Caste

To Remove Caste Bias From the Judicial System, Judges Need to Self-Correct

There are numerous cases that highlight the extent to which implicit caste biases creep into Indian courts.

People walk past the Supreme Court. Credit: Reuters

The complaint of Justice C.S. Karnan, then of the Madras high court, to the National Commission of Schedule Castes in 2011 is a useful illustration when talking about the unconscious caste biases in workshops with judges, as it appeared in the realm of the credible. Karnan complained that “The judge, sitting crosslegged next to me, touched me with his shoes deliberately and then said sorry. Two other judges were watching it smiling”. Karnan claimed that he was discriminated against on the basis of his caste at several get-togethers, such as a full court meeting, high tea and dinner.

However, the present refrain of Karnan, now a judge at the Calcutta high court, that the consequences which have followed his erratic and unbalanced behaviour are in fact illustrations of caste discrimination can only serve to undermine and make a mockery of the serious issue of caste in the judiciary.

A pointer to the relation between caste and the judiciary is a 2006 interview of noted constitutional expert and jurist Fali Nariman during the release of his book India’s Legal System where he states, “Former law minister P. Shiv Shankar, a Dalit, told me that as policy, in some states, if two justices have to be sworn in on the same day, the guy from the preferred community is sworn in first, so that the guy from the non-preferred community doesn’t supersede him in becoming chief justice”.

The law dealing with contempt of court forbids the imputing of motives or biases to a judge. However, it may be instructive to look at some judgments of courts dealing with offences under the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 (PCRA) and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

V.P. Shetty case

In May 2005, the chairman of the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), V.P. Shetty, was arrested on a complaint made by IDBI general manager Bhaskar Ramteke under the Atrocities Act. Shetty is alleged to have hurled a volley of “casteist” expletives at Ramteke. The Bombay high court held that the offence of insulting or humiliating a member of a scheduled caste in “any place within public view” was not established, as the incident took place in a private room, and quashed the FIR. Contrary to the image of Ramteke and Shetty having a get-together in the latter’s drawing room, conjured up by the phrase “private room”, the incident took place in the chairman’s office at the IDBI premises in the World Trade Centre. Ramteke had gone to meet Shetty in connection with official work pertaining to readjustment of the SC/ST backlog (vacancies unfulfilled from the past years) ahead of the merger of the IDBI commercial banking arm and the IDBI.

Krishnan Naynar case

In 1996, a case was filed against E. Krishnan Nayanar, former chief minister of Kerala, under the PCRA as well as the Atrocities Act for making “casteist” remarks against one Kuttappan while contesting a by-election to the state assembly from the Thalassery constituency. The complaint was that Nayanar, at a convention of the Left Democratic Front at the Town Bank auditorium, said, “The other thing, that harijan, one Kuttappan, he was dancing on the table”. There were witnesses who had also deposed that more or less the statement had been made, with a little difference in wording. Even though the statute provides that an act against a person belonging to the scheduled caste category shall be presumed to be on the ground of untouchability, the Kerala high court held that no offence under PCRA could be made out as it could not be said that “the complainant was insulted or attempted to be insulted on the ground of untouchability”. As for the Atrocities Act, the court ruled that although the incident was admittedly in public view, the offence of insult or humiliation was not complete as the complainant Kuttappan was not present at the public meeting. The court went on to observe that it was only offences like dumping excreta, waste matter and carcasses within the premises of a member of the SC community, which need not necessarily be done in the presence of the person insulted.

Phulsing case

Phulsing, a Lodhi thakur and ex-Malgujar, had been taking “begar” (forced labour without payment) from Balla, who was a chamar. Phulsingh had got Balla’s house demolished and abducted Balla’s wife for five days. In addition, Phulsingh had threatened to overrun Balla with his tractor and kill him. Balla reported the matter to the police and while he was returning, Phulsing shouted at Balla, “Chamra mere virudh report kyon ki, main tumse manhani ke 5,000 rupaye loonga (You chamar, why did report me, I will take Rs 5,000 from you for defamation)”. In a second case, Phulsing had a land dispute with Parsadi, also a chamar. Phulsing threatened and abused Parsadi by saying “Chamra ***** jagah chod dena nahi to goli maar doonga (You chamar, ****** leave the place otherwise I will shoot you dead)”. Phulsing also stopped Parsadi’s wife, who was passing through a road in front of his house, and said to her “Yahan se chamriya nikli to lat marenge, tere bap ka rasta nahi nahin (You chamariya, if you pass this way I will kick you, it is not your father’s road)”.

Two separate cases were registered against Phulsing – one with regard to the incident involving Balla and the other with respect to Parsadi and his wife – for insults on the ground of untouchability under Section 7(d) of the PCRA. The Madhya Pradesh high court acquitted Phulsing in both criminal cases with a rather puzzling observation, “Now calling a chamar a chamar may be insulting him, but it would not be an insult on the ground of untouchability”.

In Phulsing vs State of Madhya Pradesh, the court decreed that even a “casteist” abuse hurled at a member of a scheduled caste might not amount to insult on grounds of “untouchability” if there are other issues involved between the parties. It is pertinent to note that the quarrels that form the backdrop of “casteist” abuses, insults and humiliations are in fact themselves rooted in the caste location of the individuals concerned. PCRA has been enacted to concretise and make real the abolition of untouchability under the constitution and if two interpretations in law are possible, then the one that furthers the intention and object of the legislation is to be favoured over the other. However, the judgment held that regardless of the presumption under Section 12 of the PCRA – that the court must presume that an act was on the ground of untouchability – in the present case the insults were “insults simpliciter” and not on the ground of untouchability.

Inter-caste dining

Enforcing any social distinctions on the grounds of untouchability with regard to the use of utensils kept in restaurants, hotels, dharamshalas and sarais is an offence under the PCRA. The Karnataka high court, in State of Karnataka versus Irappa, a case where separate cups and saucers were kept for Dalits, acquitted the hotel proprietor on the grounds of a 12-hour delay in filing the complaint, the prosecution witnesses being related to each other and because the complaint did not specifically mention that the accused had kept the utensils separately.

Preventing any person from exercising a right on the grounds of untouchability is an offence under the PCRA. Similarly, encouraging any person, class of persons or the public by words, signs or otherwise to practice untouchability and insulting or attempting to insult a member of a scheduled caste are offences under the PCRA.

