Why the Caste system persists

I received a mail from a Slovakian girl recently. I would like to share the correspondence with all:

i read this highly interesting and probably even provoking article yesterday...so wanted to know your thoughts on it...let me know after u read it :))

hope ur both doing well!! its been ages since we last spoke...but i sense there will be a time for us to meet again :))

ciaoooo from Prague!!

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/01/19/011912-opinions-column-caste-dalmia-1-3/

I am going to reproduce the whole piece here; please do read my take at the bottom.

Tragic truth about caste

Why even members of India's lowest classes cling to unfair system

BY SHIKHA DALMIA THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2012

I frequently get asked in America why India’s caste system, a pre-feudalistic division of labor that assigns one’s line of work at birth, has persisted into the 21st century. I typically answer: the need of the privileged upper castes for cheap labor. But there is an even more tragic explanation, as I discovered during a recent visit to New Delhi while talking to Maya, the dalit or untouchable — the lowest of the four castes — who has serviced my family for 35 years. Maya herself clings to her caste because it still offers her the best possible life in India.

What’s puzzling about the caste system is that it endures without legal force. Unlike slavery, where whites actively relied on authorities to maintain their slave holdings, the caste system is an informal, self-perpetuating institution.

How? Consider Maya’s story.

Maya assigned herself to our house in 1977. We had no choice. If we wanted our trash picked up, bathrooms scrubbed and yards cleaned, Maya was it. Indians find dealing with other people’s refuse not just unpleasant, but polluting. Hence only dalits are willing to do this work, something that both stigmatizes them and gives them a stranglehold on the market. And they have transformed this stranglehold into an ironclad cartel that closes all other options for their customers.

When Maya got married at 16, her father-in-law paid another dalit $20 for her wedding gift: the “rights” to service 10 houses in our neighborhood, including ours. Maya has no formal deed to these “rights,” yet they are more inviolable than holy writ. Maya’s fellow dalits, who own the “rights” to other houses, can’t work in hers, just as she can’t work in theirs.

Doing so, Maya insists, would be tantamount to theft that would invite a well-deserved beating and ostracism by the dalit community. No one would help a “poacher” or attend her family functions like births, weddings or funerals.

This arrangement has guaranteed Maya a monthly income of $100 that, along with her husband’s job as a “gofer” at a government lab, has helped her raise three children and build a modest house with a bathroom, a prized feature among India’s poor. But Maya’s monopoly doesn’t give her just money. It also hands her clout to resist the upper-caste power structure, not always for noble reasons.

None of Maya’s employers dares challenge her work. Maya takes more days off for funerals every year than there are members in her extended family. Complaining, however, is not only pointless but perilous. It would result in stinking piles of garbage outside the complainer’s home for days. Every time my mother gets into spats with Maya over her sketchy scrubbing, my mother loses. One harsh word, and Maya boycotts our house until my mother cajoles her back. Nor is Maya the only sweeper, or jamadarni, with an attitude. All of New Delhi is carved up among Maya-style sweeper cartels and it is a rare house whose jamadarni is not a “big problem.”

But the price for this clout is the loss of inter-caste acceptability. Segregation has loosened considerably among the first three castes. But dalits are allowed to socialize with other castes only if they abandon trash-related work. Otherwise, every interaction involving them becomes subject to an apartheid-like social code.

Some of Maya’s houses, for example, have separate entrances that allow her to access bathrooms without having to enter the main house. Although the families have formed a genuine bond with her and treat her generously, plying her with lavish gifts during festivals, there are limits. They give her breakfast and lunch, but in separate dishes. Sitting at their table, sharing a meal, is forbidden. Not even my mother’s driver, a higher caste, would visit Maya and accept a glass of water, even though he is poorer than she.

Maya is resigned to such discrimination, but not her oldest son, 36. He holds a government job, works as a sales representative for an Amway-style company and dreams big. He is embarrassed by his mother and lies to his customers about her work. He makes enough money to support Maya and wants her to quit, but she will have none of it. She fears destitution and poverty more, she says, than she craves social respectability.

But the choice may not be hers much longer.

Upon retirement, she had planned to either pass her “business” to her children or sell it to another dalit for about $1,000. But about six months ago, municipal authorities started dispatching vans, Western-style, to collect trash from neighborhoods, the one service that protected Maya from obsolescence in an age of sophisticated home-cleaning gadgetry.

Maya and her fellow dalits held demonstrations outside the municipal commissioner’s office to stop the vans. They finally arrived at a compromise that lets Maya and her pals collect trash from individual homes and hand it to the vans for disposal. But Maya realizes that this arrangement won’t last. “I got branded as polluted and became unfit for other jobs, for what?” she wept. “To build a business that has now turned to dust?”

