India must thank Manmohan for shift from caste-based to class-based society

In the Azamgarh countryside close to Kashi, marriages are facilitated by aguas, or marriage middlemen. A Dalit agua would inform the father of a prospective bride: Nobody in this boy’s family is a halwaha (ploughman for a landlord), its women don’t work for any landlord, and the family doesn’t collect leftover food from a landlord’s home. An upper-caste agua would reel off a different narrative: The family of this boy owns two-three halwahas, a dozen members of the Praja (Dalits or subjects) hang around, milk and ghee flow down the drains of his house, and so on.

 

The British called the halwahi system Indian serfdom, where a halwaha would plough his landlord’s farms, take care of his crops, even cattle, and claim a bigha of farmland as his wage. Women would sow seeds, weed the fields, harvest crops, even clean areas around the landlord’s house, and be paid separately in grains. 

In the folklore imagery, halwahas were owned by their landlords and were socially “un-free”. 

When a landlord threw a public dinner, typically on his children’s wedding or on the death of an elderly, the entire Dalit hamlet would collect leftover food the next morning. A Dalit family’s failure to turn up would be seen as a mark of defiance.

 

The halwahi ecosystem was a society of free and un-free citizens. The dhotis worn by Dalits should always be yellowish white and not more than knee length. They could not hold their head straight, and they must refrain from laughing in front of babu sahebs. They could not grow moustaches or wear pagris, and a paunchy halwaha would be publicly mocked. A Dalit woman wearing slippers would be seen as outrageous.

 

A caveat: Not all Dalits would be halwahas, as there wouldn’t be so many vacancies. In the Azamgarh countryside, upper-caste landlords would be around 15 per cent, and Dalits over 20 per cent. Some from other backward castes (OBCs), including Ahirs, would be halwahas too. A great number of Dalits were unattached labourers — free to work for any landlord, but only landlords.

Since my early youth in the mid 1970s until 2008 (let’s call the year “Devesh”, after Prof Devesh Kapur), I had witnessed what I call the halwaha civilisation, with two types of citizens — the owners and the owned. This was “caste yuga”. Barring a few school teachers, constables, railway personnel, and postal clerks, most Dalits were owned by landlords. They had lived for ages without any self-esteem. While the British categorised Dalits as “depressed classes”, Dr B R Ambedkar named his first weekly Mooknayak, or leader of the unspeaking.

 

For ages, the halwahi ecosystem had maintained a civilisation that had kept trade cashless. Land and grains were the only form of wages. Upper-caste landlords’ farmlands were the sun in the solar system of serfdom. This barter order sustained the caste order. 

Cut to circa 2005: As I was visiting Azamgarh, a Washington Apple fell on my head. I saw a Dalit migrant who had become a labour contractor. The economy was expanding, and so was the count of factories. The contractor would take Dalit youth to Faridabad and supply them to factories. I sensed a sort of “Black Death” lurking in Dalit hamlets — they were losing men to cities. 

Once at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), in fall 2007, I reported this “Black Death” to Prof Devesh Kapur (CASI director at the time), and he ordered an extensive enquiry to document this phenomenon. He studied all the 9,154 Dalit households in 178 villages in a block in Azamgarh, and another one in West Uttar Pradesh. The Azamgarh block would most surprise Devesh: A total of 4,623 young Dalits had left for cities from these 178 hamlets. That translates into 26 per hamlet on average. The study found just 105 halwahas in these hamlets, and 24 Dalits per hamlet as farm workers. 

How does that compare with the pre-reform period?

 

Devesh’s researchers sought data for 1990, which showed 2,943 Dalits in the halwahi order, or 17 halwahas per village. It also revealed a total of 6,957 Dalits (39 per village) as farm workers. The study was completed in 2008. Since Devesh was the first to detect the near-end of the halwahi civilization, or the “caste yuga”, we are calling the 2008 milestone “Devesh” after him.

 

For my just-completed book Caste by 2050, I have studied migration patterns in five Azamgarh villages. My headcount shows 160 Dalit migrants per village since 2010. Assuming a migrant sends Rs 3,000 a month back home, a Dalit hamlet receives Rs 4.8 lakh a month or about Rs 60 lakh a year. Azamgarh has 3,792 inhabited villages. At this rate, Azamgarh Dalits may be receiving Rs 2,275 crore annually. 

The colossal cash burst on Dalit hamlets has annihilated millenniums old barter order — the central nervous system of the caste ordering of the society. The end result: From 716 Dalit households in the five villages studied, only two families now associate with their ex-landlords as regular workers, and a few dozen families occasionally work for their former landlords. 

“There is a near-complete disconnection between Dalits and their landlords,” sums up Thakur Munna Singh of village Dharvara in Azamgarh. 

Dr Manmohan Singh and his reforms are to thank for this civilisational shift. 

How? Well, this is 2025, not 2050. Yet, an abrupt transformation from “caste yuga” to a “class yuga” has already started unfolding. There are no takers any longer for farmland and grains as wages. Cash defines everyday lives. The barter order has been replaced by a market system. This “class yuga” is freeing Dalits from the holds of castes. 

Ambedkar’s aim of Annihilation of Caste [1936] is no more a delusion. With the halwahi civilization buried, Dalits can now laugh, smoke publicly, wear white attire, and raise extended belly without being mocked. Dalit women can sport sandals in full public view. Freedom seems to have set in Dalit hamlets and their roadside bazaars. 

Just as the Black Death of the 14th century led to a decline of serfdom in Western Europe, Dr Manmohan Singh and his reforms must be celebrated for unleashing a “class yuga” in India. Interestingly, pro-reform economists still seem busy counting gross domestic product numbers — a task best left to just a few government officials. Isn’t the wealth of a nation more about the consequences of economic actions than the count of money? 

Helped by Dr Manmohan Singh’s actions and their consequences, India is moving from a caste-based to a class-based Society. This change is civilisational.    The author is an affiliated scholar with Mercatus Center, George Mason University, US