One Duni Chand had invited all the residents of the village, including Dalits, for food at his house in connection with the wedding of his son. The seven accused persons arrived there when Nanku, son of Dharu, and Chana, son of Sukhiya, who were both Dalits, were eating. The accused allegedly stated that they would not eat at the house. They also apparently turned out Nanku and Chana from there. The Supreme Court held that the evidence of the complainant Duni Chand and the eyewitnesses was of a general nature and none of the witnesses had stated with reference to any of the accused the specific words used by them at the relevant time. The court said that no offence under Section 7 of the PCRA was made out and set aside the conviction of the accused persons.

Bhanwari Devi case

Under the constitutional scheme, if two interpretations of a provision in law are possible, then the courts are under an obligation to favour the one that furthers the intention and object of the legislation over the other. The PCRA has been enacted to concretise and make real the abolition of untouchability under the constitution. Similarly, the provisions of the Atrocities Act are to be interpreted to further the object of prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs.

The judges trying cases under these anti-discriminatory laws are consciously trying their best to be free from biases. However, it is no coincidence that the interpretations favoured in each of the judgments work out in favour of the acquittal of the accused persons. Such is the insidious nature of caste in India that it is likely to creep in unconsciously in actions, behaviour and interpretations of legislative provisions by courts.

The trial court judgment acquitting the accused in the infamous Bhanwari Devi gangrape case in Rajasthan is a rare instance of caste prejudice overtly manifested and articulated by a judge.

Bhanwari Devi was a sathin – a village level worker in the women’s development programme run by the government of Rajasthan. She had joined the programme in 1985 and was a relentless campaigner against the practice of child marriage. Bhanwari Devi had successfully prevented the marriage of the one-year old daughter of Ram Kanwar Gujar. On September 22, 1992, she was gangraped by five men, including a Gujar. The Jaipur district and sessions judge delivered the judgment on November 15, 1995. According to the judge, the accused were middle aged and therefore respectable citizens, while teenagers were the ones who usually committed rapes. The judgment went on to declare, “Since the accused are upper-caste men, the rape could not have taken place because Bhanwari was from a lower caste”.

Self-correction

In a series of workshops I conducted on ‘minimising the impact of biases, prejudices and stereotypes on the judicial decision making process’ with judges at the Delhi Judicial Academy, National Judicial Academy and Karnataka Judicial Academy, caste, though an important component of the Indian psyche, proved to be the most difficult area to access. The mechanism of correction envisaged in the legal system is appeal to a higher court. An aggrieved party in appeal gets an opportunity to show the flaws in the judgment of the lower court. However, the grounds which can be used in an appeal are in the domain of law. As for biases and prejudices in areas like caste, class, religion, gender and sexual orientation, self-correction by judges is the only recourse.

Rakesh Shukla is an advocate and member of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

The Cryptic Suicide of a Dalit Scholar

The oblique nature of structural violence leaves invisible marks on a Dalit student’s body and psyche that no autopsy can reveal.

Muthukrishanan, the Dalit research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University who committed suicide earlier this week. Credit: Rajni Krish’s Facebook page

Gabriel García Márquez had confessed in an interview to Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza that his editors were shocked to discover his grammar was faulty. That did not stop him from being one of the most imaginative writers in the Spanish language.

Imagination does not come from correct grammar. Indian academia, however, has a postcolonial impatience that still works insidiously against those who struggle to articulate themselves in the master’s language. The worth of a scholar lies surely in the novelty and complexity of her arguments rather than in mere linguistic proficiency. But given the dominant role of English as the lingua franca of the university system, a student’s reputation is often based on a standardised idea of fluency that places privilege over knowledge.

Muthukrishanan Jeevanathan, the Dalit research scholar studying history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, took his own life on the day Indians celebrate colour. He left no suicide note but his writings over the past few years capture the way he experienced this structural bias.

In a July 26, 2016, post on Facebook, Muthukrishanan, or Rajni Krish as he called himself, mentions how he took the JNU entrance exam thrice for the MA and twice for the MPhil/PhD. In the same post, he described the reason why he had to appear repeatedly: “First two times I did not learnt English properly. But I tried because I just don’t want to give up.” He adds, cryptically, how a professor in a previous interview before he got through in the MPhil/PhD course, mentioned his “simple language”. There is a telling sentence, where he describes sitting below the statue of Nehru in the JNU campus, “Why you don’t want to educate me?” Perhaps what he really meant to say was ‘Why does my English pose such a big hindrance to my education?’

The English language was Krish’s agony, which he could finally overcome at least at the interview level. Is this insensibility of the university system towards other ‘Englishes’ merely a linguistic one, or a masquerade when faced by challenging and uncomfortable ideas, particularly around the discourse of caste?

There is another post where he writes, “The teachers and students discussed the functions of the Linguistic Empowerment Cell as well as the difficulty of structuring remedial courses.” It is fine to have courses for improving English language skills (without the necessity to call it a “cell” and make it sound like a confinement). The problem lies in treating the process of linguistic empowerment as something distinct from intellectual abilities and giving it the ring of a special handicap.

Dreaming of studying in JNU, the student from a small village in Tamil Nadu felt anguished and trapped by the formal demands of language on his scholarship. Reading his illuminating notes on Facebook, you realise he was trying hard to find a place in society, battling prejudices in the street as much as within the academic arena. He wrote about how the security guards at the JNU check post allowed others but not him to get in without ID proof. In the backdrop of these experiences, Muthukrishanan narrated how he did menial jobs and had to “beg” others for money that he saved “like ant”, to simply come and study in JNU.

The relationship between intellectual ability and linguistic skills in a country of graded inequalities isn’t straightforward. It is mediated by experiences that differ between the privileged and the marginalised. The Indian higher education system – the University Grants Commission, university administrators, professors and students too – needs to be sensitive to this. Else it will simply become another form of elite gate-keeping.

Muthukrishanan was involved in the Rohith Vemula movement for justice. On June 30, last year, he wrote an evocative piece in his blog, ‘Daliterature’ – a politically innovative term, proving that the promise of language is imagination, not grammar – where he recounted his meetings with the Hyderabad University student whose suicide in January 2016 had rocked campuses across the country. He ended the piece with the dystopic fear that “intellectuals from the marginalised communities will get arrested just for mocking fictional characters.” He also feared, the country’s power elite will “kill many Rohiths, like us, just for eating beef, for being rational, for being intellectually productive for the country.”

