the issue of contracts for the maintenance
of a pay-and-use toilet in Gulbarga City. The Hindu, Bangalore Edition, October 16, 2010, p.1.
22 For example, See Anand Teltumbde, Reservation within Reservation: A Solution, Economic & Political
Weekly, vol xliv no 41, october 10, 2009.

23 See Kanshiram, The Chamcha Age (An Era of the Stooges), Available:
http://ambedkar.org/research/The_Chamcha_Age.htm. Last Accessed: 23 January 2012
24 Information in respect of 14 States/UTs only and as on 31-12- 2007. Source: Network for Social
Accountability (NSA) http://nsa.org.in. Last Accessed: 23 January 2012.
25 See for details Anand Teltumbde, Khairlanji, Op. Cit.
26 Anand Teltumbde, Yet Another Binayak Sen, Economic & Political Weekly, february 5, 2011 vol xlvi no 6 
27 Anand Teltumbde, The ‘Precariat’ Strikes, Economic and political weekly, Vol XLVII No.1 January 07, 2012.