Full Text | ‘Reservations Will Go On as Long as We Don’t Create a Society of Equal Representation’

On June 12, The Wire published an interview of Harvard scholar Suraj Yengde by musician and author T.M. Krishna. The interview covered a set of questions on caste and reservations to create greater awareness and understanding among people with caste privilege.

Below is the full transcript of the interview. Watch it here.

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T.M. Krishna: Hello everybody. Welcome to FAQs on reservation. That’s the word that creates discomfort in almost everybody with privilege. Even those who understand caste and caste problems would say “but there’s reservation”, and “is that fair?”. And reservation somehow makes people with caste privilege feel that they are victims, they are being pushed to the corners and their rights are being given away to people who don’t, in their minds, deserve it. So, let’s ask these questions.

I have with me today Dr. Suraj Yengde – one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals. Named as one of the 25 most influential young Indians by GQ magazine and the most influential young Dalit by ZEE, Suraj is an author of the bestseller Caste Matters and co-editor of the award-winning anthology, The Radical in Ambedkar.

Caste Matters was recently featured in the prestigious best non-fiction books of this decade list prepared by The Hindu. Suraj was a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School; he holds a research association position with the department of African and African American studies and is also a non-resident fellow at the Hutchins center for African and African American research at Harvard University. Suraj has published over a hundred essays, articles and book reviews in multiple languages in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies and labour migration in the global south. Currently, he’s involved in developing a critical theory of Dalit and Black studies. Welcome Suraj.

Suraj Yengde: Love you brother, thank you so much for having me.

TMK: So, the first question and the most commonly asked question – should merit be the ultimate criteria? Would you trust a doctor who has come through the reservation route with your life?

SY: Oh absolutely, no doubt about it because the doctor is being tested, and not based on reservation, when the doctor enters the medical school. All doctors go through the same examination, they sit for the same vivas, they do the same practicals and they pass. Reservation is only when you need a foot into the institution. Once you’re in you’re on your own.

Many a time, a student is victimised because the professors have a historical memory of violence that they want to impose again, and there is this tenacity of having an attitude of jealousy and incompetence looked through, especially, Dalits and Adivasis and in many cases now students from the other backward classes as well. So, merit is something that is very arbitrary. But it is not one thing. If it’s the numerical scores that you make by remembering what three hours of examination you gave, if that demonstrates merit, then I think monkeys who are trained to remember and regurgitate, and even donkeys, Pannalam was one of the smartest donkeys, should be the most meritorious person. But that’s not how merit is tested.

Merit is tested through various criteria, and one of the criteria is examinations. But there are other factors too – your socio-economic background, your individual competence in different fields, and this is very clear when you apply for US admissions. They don’t just look at your GRE scores, they look at all other factors and that’s where the leadership qualities and all of that count.

People who look only at numerical scores don’t have any of the others. They lack there. That’s why they want to hold onto only numerical scores. And that numerical score is very much making a Brahmin person. Brahmins from childhood are taught Vedas and mantras and they keep on reciting it day and night as a ritual. What happens when you go to an exam – you are used to rote learning and you just vomit it in the answer sheet.

However, merit cannot be tested on standalone categories. Merit needs to be reflected with the society. Society is what makes merit.

The GRE scores of Chinese students who come to America are rocket high. I had a student from China who spoke American English. She said she took training for English for five years. So, what that means is that [skill] can be acquired. But what we should appreciate is merit is not sacrificed. Merit is tested throughout the career of the student – not only in their class, but also in other activities, and if you belong to the reserved category, much more harsher rules are applied to you and much more harsher mirrors are shown to you, and within that system you still excel – that’s an extraordinary merit that one can see demonstrated.

TMK: On the harsher criteria. Can you elaborate that point on the harsher criteria for the people who come through the reserved list?

SY: First, if you are a student who belongs to the reserved category, you are automatically interiorised. You’re already told you’re already “marked”. In fact, a friend of mine, who’s now a secretary in the Andhra Pradesh government, told me when he went to Lal Bahadur Shastri [Institute], someone remarked – “oh you came from reservation”. And he said, he carried that burden until his life.