A weaver of complex narratives

India is increasingly becoming a culturally hegemonic society. Religious sentiments are becoming law, overriding constitutional guarantees of secular principles. There is palpable fear of a violent backlash if you critically interpret religious icons, consume beef or challenge injustices taking place in the name of nationalism. There is heterogeneity of beliefs in Indian society, despite the rigidity of its caste structure. Even that diverse reality is being swallowed up by a threat-inflicted consensus: Any argument against exaggerated claims regarding Indian society being tolerant shall not be tolerated. Irony is fast losing a country.

From his long notes, one learns that Muthukrishanan was a weaver of complex narratives. Stories of his past, the family’s hardships, his love for his mother and grandmother, his love for beef, were woven along with his current life and challenges at the university. There is a touching moment from a January 30 post where he suddenly breaks off his third-person narrative while remembering his late grandmother: “In Taj Mahal, without girlfriend, I was thinking about only my Sellammal Aaya.” The absence of amorous comfort heightens the despair of memory. A friend bemoaned, hearing of Muthukrishanan’s death, that the storyteller has now passed into story. But the storyteller was painfully alert to the discriminating equations being forged between numbers and history by the UGC’s new directives on higher education.

Through highly abstract reasoning, Muthukrishanan argued for a mathematics that liberates rather than acts as a calculating tool of historical discrimination. The UGC’s devious move to make the viva voce the main criterion for admission to an MPhil/PhD programme as well as the proposed cut on intake of students will adversely affect marginalised sections with varying language skills, just when their presence is growing in universities.

It is largely due to the increasing presence of students from deprived sections that new debates on knowledge production and political ideas have entered university campuses. These demands are having intense repercussions in administration, teaching as well as student politics. Muthukrishanan was aware of the “modern Manu” bringing back discrimination in all forms, including through the back door of education policy. In a post he wrote on Rohith Vemula’s first death anniversary, he lays down the various “mechanisms of discrimination” being faced by underprivileged students. Apart from the constant threat of being dubbed anti-national, he spoke of the “hypersonic academic discrimination”, where fake complaints and charges are made against students and faculty. He spoke about the “alchemy of discrimination”, where everything from showing a film on Muzaffarnagar, to singing the national anthem in cinema halls, to demonetization, create a bizarre world of appropriation.

In this regard, Muthukrishanan mentioned the “invisible, cryptic discrimination” that pervades the current “militarisation” of campus life. To call his suicide “cryptic” isn’t an attempt to obscure its meanings but rather to suggest how the oblique nature of structural violence leaves invisible marks on a Dalit student’s body and psyche that no autopsy can reveal. More than anything else, it is this burden of accumulated structural inequity that Krish’s suicide has exposed.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee teaches poetry at Ambedkar University, New Delhi. He is a frequent contributor to The Wire and has written for The Hindu, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Outlook and other publications.

‘Kaam Bolta Hai’ that Samajwadi Party Works Only for Yadavs, Say Non-Yadav OBCs

The BJP has been capitalising on an anti-Yadav sentiment that has been brewing against the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party.

BJP supporters cheer at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Deoria. Credit: Titash Sen

Ballia, Uttar Pradesh: While most accounts have indicated that the BJP is trying to polarise voters in Uttar Pradesh on religious lines, especially after the third phase of polling, what one seems to miss is that the party is complimenting its electoral and ideological strategy with a well-adopted anti-Yadav rhetoric. If trends from a large number of seats are to be believed, it has been partially successful in doing so.

Across the state, an anti-Yadav sentiment among non-Yadav voters is brewing. A constant grievance among a number of non-Yadav OBC voters is that only Yadavs have benefited from the Samajwadi Party (SP) government.

Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav emerged as a clean leader across all castes after the internecine feud within the party but the four-month long battle with his father Mulayam Singh Yadav also created a perception that only the members of the overarching Yadav caste, who are dominant in SP government, have cornered most of the resources in UP.

Shivprasad Khushwaha, an OBC resident of Salempur in Deoria, told The Wire, “Akhilesh is a clean leader but he did nothing for Poorvanchal. He focussed only on the development of Saifai (Mulayam’s birthplace).”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also hinted at Yadav hegemony under the SP rule in his election speeches. In almost all his rallies, Modi mentioned that the SP had converted police stations into party offices, indirectly pointing out that the alleged lawlessness under the SP’s rule is a result of the Yadav dominate the police force.

Many BJP activists The Wire met in UP said that the SP has only recruited Yadavs in various branches of its government.

“No recruitment happened on the basis of merit. If you are not a Yadav, then you are required to pay in lakhs as bribe to land a government job,” said Sunil Pandey, a BJP activist in Gorakhpur.

While this may or may not be true, what is important is that the BJP has largely been successful in advancing this theory of Yadav hegemony in many parts of UP.

This negative perception against the Yadavs have largely found acceptance among a large section of non-Yadav OBCs comprising Maurya, Shakya, Kurmis, Prajapatis, Khushwaha, Rajbhars, Nishads and many other such small but consolidated groups.

“If you look at the SP leaders, all of them move around in SUV-sized vehicles. Even a village-level pradhan has a (Toyota) Fortuner. Where do they get the money from?” asked one Kurmi resident of Barabanki.

This negative perception against Yadavs, which emerged from rising levels of inequality among OBCs, is being best captured by the BJP, which located these fault-lines first.

In fact, the BJP has worked on this campaign ever since it won the 2014 election. Durga Prasad Tripathi, an RSS worker in Sultanpur said, “The decision to appoint Keshav Prasad Maurya as the state president of the party was taken much before the election. It was clear since then that the BJP has hinged all its hopes on the non-Yadav population (around 25% of UP), which together with BJP’s base vote of upper castes is an winning combination. You can see that the party has given an unprecedented number of tickets to representatives of these groups.”

He added that the ‘upper’ caste loyalists of the party were offended initially because of the move by party president Amit Shah but the resentment subsided when it saw the party performing better than previous state elections. “They all know that the BJP is the only party where the upper caste voice is heard seriously,” he said.