Her son, however, is pleased. He believes that this will finally force his siblings to develop skills for more respectable work instead of joining their mother. But Maya shakes her head.

And she might be right. Post-liberalization, the most dogged and determined dalits are able to escape their caste-assigned destiny and get rich. But for the vast majority, as Maya says, opportunities are better within the caste system than outside it.

When that changes, the system will die, but not until then.

Dear Marta,

Good to hear from you! It seems you are still attached to India. I remember how you disliked that Indians employ 'servants' to do their work. Now, I too hate if there is someone at call to do my bidding, who subordinates his own wishes and well-being to providing me service. But, that is not the case here. A servant gets paid for his/her labour and the payment is not wages; it's price. And the servant - or the service-provider - may choose not to provide service to an individual. 'Good' families teach their children to respect all work and the children - even after they grow up - address the servants respectfully as "uncle" or "aunty".

She says, Maya has an inviolable right to her household and neither her family nor those from Maya's community have the authority to snatch those rights away from Maya. Don't you see, such an arrangement can exist only if both the communities have been residing in the same place for generations and the customs have become rigid? This is possible only in an age-old village where the roots of tradition are strong. The tradition binds the lower caste people to the despicable work and also binds the high caste to one particular lower caste family. The relationship is not of sale and purchase - a commercial relation; but of lords and surfs, a feudal one.

I have not seen anything like it here in Mumbai. When I was a child, I know a young man used to come to our house on his weekly-offs and help my mother in household chores. He cleaned the house, went to the market, etc. All because my father had helped him (and his brother) get a good, permanent job. We were poor too! But the feudal values prevailed so much that he subordinated himself to serving us. My father did pay him, but that was gratis. The young fellow never expected it as a right. I used to be extremely uncomfortable with this man and I hated his attitude of subservience.

Mumbai is an ever-growing industrial city and frankly, I can't imagine modern Delhi to be otherwise. New suburbs are always coming up in Mumbai where everybody is new and no tradition exists. Moreover, the people living together in a building or a cluster of buildings come from similar economic strata; they belong to the same class (who can afford the amenities the apartments provide), not to the same caste. Nor to a section of castes - upper, middle, lower. A very senior member of our housing society comes from an erstwhile untouchable caste. I have not seen anyone from the society treating him with anything other than respect. Yet it is true that not everybody in the housing society will invite him to participate in some caste-related ritual in their family.

Feudal values do persist in employer-employee relationships. Our maidservant takes pride in the fact that in the twenty-odd years that she has been working, she has been a loyal servant to every family. She left work only when the family moved out of the area. She will not demand more payment for extra work if she finds the household in financial difficulty. There are families which actively support the education of the children of housemaids. My wife and all my relations give one month's extra salary as 'bonus' to the servants on the eve of Diwali. Most of the family servants receive generous help from their employees. But the family definitely is not going to be happy if the housemaid's son turns out to be brighter in his career than one of their own!

And of course there are bad eggs to be found everywhere, but that is not the point. I think, the caste system persists because it gives one identity. People did go on pilgrimages before modern transport was introduced. The poor among them, who could not afford paid lodging and boarding, went to the alley (literally pronounced as aalee with the rounded L if you know what I mean) where people of their caste resided and they were given shelter honourably. Anyone going on a pilgrim was honourable and it was one's duty (and it still is) to treat a guest as respectfully as one can. And a person of your own caste is like your brother!

Imagine, what security the custom provided. The modern society rewards ability irrespective of one's birth standing. So, everyone has the chance to 'make it'. But don't you see that would make one lonely? Modern society is made up of individuals; each a lonely individual. Worse, now they want you to sacrifice all your interests to the company, to the job. So, your best friend is your nearest colleague. And he is also your bitterest enemy because he competes with you. Not everyone is able to withstand this crazy way of existence. And then you meet someone from your caste who will help you even if he is not related to you. Who will share values, dialect, customs with you.

I am not a supporter of the caste system but I don't find it either mysterious or loathsome. The only way to destroy the caste system, is to disregard it in public life. The caste system must be destroyed because it gives rise to discrimination. But again, think, I can afford to disown my caste because I don't need the security the caste provides! I am a high-caste person and I shall automatically have some upper hand in public life because my manner, my dialect, my references, my upbringing, all will loudly proclaim that I command values which are held as 'high' by the entire fibre of the society. However, is it right for me to demand that a new migrant to the city also forego whatever help - both material benefit and emotional support - he may get from his fellow caste members?

You have been to India. It probably is the most diverse society on earth. We do not generally perceive a person with different faith, manner, language, colour or features, as a threat. In Mumbai, it is an everyday experience. In a way, every community in India is a minority community. How do you think do we manage to stay together? Think. Law is so superfluous.