கால பைரவன்;93517 said:
I am not sure whether HH read this part of my post at all...
Rest assured am reading your posts on this particular thread carefully..
Reservation is meant to remove backwardness. It was not meant as a tool to enforce proportional representation.
Proportional representation is a tool to remove backwardness. If the percentage of SCs is 16%, there is no point in giving them 2% reservation or 50% reservation. The amount of seats reserved for them must be based on the extent of backwardness (that is, extent of illiteracy, etc) as well as the amount of population.
If proportional representation were the objective, why care about defining and identifying a group called OBCs? One can, as well, abolish all open quota and provide reservation to each caste based on population percentage. Only issue is that it will be unconstitutional. [The GOs that you cited earlier were stuck down precisely for this reason.]
Nope sir, the GOs i cited were not struck down for this reason. I still ask you -- who defined and bracketed groups of people as "backward"? What business did brahmins have to go to courts to allocate shudra varna to the general NB population? And why should GO orders that i cited (which brackets practically everyone into "backward") be acceptable to everyone?
According to the book "Politics and Social Conflict in South India : the non-Brahman movement and Tamil separatism, 1916-1929 " (which is actually a thesis by
Eugene Irschick of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies of UCal, Berkeley), the landowning groups in the early 20th century were
1) Vellalas in Tamil areas
2) Balija Naidus in both Tamil and Telugu areas
3) Kammas and Reddys in the Telugu areas.
Though there were brahmin landlords, the large scale landowners and erstwhile zamindaris were all non-brahmins. In factory ownership also the NBs were ahead of brahmins according to 1911 census.
The only diference was in jobs under colonial government where literacy skills mattered. In this, the brahmins strongly dominated (according to the 1921 records); and though the komatis, balijas, nairs, vellalas, found representation it was not in high numbers.
In the upper levels of administration, where high literary levels were required, brahmins ruled the roost. However though competition existed between everyone, even during this time there was no caste-based anger between the TBs and NBs.
Even from other books i find that until 1860 there was no evidence of hostility between the wealthy NBs and the TBs. But by the beginnings of 1900s hostility took root and soon became deeply divisive. Why?
Things changed, and caste-based anger surfaced - why? IMO it is canard to suggest that anti-brahminism took root because of jealousy (this has been popularized by quite a few authors). If such jealously did not exist all the way until the 1900s, why should suddenly people become angered against brahmins from around 1910 onwards and why should a movement rooted in anti-brahmanism (justice party) come to exist in 1917 ?
IMO things changed due to the penchant by a select group of TBs to allocate varnas to put people down in the social scenario. The wealthy NBs who practiced casteism themselves against 'dalits' found they were being put into the same social category as 'dalits'. This is where all the anti-brahmin anger starts imo. Hope you read the points by the colonial-period Vellalars.
If a zamindar with considerable social clout were categorized as a shudra (which actually means a slave in the dharmashastras), how would that be acceptable to him? According to JH Nelson, the term earlier was used by brahmins alone in speaking of people who lived in "low" conditions. But now in the last part of the colonial period, this term was being applied to educated and well off people. Would it not anger such people and hurt their social position?
Isn't it comical to think that a group of people were considered socially "low" just because they were considered "ritually low" ?
Sorry sir, "defining and identifying a group" as backward was not done by NBs. The issue became increasingly politicized. The wealthy NBs ended up joining hands with 'dalits' for political purposes.
Politicians began using things as a tool for self-promotion (well, i suppose people thot instead of being ashamed of being a shudra why not take advantage of it). Panagal Raja introduced caste reservations in 1921 in which 16% jobs were reserved for brahmins, 44% for non-brahmins, 16% for muslims and 16% for anglo-indians.
Do note MC Rajah resigned in protest of this, bcoz he thot dalits were not given sufficient representation. Later, EVR came on the reservations scene (after being elected as president of congress committe in 1922). Thereafter its history.
The Communal GO of 1927 provided compartmental reservation for various communities; and from there on the concept of reservations for individual communities (like specifically 'dalits') became the norm.
I feel such categorization should have been declared unconstitutional atleast in independent india..but even after india got independence the penchant of categorizing people as shudras / backward "class" continued in social life...
After independence things only got more and more politicized. Each state started their own commissions to identify "backward" people, and caste was still used as a factor to identify social backwardness. But then some like the Ngana Gowda commitee of Karnataka which based representation in government service on
(1) Social backwardness of caste wrt the hierarchial status
(2) Educational backwardness
(3) Existing proportion of representation in government service.
was stuck down because caste was used as the basis of finding backwardness. Later, factors identifying backwardness became more streamlined with various parameters being taken into account (though caste criteria does still tend to remain). What do you think is the solution for this? What can be done to eradicate caste-based reservations?
Therefore, one cannot say that the percentage of seats reserved should be equal to population percentage. The population percentage can be used as one of the factors in deciding the quantum of reservation. Extent of backwardness, I think, should be a more important factor.
Extent of backwardness and allocation of seats as per population percentage, both must matter.
Because dalits were the worst affected of the lot, they should be given the maximum opportunities. Giving them 18% reservation but taking away 50% of the seats (which are subsequently reserved for OBCs) from them is unjust. This, I see, as one of the fundamental flaws in implementation of reservation system.
Are you saying SCs must be given 50% seats though their population is just 16% ?
Political parties have cleverly manipulated the reservation scheme to benefit OBCs by creating exclusive reservation to them. If you cannot understand or appreciate this point, consider this: dalits being made ineligible to compete for the 50% seats reserved to OBCs is akin to non-FCs being made ineligible to compete for open quota seats. Can that be considered fair?
Again, it sppears you are using the term OBC to refer to shudras (if not, please make yourself clearer). Because there is nothing called OBC in Tamilnadu. As already mentioned in
post 28, there are 69% reserved seats, and this is distributed as BC 30%, MBC 20%, SC 18% (in which 3% is reserved exclusively for the Arundhathiyars -- and this proportion takes their population size into account as well) and ST 1%.
On what basis do you claim dalits are being made ineligible to compete for 50% seats allocated for OBCs (which OBCs in which state) ?
If the caste system is considered hierarchical, so should the remedy be. Apart from a percentage of seats reserved to them, the dalits should be eligible for competing for all the rest of the seats. The MBCs should be kept only out of seats reserved for dalits - so on and so forth. That would be a fair system. Is this system workable in TN? I do not think so. The OBCs will oppose it tooth and nail, because it eats into their opportunities. That is why I consider it hypocritical for them to be critical of those FCs, who oppose reservation.
So dalits should be made eligible for competing for the rest of the seats? Nice suggestion. But it will not be acceptable to communities who are no better off than the dalits wrt to literacy and economic conditions. This includes a so-called high caste like kallars who are abjectly poor in places like interior thanjavur, and those who come under "denotified communities":
LIST OF BACKWARD CLASSES APPROVED
IMO it will be more feasible to remove creamy layer subject to some conditions (like annual family income, existing education level in the family, etc).
Regards.
, and get their children admitted to prestigious engineering colleges with low fee payments, how do we expect things to be set right? Such people are very, very influential and they have good contacts at all the levels of the govt. machinery and can get anything done without actually making any payment of bribes (I wonder if the JLP Act will punish such "discretionary" decisions.) that 