He’s 30 years approximately in service now. He still says, “Suraj, I feel like I should consult the policy that I make for a non-Dalit candidate, because that’s the kind of violence which is the criteria and it gets much harsher because then there are extra rules that are applied for [these] students which savarna students don’t have.

First is the culture – the echo chamber you operate in. Your gods and cultures are celebrated, your teachers are from the same community, you most likely have a similar caste lingo, which you vibe with each other, whereas these students feel outcast. We’re going to hostels, arranged according to caste groups; roll numbers are allocated according to the caste criteria. That itself is much harsher, it’s not a democratic experiment. Its already distinguishing, and then the atrocities of hostile professors – the Dronacharyas looking for their next Eklavya to be sacrificed – who mock the students and don’t encourage them.

Now I have my personal experience. In my law school in India, my teachers, very few, if at all encouraged. Most of them had progressive outlooks, even if they were savarna or Dalits. But many others mocked, laughed, looked down upon, and would not encourage or promote for internships or would not write good recommendation letters.

I have a student here at Harvard. He’s pursuing PhD; he was in JNU. He had asked a Brahmin professor if he could write a recommendation letter for him – he wrote a two-line recommendation letter. Can you imagine that kind of harshness? Not only that, the final thing is that you have to go through that agni pariksha almost every time you have to demonstrate your smartness. Because not only do you have to cross over the line of inferiority, but you also have to be more visible, more noticeable, and how do you do that when the arrows are pointing against you? Irrespective of all this, when the students pass with good grades and make their career, who is more meritorious?

TMK: This is again a very often-asked questions – the creamy layer question if I can place it that way. Of course, there should be reservation, but surely not for these kids of rich SC/ST parents, they grew up with as much or more privilege than I did.

SY: I kind of understand where this sentiment is coming from and I partly agree with that too, but that’s not the question for the savarnas to worry about. They’re, all of a sudden, almost benevolent – “oh you know, you want to give reservation to poor Dalit and if you’re so concerned about that then I can give you my extra work, if you’re really interested in doing some work you know.” There’s always been a debate within the Dalit community about this. Unfortunately, we don’t have data. I can tell you anecdotally – personally many of my friends who are well off have never availed of reservations. These are mostly people living in posh quarters and have a life where they send their child to a good private school, and don’t want to make their child feel that she/he is in any way lower because of reservation. It’s also like being responsible for something you haven’t done, for being judged by the metrics someone else places.

Many reservation students don’t claim their caste unless they’re really Ambedkarites. Many prefer to stay mum. At MIT, there was a Rajasthani Dalit – smart boy, doing excellent, phenomenal research, but he was very scared, because it was sort of injected in him. Having said that, reservation is meant to provide representation, so that there is an equal representation in that classroom.

Also read: Reservation Is About Adequate Representation, Not Poverty Eradication

Classroom is probably the only space in India that has the potential to challenge caste, because people from across castes can sit on the same table. Of course, the ranking now might play but that’s an opportunity for us to now know each other, talk to each other, share our experiences, but then again, we have the north India-south India divide.

There is no research as to how many second generation or third generation affluent Dalit children have availed of reservation. Even if they did, I think they actually helped the government from demonstrating its failures because if there is no SC/ST, that means the government is not doing enough. That’s why there is a quota, that’s why it’s meant for different castes, communities to share and if you are representing, what you’re effectively doing is you’re actually strengthening the quorum of the class, you’re actually providing much more liberty to our thinking.

My final point – the rich SC/ST kind of discussion that always takes place – it’s not the class rich SC/ST, it’s the caste rich SC/ST. That’s a very fundamental difference you have to understand. People are not worrying about them being rich – these are what, first generation, second generation rich people. What do you mean by marriage? What do you compare it with? Because they have a government and service? If the government goes, what do they have? They have no land; they have no enormous savings and that’s the only job they have. Because they have a job, they get government facilities, so that’s what they do. They have nothing else to fall back on. So, let us also remove the myth of this rich SC/ST, because what happens when you lose a job? Where are you going to fall back on? So, there is a clear view of examining this topic and I think especially students who go to colleges and schools and universities should be able to do this more creatively than just shifting the blame from their own incapacity.