A Delhi-based political analyst, who asked not to be named, says that there are two factors behind the resurgence of the BJP in the UP assembly elections. First, Modi’s popularity among a large section of people still remains intact. Second, the social engineering method that Shah adopted by uniting a large mass of OBCs and ‘upper’ castes helped it regain credibility among floating voters in terms of caste arithmetic. He added that this social coalition works well on ground as in the last two decades the assertive Yadavs have become the most-hated lot.

“Brahmins and other ‘upper’ castes hate the Yadavs, who under Mulayam’s leadership, challenged their hegemony. The ‘upper castes’ had a disproportionate hold over the whole political system. Yadavs not only challenged them but usurped their position in politics of patronage and corruption,” he said.

The wholehearted support of Brahmins for the BJP is something one cannot miss in this election. In every street corner, common areas of villages, and road-side tea stalls, Brahmins, who are also in a majority in the intellectual class of UP, have dominated public discourse in the last one week.

All of them give a clear lead to the BJP. “It will win at least 250 seats. Mark my words. We will talk again on March 11 (the day votes will be counted),” Sunil Pandey, a resident of Ayodhya, told The Wire with an assured tone.

In many other areas, Brahmins indulged in such psephology in favour of the BJP. They talk in an objective tenor, give detailed analysis of each constituency, its samikaran (caste arithmetic), larger political factors that favour the BJP even while the situation on the ground is starkly different.

“Although the BJP did not perform very well in the first phase, by all indications, it has swept the rest of the four phases,” said another Brahmin journalist of Basti who had concluded that the BJP will get an absolute majority.

While the upper caste votes are to few in comparison to other caste groups, such informal campaigns by them compliments the meta-narratives set by BJP. In this Brahminical discourse, the anti-Yadav sentiment reigns supreme.

Much of this hypothesis advanced by the Brahmins is also picked-up by non-Yadav OBCs, and this helps in setting the contours of the political debates on ground.

Thus, one can seriously perceive a growing anti-Yadav consolidation against the SP-Congress combine. But whether it will be enough to secure the requisite number of seats in a 403-member assembly is debatable.

The BJP leaders with whom The Wire spoke are aware of this. They believe that an anti-Muslim Hindu consolidation in an assembly election is difficult, given the sharp divisions among Hindus on caste lines. Since UP polls are largely dictated by a complex caste arithmetic, an anti-Yadav campaign, they say, may help the saffron party consolidate non-Yadav Hindus better.

A communal twist to the election and a concerted effort to consolidate non-Yadavs, the BJP hopes, will sharpen its campaign and win it a majority.

In response, Akhilesh has attempted to shed this Yadav-friendly image. For the first time, he has given tickets to many Kurmis, Koeris, Jaiswals and Mauryas.

By all accounts, Akhilesh has emerged as the first SP leader who is liked across caste and community groups in UP. Before the different phases of polling in the state, a random survey of voters established this fondness for Akhilesh. He is now banking on his non-partisan image to corner the opposition.

While rest of the parties are banking on a negative campaign against the SP rule, Akhilesh has relied only on his performance, going with his “Kaam Bolta Hai” slogan. What is pulling him down, however, is that ground-level SP activists, against whom anti-incumbency sentiments are running high, have not been able to consolidate this side of Akhilesh in a large number of seats. Most also lack the required expertise to intervene in this political situation.

Both the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the BJP are functioning much better as far as campaigning in constituencies are concerned, in terms of general visibility and loudness.

What one is witnessing in UP is a churning within the OBC community and also one of the most aggressive attempts by the ‘upper’ castes to get back their lost glory. In this scheme of things, however, the BSP may prove to be a major roadblock for the BJP.

Despite Holes in Police Story, Death of Dalit Youth Ruled a ‘Suicide’

The police insist the 2013 death of the Dalit man at the epicentre of upper caste violence over his engagement to a Vanniyar woman in Tamil Nadu was a suicide. But the evidence does not support this claim.

There is evidence to the contrary but the CB-CID too insists the 2013 death of the Dalit man at the epicentre of upper caste violence over his engagement to a Vanniyar woman in Tamil Nadu was a suicide.

This is an updated version of the story first published in February 17, 2017.

Chennai: Less than four years ago, all of Tamil Nadu keenly followed the travails of Ilavarasan and Divya, a Dalit-Vanniyar love story that ended in Ilavarasan’s death under murky circumstances along a railway track in Dharmapuri in July 2013.

Before his death, in violence instigated by local Pattali Makkal Katchi leaders and the Vanniyar Sangham, 326 Dalit homes in three Dalit settlements of Dharmapuri district were torched. A caste war was waged for months in northern Tamil Nadu. Three years later, in November 2016, the Madras high court ordered a CB-CID probe into Ilavarasan’s death. The CB-CID submitted its compliance report on the case to the court on Tuesday, February 21, ruling it a casevof suicide.

Key question

Was E. Ilavarasan, the Dalit youth from Natham Colony, Dharmapuri district, really hit at 1.20 pm on July 4, 2013, by the Coimbatore–Kurla Express (train no.11014) that passed the spot where he was found dead, next to the railway track, 3 km before Dharmapuri railway station? This is the key question on which the entire case turns. Asra Garg, who was the superintendent of police of Dharmapuri at the time, claimed that Ilavarasan’s wrist watch – recovered from the scene – had got stuck at 1.20, the very instant the train passed the spot (1.20 pm). Garg conjectured that it was the impact of the train hitting Ilavarasan that stopped the watch. This ‘fact’, in turn, has been used to ‘prove’ that the young man committed suicide by jumping in front of the train.

However, there were no eyewitness accounts, no accident reported by the engine driver, nor any admitted evidence of a run-over such as blood or tissue found on the train.

In a YouTube video uploaded by one “Ratish.G” – taken on the day Ilavarasan died, and uploaded on July 7, 2013 – there is a close-up of the dial of the wrist watch. The video was shot on the day of his death. The police and onlookers are at the scene. What the close-up of the watch reveals may hold the key to challenging the time on the watch as a crucial piece of evidence presented by the police.

The video at 1:46 clearly shows Ilavarasan’s watch in a white transparent plastic bag lying on the culvert a few feet from the track, adjacent to which his body was found. The time on the watch, discernible to the naked eye, is not 1.20, from any angle. Even if the needles of the watch are not sharply visible, the angle between the two needles at the position of 1.20 cannot be what is seen in this video. It certainly calls for a close, forensic re-examination of the original high-resolution footage of the video.

