#savarnas

Savarnas often ask ‘would you go for treatment from a doctor who got medical seat using reservation?’ The whole narrative rests on testimonial injustice where the expertise of a DBA individual is discarded, despite having the degree and experience. Interestingly this argument will never be used for doctors who used EWS reservation or even paid management seats. The use of ‘Merit’ against reservation to undermine the intellect and capabilities of DBA community is the most popular example of epistemic injustice done on the community.

i searched on hathras and dalits, and there’s not much posts here now. i made posts about it, and even they are not there now. is this tumblr’s standard operating procedure for all social movements and rape cases?

The ’70s witnessed the Navnirman student’s movement, essentially an urban upsurge against those who were repeating ad nauseum the slogans of green and white revolutions. To recover from the setback caused by the Navnirman movement, the Congress formulated an election strategy around a combination of caste and community known as KHAM (Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasi-Muslim combine). After the great success of this formula in the Assembly elections of 1980, the upper castes for the first time sensed a political and economic threat to their domination. To them it appeared that their political power was slipping away and being transferred to the ‘backward castes and communities’. The educated middle class, mainly the Brahmins, Banias and Patidars, reacted sharply by starting an agitation against the reservation system in 1981. Probably for the first time in independent India, a modern industrial metropolis experienced such extreme forms of caste violence. The clashes between the savarnas and the Dalits in the industrial periphery of Ahmedabad gradually evolved into a caste war that spread to the towns in 18 out of the then 19 districts. In many villages dominated by land owning Patidars in North and Central Gujarat, Dalit bastis were burnt. Caste tension resurfaced in 1985 in the second anti-reservation agitation. The issue this time was the increase in job quotas of the non-Dalit socially and educationally backward castes; yet the victims were all Dalits. As a result of these two agitations, the Brahmin-Bania-Patidar combine acquired a savarna unity.

The fact of the matter is - the burden of proof of 'merit' doesn't rest on the shoulder of students and young people from marginalised communities. The onus is on the schools, institutions and organisations to prove, with evidence, that they are not dens of savarna monopoly over taxpayers' money. The onus also squarely rests on the shoulders of the savarnas to prove that their credibility and locus standi rests on moral tools of fairness, justice and equality and not on the well ingrained laws of caste privilege as ordained by Manu.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers... Because their conscience has to heed to their own needs, primarily. Brahmin-savarna and Bahujan needs don't converge; they'll always be in conflict. So how can the Brahmin-Savarnas and the Bahujans share any common goals, ever? They might, on rare occasions, intersect. But they mostly collide with each other, even at the intersections. So we can't appeal to their reason either. The Brahmin-Savarna Marxists are a good example. The places where Brahmin-Savarna and Bahujan needs intersect are those considered as 'modern': legislatures, government and other public sector institutions, universities etc. Places where reservations bring them together. The Bahujans in these places are not even a 1% minority among all Bahujans. But the Brahmin-Savarnas effectively use these intersections to camouflage the essential character of their relationship with the Bahujans: that of antagonism.

As old India dies, shouldn't the primary criterion to define classes in India, at least now, be recognized as control over the reins of production rather than just ownership of means of production? Because the orthodox Brahmin Marxist formula, which allowed the most orthodox Brahmins to lead and define 'revolutionary' struggles seems more and more farcical by the day. From Sitaram Yechury to Kanhaiya Kumar, even as their political freedoms seem to be sometimes curtailed, their social and economic freedoms are never affected much. As is the case of Mohan Bhagwat and Narendra Modi, or Sonia Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal. But it's not the same for the Bahujans: they've to fight for political, social and economic freedoms all the time, simultaneously. They've to fight not just the top 1%, but all of the top 20% of Indians (mostly Brahmin-Savarnas) for their independence.

If privilege is interpreted as 'unearned advantage', it tells you only half the story. The untold part is that this unearned advantage was gained through expropriating concrete assets from those who 'lack privilege'. That the underprivileged paid for the unearned advantage. The discourse of privileges converts this antagonistic relationship into one of inequality. This has two insidious purposes. One, it places both groups, who are antagonists in reality, on one ground, thus introducing the suggestion that they're equal participants, and the only difference between them being one of degree: one is taller, another is shorter, one went to an elite school, while the other went to a government school and so on. All differences become relative differences. Two, it places the burden of bridging this inequality on the Bahujan, which by now seems like a very logical, natural solution if you fall in line with this train of discourse. She has to improve herself, reform herself, and work harder to reach the level of the Brahmin-Savarna.

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