Also read: Caste and Meritocracy Keep India’s Top Institutions Running. At What Cost?

TMK: I think you make a very valid point of who should worry about this, and who should be asking the questions about this. It’s a very important point, right? And as you said, this is a conversation within the Dalit communities, and for data to emerge and answers to emerge from that. That’s so true. The next question. I think this has come up more now because of this entire reservation based on economic criteria. Why can’t reservation fundamentally be just based on economic criteria? Isn’t a poor Dalit and the poor upper caste the same?

SY: No, they’re not, unfortunately. I wish it was the same. If that was the case, richest, poor SC/ST and poor upper caste would be partners. Where are they? They’re not together? They don’t share meals, they don’t share the space, they don’t fight for their rights. If you have a shared victimhood, you come together. Why don’t we see a mass movement of poor dominant caste people and poor SC/ST and OBCs? It doesn’t happen, because it’s not the question of poverty, it’s about how do I retain my status and how do I have anything to do with this?

People in Maharashtra, where I come from, hyphenate their extra surnames to show they belong to a particular caste, even if they are poor. They add an extra layer – it’s almost like the English aristocracy. They have two surnames because they want to show they’re supreme.

The economic criteria of reservation is already existing. They made it more prominent now with the economically weaker section.

Then why do you now put your feet in someone else’s mouth to say that you don’t want a poor person or a person who’s deserving to progress? You don’t believe in the idea of collective nation; you believe in the idea of caste nation. Caste nationhood means you will just look after your own interest. That means you’re not invested in the idea of country, which really takes us to our different domain of you perhaps being a questionable nationalist. I say nationalist in a liberal term, I don’t say it in the term that’s used in today’s lingo. So, the economic criteria have always been there, and the economic criteria applies within Dalits.

The point is, the framers of this policy were not ignorant about this. We didn’t think of such huge contentious debates happening in the constituent assembly, but also outside of the constitutional assembly.

TMK: The next question is again a kind of extension to the question of reservations not helping people with merit. In some states in India, the general merit category has hardly one third of seats with the rest all being reserved. So why am I being penalised for just being born as an upper caste. Isn’t that unfair?

SY: I understand that and I pity the ignorance that this dominant caste communities have. It’s a profound ignorance, and I think it’s a chosen ignorance. It’s not an alternative ignorance. It’s a very fixative one. Now the student if at all knows anything at all about census, would then go an investigate into what is the percentage of my community in India. Once they would look at the numbers, they would see that the general category in its strictest terms is approximately 22%, and then we add all of the other groups and they have 51% reservation. That means they [general category] have twice than that [what’s allotted to them].

That means the Supreme Court has granted twice reservation. The fight is only between SC/STs and OBCs. They are fighting amongst themselves, because that’s the competition. They’re not crossing over into your places because they are given what is their share. You are given twice and sometimes thrice the share of what you should own. So, instead of having a grievance against an SC/ST or OBC, have a grievance against people of your own caste, because many of them are going to the same college. That’s the competition.

If you don’t get the seat, it’s not because an SC/ST or an OBC has taken your seat. They already have their quota. They are taking from their quota. You are not getting saved because someone from your community is taking your seat. So, if you want to create a parity system, you should actually create more equality within your own community. Because that’s where the problem is. See, my heart goes out to the poor Brahmins, because the poor Brahmins are pandits. They’re the lower caste Brahmins. More than 1,500 sub-castes of Brahmins exist across India, yet only a few dominant caste rules.

Even in north India, the distinction and the one who’s facing the wrath of public is the poor Brahmin. So, a poor brahmin needs to be supported and I’m all for it, and the poor Brahmin needs to be supported not by identifying a Dalit as a responsible person, but by realising that a poor Brahmin is victimised because someone else from their community has taken that place. They have colleges, banks, they have been lending cash for so long. We need to tell our youngsters from the dominant caste communities from the general category that there has already been a structure of equal distribution. If you are not equally benefitting, it is not because someone has taken you place. Your place was already there, but someone else from your community, especially the poor, perhaps are now coming and getting education.