It’s all about time

The time is crucial because a copy of the train signal register of arrival and departure timings at Dharmapuri railway station on July 4, 2013, obtained by this writer through a Right to Information application from the South Western Railways office, shows that the 11014 Coimbatore–Kurla Express arrived at Dharmapuri junction, 3km past the spot where Ilavarasan was found dead, at 1:25 pm. A 1.20 pm death on the tracks is consistent with the station log but if the young man died before or after the train was already at the station, the suicide theory falls apart.

Is the watch showing 1:20, as the police have claimed? Credit: Screenshot from video uploaded by Rathish G/YouTube

Moreover, the watch and the time it had allegedly stopped at was not shown to Ilavarasan’s parents, Elango and Krishnaveni, on the day of his death. “The watch was lying there in a bag on the culvert, next to the half-eaten banana. But it was only when I went to collect Ilavarasan’s Pulsar bike from the station, more than a month after the incident, that they told me about the time on it,” said Elango, over the phone. “The police even hazarded a guess that he must have removed his watch and kept it there before jumping in front of the train. Why would a man who’s supposedly decided to commit suicide bother to remove his watch?” asks Elango incredulously.

Even if he did so, this only further counters the police’s conjecture and presentation of the watch as ‘crucial evidence’, for it means the watch was not on Ilavarasan’s body when he was supposedly hit by the train, and hence could not have got stuck at the time of impact in the first place.

There are many questions with no convincing answers regarding the watch and the hypothesis of synchronised timings. Ilavarasan was right-handed, and wore his watch on his left wrist. It was his left forearm which was badly damaged, according to the post mortem reports. His body was lying face-down, close and all along the culvert, with no space between the culvert and him, his left arm trapped under the weight of his body.

Among the questions that beg answers are: If Ilavarasan did not remove the watch from this arm before dying, who did, and why was it then placed in a bag and left at the spot where it was recovered from? If this was done after his death, how was it taken off his wrist even before removing the body was authorised? If the watch was not found on his body in the first place, then where was it found, by whom, and in what condition? Were there photographs of his watch taken at the spot, before it was touched? Was the watch finger-printed? Why was the watch not provided to the post-mortem team? This point is specifically mentioned by doctors in reports in possession of this writer.

Oddly, the police superinentent announced the synchronisation of time on the watch with the train’s timing as clinching evidence a good one month after the incident, perhaps, it is alleged, after ascertaining when the train passed by. This point was raised by Elango in his petition (WP No. 21150 of 2013) in the Madras high court through lawyer S. Rajinikanth, “Further, the 5th respondent (SP, Dharmapuri) belatedly claimed after a month that a watch of the deceased was found near the scene of occurrence and he has not explained as to how it was recovered after one month…. and there is no date mentioned on the watch and he has not explained under what mechanism the watch was struck.” To these questions, there was no response in the SP’s 21-page counter-affidavit.

Anyone could have set the watch at 1.20 once the train timing was known. The video and the questions pick gaping holes in the supposed match in the watch and train timings, on which the SP’s suicide theory of jumping before the train almost entirely hinges.

Other inconsistencies

That is not all. Ilavarsan is said to have spoken with three close friends over the phone from near the railway track, close to the alleged time of death – Manoj Kumar (in Chennai), Karthik (in Chittoor), and Arivalagan (his cousin, in Dharmapuri).

According to his parents, someone else called him that morning, whose identity is still a mystery.

Though Ilavarasan’s phone was set on a mode where all conversations were automatically recorded, the police seem to have retrieved only the audio recordings of the two short conversations with Arivalagan. There are no recordings of the calls with Manoj and Karthik, with whom he spoke around the same time, for longer. The absence of recordings assumes significance because the two friends, in their verbal statements made to the police, apparently said that Ilavarasan sounded upset about Divya’s separation from him, that he was drinking along the track, and planned to commit suicide that day. There are no recordings to substantiate this claim.

Manoj Kumar, a childhood friend of Ilavarasan, could not be contacted. His own inter-OBC caste love marriage with a Vanniyar girl from the area around the time riots broke out in Dharmapuri in 2012 (when Divya’s father allegedly committed suicide) prompted them to leave the place quietly, and settle in Chennai, with his parents refusing to divulge his whereabouts to anyone out of fear. Ilavarasan’s close college friend Karthik, who had arranged Ilavarasan’s and Divya’s elopement and marriage in Chittoor, was also unreachable over the phone. However, when Elango had earlier spoken to him regarding his alleged statement to the police, Karthik had denied hearing Ilavarasan say he would commit suicide. “Ilavarasan did not tell me that he was going to commit suicide that day. In fact, he said he was coming here (to Chittoor) and I invited him over,” Elango claimed Karthik told him.

Ilavarasan’s family believes the police version of what Manoj Kumar and Karthik recounted is not reliable.

“Ilavarasan’s phone had an auto-call recording feature, I know, because I got him that phone on an offer,” said Arivalagan. “It records all calls, incoming and outgoing. If my conversations, in which Ilavarasan said he’s on his way, minutes before his body was discovered, got recorded, then so must have theirs. “When recently called by the CB-CID for verification, I asked them this question – ‘how come you have only my recordings and not Manoj’s or Karthik’s?’ They had no answer,” he said.

Ilavarasan’s family had pinned its hopes on the CB-CID. But with the investigative department also sticking to the suicide theory, and the high court deciding to close the docket, it does seem like the end of the road for then.

Timeline: A tragic tale of transgressive love

Sowmya Sivakumar is an independent journalist based in Chennai

Looking Back at the Colonial Origins of Communal and Caste Conflict in India

Ajay Verghese’s The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence looks at the colonial past to understand why some parts of India suffer from communal conflict while others suffer from caste conflict.

Policies followed by the British were diverse over the country, and the repercussions of these policies can be felt still in politics today. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Policies followed by the British were diverse over the country, and the repercussions of these policies can still be felt in the communal violence or caste violence that an area experiences today. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In the past two decades, economists and political scientists have increasingly turned to India’s colonial past to understand the present. Scholars such as Abhijit Banerjee, Lakshmi Iyer, Dave Donaldson and Shivaji Mukherjee have shown how colonial indirect rule and land administration policies, often implemented with little consideration of local conditions, explain how levels of conflict and economic development vary so much across South Asia today. The very randomness of these colonial policies makes them ideal ‘natural experiments,’ it appears, for estimating the true effects of different kinds of government interventions.

