-Rajesh
Tyagi/5.4.2016
‘Marxists
have no answer to caste question’, claims the Ambedkarite. ‘Let Marx and
Ambedkar get together then’, succumbs the Stalinist, forthwith.
Both Stalinists and Ambedkarites distort
the real issue and fail to pose the question in correct perspective, what to say of venturing upon its resolution!
Caste
question in India emerges from peculiarity of its social development, that in
turn was founded upon crude division of social labour among four varnas- Brahmin,
Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra. The hierarchy of castes has developed gradually in
the distant past, within this tightly caged system of four varnas. Through this
system, the burden of all social toil, was shifted essentially to the shoulders
of ‘Sudras’ pushed to lowest pedestal of this social ladder. Varna was strictly identified with one’s birth and in no case
could be acquired or altered by choice later.
Capitalism,
came to India, in the form of colonialism. However, colonialism itself was the irrefutable
proof of the fact that capitalism was already suffocating in the countries of
its origin in the West and was decadent. The role of capitalism in India was
not to liberate the forces of production from medieval shackles, but to simply subjugate
them to itself. Colonialists had no interest in breaking up the old social
structures in India, but to make inroads into them superimposing new social relations
wherever they were needed.
Social canvas
of the old society, knit through which is the hierarchy of castes, thus faced
no challenge from the new. On the contrary, there occurred a gradual mutual
adaptation between the old and the new.