There was a time when Brahmins, especially lower castes, couldn’t go to school. They were just house tutored. In central India, it was not allowed because of the rules, rigidity and other factors, but now they’re getting into colleges. So, we need to create this prospect. But what we do instead is we find out the poorest victim and then we make a case from that. That’s why we should see that the elites of each caste group are the ones responsible for this.

TMK: Well, another extension to this question is what about these cut-offs in colleges. Cut offs for the general category are at 99%. Some universities 98% – is that even fair?

SY: The cut off list is because of your own groups, it’s not because of SC/STs. The point is nobody is taking your seat. The seats that SC/STs are taking are within their own seats. If they are given 16% and Adivasi are 8%, they are competing against their own quotas. They are not crossing over into your quotas.

Many IAS toppers and the entrance examination toppers are Dalits and in many cases they are also Adivasis, joining the stream of merits, so the cut off is more. And as I said again, it is because people from the general community are also competing. Now for example, Kshatriyas are probably the most illiterate, comparatively, census wise, among the general category when it comes to higher education standards. When I say illiterate, I use it in a very loose, rhetorical sense. Kshatriyas don’t have a standard representation in majority of ‘clever business and clever vocations’. They’ve been always doing this some or the other kind of ‘handling jobs’ and becoming a part of the Bajrang Dal. But here’s what happens: a Baniya, for example, Agarwal Baniya from Rajasthan, a Jain Baniya from Karnataka, they’re competing against the same standards, but both experiences will be different. A south Indian Baniya exiled from North India became a Jain; the Agarwal is very much rooted in Marwari culture. What we are seeing here is the dissatisfaction amongst the Baniya or Brahmin groups. They want to express their frustration by finding a scapegoat because someone else has wrongly told them, these are the people you should blame.

TMK: I think you made an important point in between about everybody wanting to just go to that same college, or that same place, and therefore, actually depriving people in need within their community for access to that kind of a college.

SY: Can I give you an example? I know this because a person shared this experience with me. The Baniya community got together and had a local scholarship for supporting each other. It gave scholarship to send the students to study. There were more and more students for the scholarship. However, this person irrespective of him being smart and scoring well, was deprived of that opportunity because his father was not an influential businessman.

What happened in this case is he was deprived of the opportunity because more people within the same group wanted to go to that specific college only. Go to other colleges also, no? That way we might have more opportunities there.

TMK: This is a question that connects religion converting again with reservation. If a Dalit converts to Christianity because of caste persecution within the Hindu community, why would this Dalit be given reservation after conversion?

SY: I mean they are not anymore not Dalits, right? They are still Dalits there, because there is a Brahmin there. This reservation is given based on caste, not religion and caste unfortunately. Many Dalit Christians benefitted, they especially benefitted from colonial education.

The question is about those Dalit Christians who have a constitutional right because of their own caste distinction. What they did was they wanted to maintain an invented Hindu majority. Many Dalits are still Hindus, when in fact they’re not Hindu. In the caste certificate when you write, they mention, my caste certificate mentions me as Hindu, when none of my family is Hindu or nothing to do with that, but the caste certificate was made in 1980s, now it is made for Buddhists to become qualified, but many other kinds of calculation are not made in the estimation in this liberal way of looking at caste as a parity concept. Why Dalit Christians, and this could also be Dalit Muslims.

Also read: The Supreme Court’s Question About Reservations Is the Wrong One to Ask

TMK: Yes, exactly,

SY: This is because they are being discriminated by their own religious supremacists, their own dominant caste people and Muslims and Christians, whoever, majority of them are from this same land. They convert, and it’s not like only one group is converted, there’s also many groups converted and unfortunately, especially in the Catholic tradition in India, as much as I know, I’m not an expert in that, I know about a Tamil Nadu example where I know repeatedly bishops are sending memorandums about caste to the pope to the Vatican, saying this is the problem, and of course, we know legendary catholic priests, fathers, who were progressive in their thinking, contributed to the people’s struggles, and they belong to the dominant castes by the way, and they have been supportive of reservation, so why they should get this is because their caste experiences doesn’t go away.