The latest work in this area by a political scientist, Ajay Verghese’s The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India, looks to the colonial past to understand why some parts of India seem to suffer from communal conflicts while others suffer from high levels of caste conflicts. Generations of historians have pointed to religious divide-and-rule policies as perhaps the most distinctive and damaging aspect of British colonial rule. But Verghese’s revisionist thesis emphasises the role of the colonial administration, after 1857, in highlighting caste identities in its provincial governments and policies, most importantly in its land settlement and land administration policies. These provincial policies, he says, led to an increase in caste polarisation and conflict in British India. The cross-cutting nature of these caste cleavages also had at least one unforeseen benefit, however, by helping to defuse larger religious conflicts in the provinces between Hindus and Muslims. In princely India, by contrast, Verghese argues that rulers sought religious legitimacy and also practiced religious discrimination in their administrations, therefore increasing long-term religious grievances and conflicts but in doing so, also helping to reduce caste conflicts. Independence did not represent a sharp break with these patterns, but rather helped to entrench them. Areas that that had been part of British India continued to have higher levels of caste conflict, while former princely states had higher levels of communal conflict.

Ajay Verghese
The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India
Stanford University Press, 2016

The most important evidence for Verghese’s thesis comes from his careful historical analysis of two pairs of cases, the former princely state of Jaipur and the British territory of Ajmer in present-day Rajasthan, and the former princely state of Travancore and British district of Malabar in Kerala. He argues that Jaipur had high levels of Hindu-Muslim tension and conflict before independence, but low levels of caste conflict, and that these levels continue today. Ajmer on the other hand had very low levels of communal conflict before 1947 but higher degrees of caste conflict, and these patterns too have continued after independence. The story in Kerala is much the same. He argues that the British in the Malabar region de-emphasised religion and highlighted caste inequalities and identities, which continue to dominate politics today, while the princely state of Travancore highlighted religious identities and discrimination, which continues to dominate politics in that area. Such differences explain, for instance, why the RSS and BJP have done better in Travancore, and why Naxals are more prevalent in Malabar.

There is a lot to like in this book. Verghese is surely right to highlight the fact that different identities were important at different levels of the colonial Indian state, and that, through the prism of the 1930s and partition, we tend to assume that religion was much more central to colonial policy than it might have been, and that we are too ready to discount the importance of caste and other identities. One other very appealing aspects of the book is the way in which Verghese integrates so many different kinds of evidence – fourteen months of archival research and fieldwork, careful historical and case studies, as well as large-n analysis. Verghese also anticipates some of the possible counter-arguments to his analysis, for instance why the former princely state of Bastar has such high levels of tribal and Naxal conflict despite seemingly possessing the (princely state) factors that elsewhere in the book associates with religious conflict.

But, as is often the case with revisionist arguments, Verghese sometimes pushes the evidence a bit too far in support of his thesis. First, outside the province of Madras, where the post-1910 backward caste revolution and Justice Party rule in the 1920s and 1930s make a clear case for the importance of caste identities, it is hard to sustain his overall thesis that caste was more important than religion at the provincial level throughout British India. We can in fact point to a very large number of British provincial policies, from separate electorates in provincial governments, to religious reservations in state police and civil service employment, to language policies declaring the use of Urdu versus Hindi, which did focus on religion rather than caste, and which therefore help to explain the large amount of conflict along religious lines in British India. The UP administration, as Francis Robinson, Paul Brass and others have explored, recruited many staff on the basis of religious preferences before independence – Muslims, with 14% of the population, were guaranteed a third or more of the positions in the police and civil service – but had far fewer preferences on the basis of caste. The same was true in most other provinces. The legislative debates from provinces like Bengal, Punjab, Bihar, and CP before independence also have a lot more questions about religious proportions in government service, and religious conflicts, than they do about caste cleavages, which again suggests that these identities were more important than caste identities to politicians and their constituents. Hindu-dominated elected governments in Congress provinces after 1937 were accused of favouring their co-religionists in a very similar way to the rulers in princely states, as publications such as A.K. Fazlul Huq’s, Muslim Sufferings under Congress Rule (Calcutta, December 1939) make clear.

A second issue is that teasing apart caste from communal motivations in order to prove that princely India equals religious conflict and British India equals caste conflict, is harder than it seems. Verghese’s argument that the Malabar was an area of relative communal peace before independence, for instance, will likely come as a surprise to readers, because the Mappila rebellion of 1921 has frequently been characterised as one of the worst instances of Hindu-Muslim conflict before independence. Verghese recognises that the Malabar is a problematic case for his argument, and he therefore goes to considerable lengths to show that the rising was at its core driven by caste and economic concerns. He uses the fact that many Muslims were low caste converts, that many landlords were Hindu upper castes, and that some low caste Hindus were involved in the uprising (albeit in the initial stages) to argue that, “At its core, the Mappila unrest was agrarian…in essence an expression of long-standing agrarian discontent, which was only intensified by the religious and ethnic identity of the Moplahs and by their political alienation.” This caste interpretation may be plausible, but he provides no conclusive evidence to show that this is the only reading possible for events that clearly had a variety of economic, caste, agrarian and religious motivations, nor for his contention that communal tensions dramatically declined in Malabar after 1921 and 1947, while caste identities remained salient.

A related question, while we are on the subject of categorisation, is how we can we squeeze the fluidity and complexity of history into the hard categories of social science and especially statistical analysis. In his Bastar chapter – my personal favourite – Verghese argues that the exceptionally high violence in pre-1947 Bastar was not really an exception in terms of his overall characterisation of princely India, because Bastar had actually been run for much of the pre-1947 period directly by the British. The British controlled the region’s forests, exploited the natural resources and the tribal populations and, when it suited them, took over the princely state directly for long periods on some pretext or other. Thus, the distinction between the British and the princely is not as clear as we may think. Some British territory was clearly administered differently and with more of a nod to local precedent, interests, rulers and customs than others and on the princely side some areas like Bastar clearly had much less autonomy than others, and were administered directly or indirectly by the British for long stretches.

