On May 1 in the 110th American Congress session, Franks, a Congressman from Arizona, introduced a concurrent resolution on caste and untouchability in India. It is now referred to the Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs. The resolution is the first of its kind in parliamentary history of the US. The first part of the resolution discusses the gravity and magnitude of the problem involving about 250 million SC, STs. Though it does not talk about the situation of the OBCs, it puts the caste system in perspective.
It says “Caste is the socio-economic stratification of people in South Asia based on a combination of work and descent”. This definition of caste is significant since India refused to accept this definition at the UN Durban Conference. However, the resolution lays emphasis on untouchability, violence against SC, ST women, and the socio-economic conditions in which these masses live in the globalised word.
It says “Discrimination against Dalits and tribals has existed for 2,000 years. It includes educational discrimination, economic disenfranchisement, physical abuse, discrimination in medical care, religious discrimination, and violence targeting Dalit and tribal women”. We know that the US has close relations with India and the Indian economy mostly depends on loans, charity funds from the US. America is also outsourcing lots of its industrial services. In a situation of a globalised market and software economy, the Indian upper castes see the US as their destination, where they do not have to live a life of shame and guilt about the discriminatory structures that their ancestors constructed and they want to sustain them silently. It is also because of the dollar money that the young upper caste children earn through means of English education from software and other service sectors.
Though some of us have been repeatedly demanding uniform English medium education for Dalit-Bahujan children, the protagonists of the very same upper castes have been dubbing us as anti-nationals. It is a fact that without English medium education many children of the upper castes would have not even been eligible for clerical jobs even in India.
Quite interestingly, the American resolution says, “The public education offered to Dalits and tribals, when available at all, is usually inadequate and conducted in regional languages or Hindi, thereby disqualifying them from access to India’s public universities, which teach in English, and from most government positions and most advanced jobs in India, which require English”.
At least now the US, the World Bank, the IMF which keep giving funds for school and university education know that two modes of education systems are in place in India — English for the rich and upper castes and regional language for the Dalit-Bahujans.
The American funds have been flowing into the Indian education system from the days of the PL 480 programme, way back in the 60s when I was a school child. Now every state government takes money from projects of American Aid and World Bank for school education. But all of them spend that money on the regional language school education infrastructure. And most of such money is garnered by corrupt ministers, bureaucrats and ruthless contractors. In education, healthcare and other programmes of poverty alleviation, the targeted poor and lower castes have not been getting anything that can substantially change their life. The Western countries never realised that caste, untouchability and tribalism are the main source of socio-economic stagnation.
There is no large scale public demand for uniform English medium education for all children in the country because the Hindu caste system made them think “the lower castes and the poor are not getting uniform English medium education or good healthcare because of their Karma”. Some of the saints, who claim to work to integrate Dalits into Hinduism, though they themselves are Anglicised and look for American trips and NRI dollar money, keep saying why should America interfere with the Indian caste system. These are all hoodwinking strategies.
However, the recent international campaign could successfully nail their pseudo nationalist agendas. The West is getting convinced that in the money that goes from the West in the form of loans and charity the Dalit-Bahujans must have their own share.
The Congress resolution seeks for a review of the American International development projects and also seeks for an “active participation of Dalit organisations in the planning and implementation of development projects from the US”. It also talks about “prioritising funding for projects that positively impact Dalit and tribal communities, especially women”.
The resolution and the possible debate on caste and untouchability in the American Congress will have serious implications on the Indian socio-political system. If the American Congress passes the resolution, it will have a major impact on the UN bodies and the World Bank. What those who oppose globalisation of caste should understand is that the masses who suffered from caste and untouchability will have to get their share of benefits from every pie that operates in India and in the global market. This resolution certainly helps that process.