They are still inferior, they are still made to live a subhuman life and when they converted to Christianity, for they want to have an equal opportunity, to get basic education. They also have a material interest in addition to spiritual and final reason is that the idea of reservation is caste based. We need to understand based on that idea of discrimination and exclusion.

For example, the Christian institutions in India, St. Stephens and all that, they produce Hindu nationalists, like BJP’s Jay Panda is educated in those. It’s interesting right like this is how caste dynamics work and again there is this reproduction of a certain kind of release, that’s why I’m saying when we critique, it’s not Hinduism only, but also for the religion and when we critique, we also would like to get social justice and economic equality provided here.

TMK: Reservations were necessary when India gained freedom, but how long are they going to go on? Even Ambedkar said that after ten years it should be removed.

SY: So, there are two misconceptions that we should address. First is that Ambedkar actually later in his speech said it was Vallabh Bhai Patel who was pushing for it, and he refused to do that for ten years and I’m going to provide citations. Actually, Narender Jadhav translated the speeches of Ambedkar in English and in that he mentioned that Ambedkar was not advocating for that. The idea of reservations for ten years was political. Dalits don’t want political reservation because it creates more as Kanchiram would call chamcha or Ambedkar called them stooge.

For how long should reservations go, we should look at the statistics. Ninety-three per cent of the Indian labour force works in informal sector, unorganised sector, shops, hawking, you know all this is informal. Only 7% is organised and of that, 3% is private. So, 4% is actually the space of contestation here. Can you imagine? So why don’t we pay attention to what’s happening to the 93% where there is no reservation? If you are a Baniya, you are re-inheriting the business if you are a landlord, you are inheriting the business or agriculture. If you are a priest, you’re inheriting business. If you’re the son or daughter of some industrialist you’re inheriting the business.

Much of the informal sector, apart from industries is put into informal sector. Even the business they put into it and of that 89% are SC/STs. Informal majority workers are in so we are concerned about less than 10% SC/ST’s collectively. That means 10% SC/ST’s threaten the entire structure of savarna intelligence. What about 90% if you count all of us together, there will be chaos so only you know one can barely handle the genius of 10% and of this 10%, it’s not an easy game.

Now let us go to the private sector – there is no reservation there. Fortunately, there are reports on caste communities –  Lakshmi Iyer, Arun Khanna and Ashutosh published surveys and reports in Economic and Political Weekly in a very good tabulated form. In non-agricultural sector employment within agricultural sector – for example, if you are the owner of a big farmland, or if you’re a marginal farmer, if you are doing the Bagh or orchard, there are different kinds – they don’t calculate the percentage of savarnas, because they don’t know how many savarnas are existing in India. We are using very old data.

We should advocate for census. What they cleverly did is they only calculated SC/STs because they say we only want to give them policies, we don’t need to calculate others. It’s wrong.

For how long it will go [on] – it will go on as long as we don’t really create a society of equal representation. Unless there is no representation, people will still try to get there – education and job reservations. Now they’re also asking for promotion and there’s already approved. We should contest against political reservation. Dalits are contesting, and I think nobody is favouring political reservation because that’s when I think there is actually a possibility that Dalits actually will unite but Dalits are a minority, Adivasis are a minority, and we don’t have a presidential where you vote for one person and you get a number of seats, that’s why in this extremely complex system, what we need to do is we need to think about how we distribute equally, amongst everyone, so the privileged doesn’t become more powerful, doesn’t mean privileged shouldn’t get their share – we should distribute in a way that doesn’t make the privileged more powerful. That’s my closing statement.

TMK: So true, thank you so much Suraj for taking the time and answering again these set of often repeated questions that just don’t seem to go away, but I do hope that this putting together and answering each one of them is at least one step forward. It is there for everybody to listen to again, understand again, and read more and learn more. That’s the only way we can progress together. Thank you, brother.

SY: Thank you brother, take care.