Hugo Corringe
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
In February 2023, Seattle City Council amended the anti-discrimination legislative protections in employment, public places, housing, and contracting to include caste as a protected category. In March 2023, the Toronto District School Board, the largest in Canada, moved to ban caste discrimination. In the United Kingdom (U.K.), meanwhile, the government has pulled back from its commitment to include caste inequalities legislation. Those wishing to undertand the processes underpinning the attempts to legislate against caste around the world, and the opposition they encounter, would do well toread Annapurna Waughray’s informative book Capturing Caste in Law :The Legal Regulation of Caste Discrimination. For those, like me, who may be daunted by the prospect of wading through a legal treatise, rest assured that this is very accessible and engagingly written. Moreover, it is not confined to law, but pulls together the insights of law, social sciences, genetics, and history among other disciplines.
Caste and the Prism of Law
The book looks at caste through the prism of law and is comprised of three parts. The first part deals with the definition and origins of caste before detailing how it is practised and legislated against in India. The second deals with international conventions and human rights law, and the third focuses on the debates around caste discrimination in British law. One of the central arguments is that caste persists, it travels, and it adapts or evolves to new scenarios, and the book makes a compelling case to subject all claims of castelessness to critical scrutiny. This is all the more important as Waughray documents the systematic way in which Hindu lobby groups now seek to defend caste as “culture,” and to deny that any discrimination exists or existed in ancient Hinduism. Anti-caste activists are portrayed as Christian stooges, or as suffering from colonial mindsets, and attempts to legislate against caste in the West are equated to neocolonial attempts to besmirch Hinduism. In this context, the book’s detailed account of the historical emergence of caste is a timely corrective. Caste was undoubtedly shaped by colonial rule – as was every aspect of society in the colonies – but it was not invented from scratch.
Another myth that is contested is that independent India has succeeded in riding itself of the curse of untouchability through progressive legislation. The legislation documented here is certainly progressive, but the laws are often observed more in the breach than its’ practice. Indeed, the multiple attempts to revise and strengthen legislations against untouchability highlight its persistence. This much will, I suspect, be very familiar to readers of the EPW already, but the information is collated in a clear, coherent, and interesting manner and offers a well evidenced primer on caste. What may be less widelyrecognised is that despite the promises of the Constitution, India lacks a comprehensive,multiground, anti-discrimination legislation, of the kind proposed by the Member of Parliament ShashiTharoor in 2017. The book suggests the adoption of such legislation before turning to developments beyond India.
Faced with the persistence of caste abuses, it has often fallen to Dalit activists to raise the issue in national and international fora. Since the late 1990s, they have sought to harness and shape international laws and conventions to address the menace of caste. The book details the effects of transnational advocacy in this field, noting how caste has come to be incorporated into several documents under the rubric of work and descent. Although the Indian government consistently refuses to see caste as anything other than a domestic issue, Dalit campaigning has succeeded in bringing international attention to this problem. Readers will doubtless be familiar with the story of how Dalit activists took the World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 by storm, and succeeded in placing caste firmly on the international agenda. The book details the legal changes and conventions that have emerged in subsequent years.
Externalising and Domesticating Caste
If Dalits in India have sought to externalise the issue of caste by raising it in international for a, those in the diaspora have sought to domesticate caste discrimination by pressing for it to be incorporated into national legislation around the world. While developments in the United States (US) and Canada are currently setting the pace, the book offers a detailed account of the debates around the Equalities Act in the UK around 2010. In my observation, the volume holds more significance than just being a law book, as it provides context to the discussions and procedures involved. In cases both at the international and domestic levels, I am impressed by the significance of activism in bringing caste-related issues to the forefront, advocating for reforms, collecting evidence, and keeping a check on institutional performance. There is an implicit message for all of us here – that we should continue to call out caste abuses, hold governments and institutions to account, and resist the narratives ofcastelessness. Legislation, no matter how progressive, achieves little on its own. That said, a second strand running through the book is on the social significance of legislation – it raises awareness, shines a light on particular forms of discrimination, highlights the need for action, and helps to shift norms.
Concluding Remarks
In sum, the book offers an introduction to, or refresher on, caste and details the legislation designed to address caste discrimination in India, the international arena, and the UK. In closing, however, the book raises the provocative question of whether the problem to be addressed is caste discrimination or caste – and caste identity – per se. This echoes a concern from the opponents of the legislation; that such efforts would end up impinging on people’s ways of life. Given that caste is all about opportunity hoarding, this raises the question of whether legislation against caste discrimination can never resolve the structural inequalities associated with caste. If, as Ambedkar suggested, you cannot have caste withoutcasteism, then perhaps our efforts would be better directed towards the annihilation of caste. In the meanwhile, this volume is highly recommended as an informed, detailed and informative overview of key issues and debates animating contemporary legislations around caste.
Excerpts from Economic and Political Weekly