But if we do accept that distinctions such as British-princely, indirect rule-direct rule, or Zamindari-Ryotwari-Mahalwari land systems are really continuous variables, with lots of regional and local differences in policy and implementation, rather than hard-and-fast categories, then is the recent large-scale use of such variables in statistical analysis –including by Verghese in this book – defensible? In truth, as Verghese’s qualitative analysis makes clear, some states such as Hyderabad had enormous autonomy, others much less so, while in other states rulers were autonomous for some periods but were under heavy British supervision or even direct rule for others, in a way that makes statistical dummy variables seem inappropriate.

Ajay Verghese. Credit: University of California, Riverside, website

A third point, in any study that wants to establish continuity with the past, is the question of whether we are we sure we have got the past right? Verghese seems confident on the basis of his archival work that he has his facts about the past correct, and that others do not. He argues that scholars such as the historian Ian Copland, who have argued that Ajmer was as communally sensitive as Jaipur before independence are just wrong: “Ajmer had only two minor riots prior to Partition” while Jaipur experienced several more riots than listed by Copland. Verghese himself however has missed a few riots in Ajmer. In addition to the two ‘minor’ riots he lists in 1923 and 1936, by my count there seem to have been at least three more in Ajmer before the end of 1947 – one in 1926, a riot in May 1928 in which 25 Muslims were injured, and one in December 1947 in which more than 50 persons, mainly Muslims were reported killed December 1947. In addition there was a reported Hindu-Muslim riot over a Holi procession at Bhinai, outside Ajmer, listed in the 1912 administration report. There may, of course, be more cases. So overall it is hard to see Ajmer as a complete bastion of communal peace prior to India’s independence, and without that clear difference the ‘continuity’ argument that Verghese makes between levels of communal peace before and after 1947 in Ajmer starts to look more doubtful.

One final question is about the role of post-1947 politicians in determining the pathway that these different regions have taken? If we focus so much on past colonial policies in explaining outcomes such as caste and communal conflicts, or the number of roads and schools in a region, does that absolve the post-1947 politicians, parties, and agents of the state from blame, and what does that mean in terms of our agency to change things in the present? Verghese properly acknowledges this tension, but one thing I would have liked to see more of in the book is a more explicit consideration of how much he thinks the historical institutions he explores gave post-1947 Indians, and Indians today, the freedom to change things, and reduce levels of conflict, Naxal and caste violence today.

Steven Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University.

Access to Education Imperative for Musahars in Bihar

Derided as rat eaters, a large number of Musahars in Bihar villages see education for their children as the only way out of the oppression they face daily, but the going is still tough.

Derided as rat eaters, a large number of Musahars in Bihar villages see education for their children as the only way out of the oppression they face daily but the going is still tough.

The Musahar community is still living in squalor across villages in Bihar. Credit: Mohd Imran Khan/VillageSquare

Balmanti Devi and Renu Devi, landless labourers living in Hinduni Musahartoli village of Phulwari Sharif administrative block in Patna district, are sending their children to a government school in the hope education will help them escape the oppression their parents have faced all their lives.

Balmanti and Renu are two among hundreds of Musahar women in villages spread across flood-prone north Bihar to drought-prone central and south Bihar who have been silently ensuring that their children go to school for a brighter future. They are in the vanguard of a slow change taking place in hundreds of Musahartoli or Musaharis, as the villages of Musahars are known as locally.

Languishing at the bottom

At a time when India is making rapid social and economic progress, Musahars are still not allowed to live anywhere in Bihar except in hamlets earmarked exclusively for them. Living in unhygienic conditions with very little benefits from the government, this impoverished and oppressed scheduled caste is overwhelmingly landless, eking out a miserable living by working as unskilled or farm labour.

Bihar has nearly 2.2 million Musahars, according to the state Mahadalit Commission’s interim report. Community activists however claim the population of Musahars is not less than 3 million in Bihar. About 96.3% of them are landless and 92.5% work as farm labour. Literacy rates among this community, which upper caste Hindus still consider untouchable, is only 9.8%, the lowest among Dalits in the country.

“My elder son, who is 19 years old, is illiterate like most of others of his age in the community. But my two younger children – 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son – are going to school to study. I have a dream for them to become educated,” Balmanti of Hinduni Musahartoli told VillageSquare.

Hinduni Musahartoli is home to over 100 households but has failed to produce a graduate till date. The situation is the same in Kurkuri Musahartoli, a neighbouring village with a population of over 2,000.

Opening opportunities

Renu, a widow who works as a farm labour to feed her four children, is determined to educate them. “No doubt I am struggling for survival but I want my children to study for a better future. If my children will not study, they will be forced to work as farm labour like most Musahars,” she says. “Education will open opportunities for them.”

But Somaru Manjhi, a resident of Kurkuri Musahartoli, said none of his five children went to school. “Even today, a majority of Musahars is like me, whose children are still not going to school. This is a big hurdle for us,” said Somaru, who rears pigs.

However, a sustained effort by some Musahar households is reflected in the composition of student in the primary school near Kurkuri Musahartoli. “There are 64 Musahar children of a total of 68 children in the school. It is something not imagined even a few years ago. Musahar parents are now ensuring their children attends school. The situation is changing, Geetanjali Sinha, principal of the school, told VillageSquare.

Musahar children studying in a government primary school at Kurkuri Musahari. Credit: Mohd Imran Khan/VillageSquare

Sinha, who has been teaching in this school since 1999, said earlier there was no inclination for education among Musahar parents. “Now more than men, Musahar women have a positive mindset for education of their children.”

Ghalib Khan, deputy director of mass education department of the state government, said experts have observed that discrimination on caste lines and a strong reservation for their unhygienic lifestyle results to discouraging Musahar children to join school.

Social outcasts

Musahars, known for hunting and eating rats, are at the bottom of India’s hundreds of Dalit sub-castes, who are still treated as untouchables. Asharfi Sada, state president of Mushar Vikas Manch, said high illiteracy among Musahars is due to the fact that they have been always kept away from mainstream society. “Musahars were not only treated as untouchables but were allowed to only settle outside a village and away from the main population for ages. Even today, Musahars are outcasts of society,” said Asharfi, one of the first few Musahar to earn a postgraduate degree in 1991.

He blamed society for keeping Musahars away from the mainstream. Most Musahar children did not get an opportunity to join schools and the few who went quickly discontinued because of discrimination they faced. They also lack the environment for education in their mud huts. “To change Musahars, the government has to provide quality education to entire one generation of children to make them stand on their feet and become independent,” Asharfi told VillageSquare. “It is only possible by a special plan by the government. Private education is beyond their reach.”

