Caste - Mainstream and Communists - 8

According to many the present caste system is distorted version of the original scientific system of division of labor where everybody could chose his occupation and lived his life; exploitation and untouchability is not a part of original Hindu religion and blah, blah, blah. All the distortions were said to be introduced by the unknown vested interests and everything would be fine when these distortions are removed. The sufferings of people find no place in their thinking and neither the responsibility for the exploitation under such a great system; it is the system which finds no problem in trampling over the lives of millions of muted and helpless people. As far as these people are concerned the caste did nothing and does nothing, and at most there were unidentifiable vested interests over which nobody had any control. All the upper castes are unanimous in voicing these kinds of esteemed, exalted and scientific opinions. And in the process, absolve them of everything. How such pious pure spiritual and egalitarian people could be accused of developing the heinous practice of untouchability? Fat chance! Only heinous cruel sinful inhuman lowly exploitative unidentifiable vested interests could do it. And only their unidentifiable coming generations could maintain it and extract the last drop of blood from it, the alternatives given to untouchables were splattered brains, dead bodies and thick red dirty water flowing on the earth. And only such lowly vested interests could eternally benefit from such a practice. And these vested interests had no control over them since the top was not under control of lower impure strata.



This kind of non-importance of caste is a straight inheritance from Varna dharma. Whatever benefits higher Varnas is normal or depends upon their merit or their supposed superiority. The communist party being a supporter of deprived section of the society should have developed a strong support among the lowest stratum of Hindus but it did not. These 20 percent people could have made them major players in Indian politics but they are still minor players. The lowest caste cadres in communist set up are seen as the last men in the hierarchy; again they are first from the bottom; nothing changes for them; it is a kind of Varna system without any overt display of untouchability. The sole use of untouchables there is to carry the red flag and take part in protests rallies. That is where their role ends.


The idea of communists is to unite everybody in the name of class struggle. The workers in India come from different castes and thus have different social status and separate bloodlines. How they are going to identify with each other is anybody’s guess. Nobody is going to give up the chance to assert the social superiority over others. Maximization of status superiority is a normal thing. The social difference creates the difference between workers. This is a clear-cut case of superstructure (or society) creating fissures in the economic base. After a long spell of being treated unequally the untouchables leave them. By no stretch of imagination the Materialistic interpretation of history can explain the notion of purity and impurity and practice of untouchability in a precise manner. Marx also did not bring the mode of production in India within his theory. He classified it as Asiatic mode of production frozen in time and Indian Marxists have not gone beyond that. It was a caste mode of production where unpropertied Shudras and untouchables worked on the lands of higher three Varnas and Brahmans; and temples that had gotten land grants from kings, did not provide them with any army to fight in case of need. The Varna dharma clearly separates the exploiter from the exploited and the haves from haves not.
However the Communitst should have read Engles and Gramsci also. The caste is a part of super structure as well as part of false conscious. According to Engles it is the false conscious that prevents unity among working class.

The caste's presence as a big part of "false conscious" that creates fissures in the base, is due to cultural hegemony of Brahmans. This cultural hagemony is responsible for a divide between poor and poor. This cultural hegemony needed to be attacked by Communists. But that did not happen.

Had the communists gone according to Gramsci they would definitely tackled the caste actively instead of passively waiting for it to fall down. The communists of India totally ignore Gramsci whose emphasis on cultural hegemony would point towards cultural hegemony of Brahmans. And provide the communists a better target and idea to launch a direct attack on caste. Then who wants to harm himself? Nobody. Or is the ignoring of Engles and Gramsci is deliberate? They treat caste as a social phenomenon to be solved through a change in economic base. Caste is much more then that, it decides who shall wear sleepers and who shall not. It also decides who shall own property and who shall live by his labor alone. A better exposition of permanent division of economic means on the basis of heredity is not possible. The lower two groups, Shudras and untouchables, have no right to property, they have to live by labor alone. This condition should make the lower two strata as exploited and the rest as exploiters. The Indian communist do not think so. They never got the caste system right; doing so would have made holes in their fragile, soft and compassionate consciousness. After all their hearts collectively beat for the haves not. What they produce is actually Varna dharma in a communist bottle. Both are group oriented. Both are power structure. Both are economic system. And above all, both of them have the upper castes at the top and the untouchables at the bottom. A smooth transition it is. No guilt, no responsibility, it is all the fault of economic base. The use of Marxist theory is the same as that of Karma theory. Both of them are used to absolve the higher castes of their acts.