Asharfi said that nearly 70 years after India’s independence, there is only one medical doctor and one PhD scholar from the community, reflecting the sorry state of education in the community.

Vijay Prakash, a former Indian Administrative Service officer, said literacy among Musahars was 2.5% in 1961, which rose to little over 9% in 2011. In the past five decades, literacy rate in the community increased to little over 6%. Going by this trend, it will take some 500 years to achieve full literacy among Musahars, he said.

Enabling environment

“The government as well as society have to join hands to come out with a different way to attract Musahar children to schools and create an atmosphere comfortable for them within its walls, keeping their lifestyle, language and environment in mind. We should encourage them by innovative ways instead of discouraging them by imposing our so-called civilised lifestyle,” said Prakash.

Vijay Prakash is running an alternative education school for Musahar children in Danapur. “After decades of working closely with Musahars, I am of the view that teachers are not encouraging Musahar children to join school. We lack sensitivity to their special needs.” He has found that creativity among poor Musahar children is better than many others. “They are very much inclined for creating jugaad (made–do) technology and handicrafts,” he said.

Philip Manthra, who has been who has been working for change through education of this community in Patna district for nearly 38 years, said Musahars need to be brought to the forefront of universal education. Manthra has founded an organisation called Manthan to create awareness, motivate and facilitate Musahar children for education.

Education-centric approach

“Education is the key for their development. Education-centric approach with skill development through special programmes by the government can make a difference. They have not given attention for centuries. Most of them are still living in huts. The government has to invest in creating shelter infrastructure to bring them in the mainstream. They need infrastructure development to create an environment of study,” Manthra told VillageSquare. “Unless there is proper environment, there is little hope for education.

Manthra recalled that in 1979,when he along with a team of 25 activists visited Jamsaut village under Danapur block in Patna district, 65 households of Musahars were living without a drop of water during summer. “When I requested for a glass of water, it took 45 minutes for them to arrange it for me from the house of a landowner in a nearby village,” he recalls. “One can imagine how they were living even without water then. Now the situation has changed with hand pumps installed by the government in most of Musahar villages.”

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has launched several special schemes for the upliftment of Musahars in the past 11 years, according to Manju Verma, the state’s minister for social welfare. “The government has set up the Mahadalit Commission for their development and appointed thousands of Tola Sewak (village volunteers) and Vikas Mitra (development assistants) from among them,” she told VillageSquare. “We are committed to bring Musahars to the mainstream.”

Mohd Imran Khan is a Patna-based journalist.

This article first appeared in VillageSquare.

In Karnataka’s Traditional Buffalo Race, Caste is Never Far Behind

Demands are growing in coastal Karnataka for the revival of kambala, the buffalo race which has feudalism stamped all over.

Kadri kambala. Credit: Flickr/Sainath KM CC 2.0

In the wake of the Tamil Nadu government’s move to first bring an ordinance allowing jallikattu and then pass a law, a social media campaign to revive kambala – the traditional buffalo race held in the costal districts of Karnataka – has begun. There is an attempt to project kambala as integral to the cultural identity of the Tulu population – the inhabitants of coastal Karnataka, especially in the Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts. The movement in favour of kambala, which is primarily a feudal relic, is seen by many people and scholars as a conspiracy to perpetuate the discriminatory caste-based social order and strengthen the cultural hegemony of the dominant sections in the area. Critics have also expressed shock over the attempts to portray kambala – which primarily upholds the dominance of one particular caste while institutionalising the subordinate status of the lower castes in the Tulu belt – as part of the cultural identity of the masses.

Kambala racing was evolved as a tradition to establish the supremacy of the Bunt caste and to provide it cultural legitimacy over the plebeians. Initially, kambala he-buffalos were owned only by the Bunts. These animals were not used for tilling and other agricultural operations. These well fed, hefty buffalos were the epitome of power and pride for the Bunts. Kambala races used to be organised as a statement of their martial supremacy. It also amplified their feudal power over the poor, tenant and the lower caste farmers. Kambala was also used to exert control over the resources and production of these ‘lesser’ communities. Tenant farmers were required to supply fodder for the kambala buffalos. Dalits and other lower caste farmers were entrusted with the work of looking after these bovines. Kambala was thus used as a medium to control the labour and resources of the lower caste farmers.

In its origin and practice, kambala is inextricably bound up with caste hierarchy and prejudice. Till recently, many inhumane practices like untouchability and the ‘Ajalu’ system used to be practised during kambala races. Since it was a prestigious sport among the social elites of several neighbouring villages, there was always the danger that the paddy fields filled with mud – used as kambala tracks – would be destroyed by opponents. That is why the people belonging to the Koraga community, a local tribe, were made to guard the fields during the night hours. This practice was known as pani kullunu. Further, the Koragas were also required to run on the fields of the kambala before the start of the actual race to ensure that there were no broken glass pieces, thorns, stones etc. on the tracks so that the bulls did not get hurt during the race. Though there have been some modifications in the form of kambala, it is still at its core a game of feudal dimensions.

If we look at the social profile of the organisers of kambala across coastal Karnataka, we will see understand feudal and the casteist nature of this sport. In Dakshina Kannada district, kambala races are organised in places like Baradi Beedu (near Karkala), Yeedu (Karkala), Miyaru (near Karkala), Aikala Bava (between Moodabidre and Mulki), Bangadi (Belathangadi), Hokkadi Goli (Bantwala), Pajiru (Bantwala), Pilikula (near Mangalore), Jappinamogaru (near Mangalore), Talapady Panjala (near Mangalore), Katapadi (Udupi), Adve, Nandikooru, Moodabidre, Mulki, Venuru, Uppinangady, Puttur and Thonse. In all these Kambala racing events, it is either the Bunts or the Jains are the organisers. But the person who runs along the buffalos and drives them, the caretakers of those buffalos and the other volunteers, generally belong to the Billava and other lower castes.

Kambala racing cannot today be considered something integral to the culture of a region riven by caste distinctions. All efforts to save and rejuvenate the sport will result in institutionalising caste-based prejudices and hierarchies.

Naveen Soorinje is a senior Bangalore-based political reporter
Translated from the Kannada original by Kavya Achut