Subramaniyam Shankar on America's caste problem

Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents seems set to change popular discourse re. Race in America. But, will it lead to criticism of the 'creamy layer' which has benefited from affirmative action? After all, Obama was a two term President. What did he do to improve things for African Americans?

Two years ago, Prof. Subramaniyan Shankar wrote an article titled 'Does America have a Caste system'? for 'The Conversation'. 

Before looking at that article, let us consider for a moment what would be involved in accepting 'Caste' as a factor in American social life. I think, it would mean abandoning 'one drop' rules. Thus affirmative action would be graded according to degree of racial admixture. On top of that, a distinction would be made between 'Educationally Forward' and 'Educationally Backward' castes. In other words, as happens in India, the 'creamy layer' would be excluded from the benefits of affirmative action. Furthermore, different 'dominant' groups would compete for 'Quotas' on the grounds that they were historically disadvantaged for geographical and historical reasons. The 'hillbilly' and the 'redneck' and the 'Okie' , as well as various ethnicities, may be able to document a history of relative deprivation. Rural populations, perhaps by reason of having more weightage in the Electoral College may be able to get European style support for the small farmer to level the playing field with Multi National agribusiness.

Would this be a good thing? Arguably it would reverse the 'hollowing out of the middle class' and combat 'despair deaths'. On the other hand, it may reduce economic dynamism while fuelling internecine conflict.

Is there a better way forward? Yes. Instead of relying on kinship or religious networks, we are better off paying for 'risk pooling'- i.e. insurance against relevant risks. This type of insurance must be 'incentive compatible' i.e. not feature moral hazard. However, wealthy countries can also afford compulsory insurance to provide a 'social minimum'. Interestingly, India is moving to 'last mile delivery' of a social minimum and this has been an important factor in the decline of casteism. Advanced countries should pursue 'Tiebout sorting' so that neighborhoods capitalize on their human capital endowment and public services are tailored to community needs. Mimetic effects then raise value added within communities.

Prof. Shankar takes a different view-

In the United States, inequality tends to be framed as an issue of either class, race or both.

Yet, inequality is wholly economic.

Consider, for example, criticism that Republicans’ new tax plan is a weapon of “class warfare,” or accusations that the recent U.S. government shutdown was racist.

In both cases, people of a particular class or race were hit harder in their pocket-book.

As an India-born novelist and scholar who teaches in the United States, I have come to see America’s stratified society through a different lens: caste.

Surely, this reflects a failure to assimilate? Even in India, Caste is less and less useful as a political instrument.

Many Americans would be appalled to think that anything like caste could exist in a country allegedly founded on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. After all, India’s atrocious caste system determines social status by birth, compels marriage within a community and restricts job opportunity.

India adopted affirmative action much before the USA. It never had laws re. miscegenation. But, India is much poorer than America. Thus there is much less occupational mobility. It is poverty, not 'the caste system' which restricts life-chances. African Americans faced much worse statutory discrimination than any Indian, yet their 'talented tenth' got ahead simply through hard work and the pursuit of excellence. But, they faced much harsher obstacles. Compare Asa Philip Randolph's uphill struggle to Unionize African Americans with the relative success of Dalit Labor leaders like R.B More. Indeed, the 'trade union' aspect of caste, meant that all Indians had access to some countervailing power against the powerful in a manner which was anathema to the 'Gilded Age'  Plutocrats and their Pinkertons. As a case in point, consider what happened when the Tatas brought in an American to run their Jamshedpur plant. Even the British officials were appalled by the strong arm tactics- and open racism- of the American. Interestingly, a young Parsi with a Metallurgy degree from Pittsburgh grew so revolted by the bullying and racism of the European staff that he quit the Tatas and set up an independent Union. Unusually, he was jailed on trumped up charges but after Independence he was favored by the Government. My point is that America was much more hostile to organized Labor than India even under the British. No doubt, America changed in that respect but it seems to be going back to its bad old ways. This is the central question for America's 'disenfranchised'. Hopefully, Biden will offer a comprehensive 'New Deal' everyone can get behind. The last thing we need is talk of 'caste' or 'intersectionality' so as to divide the productive classes and render them politically null.

Indeed, it is foolish to see the problems of a very rich country through the lens of the problems of a very very poor country where only 15 million, out of a population of 1.3 billion, earn enough money to pay Income tax.

But is the U.S. really so different?

Yes. It is very very much richer.

What is caste?
I first realized that caste could shed a new light on American inequality in 2016, when I was scholar-in-residence at the Center for Critical Race Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown.
There, I found that my public presentations on caste resonated deeply with students, who were largely working-class, black and Latino.

The word 'Caste' is from Portuguese and Spanish. Moreover, within Black communities, there was an informal caste system based on degree of miscegenation. But much of the USA went in for a rigid 'one drop' rule. If you could 'pass', you had to cut yourself off from your family or else risk being 'outed'. If you had married a White spouse, that marriage would be dissolved and you could be sent to jail. Caste as a sociological phenomena does have a reality for the lived experience of certain ethnicities. Even among the Jews, there was a concern not to look 'Jewy'. The ubiquity of the 'nose-job' and the concern not to have 'frizzy' hair reflect this social pathology. On the other hand, for the dominant population- 70 percent, by some counts- there is no Caste. There are Whites, there are Blacks, and there are hyphenated Americans of various more or less acceptable sorts.

I believe that’s because two key characteristics differentiate caste from race and class.
First, caste cannot be transcended.

The opposite is the case. Caste, like Class, is transcended through hypergamy and wealth based 'cultural assimilation'. This is what happened in Europe. The bourgeoisie aped the manners of the Aristocracy, married their daughters to bankrupt Noblemen, and- where possible- bought themselves a title. In India, the process was more direct. Your family adopted Vegetarianism and paid Brahman priests to induct you into a higher 'Varna'. More recently, even the need for this was dropped. If your Dad is an IAS officer or your Uncle is a Minister, your caste goes up.

Unlike class, people of the “low” Mahar caste cannot educate or earn their way out of being Mahar.

Nonsense! Look at Dr. Devayani Khobargarde. Her dad was an IAS officer. She is a diplomat. Her husband's name is Rathore- a very Aristocratic surname indeed. This is a case of assortative mating of a type common on elite Ivy League campuses. It is ridiculous to suggest that Rathores look down on Mahars of her breeding. In any case, Mahars were a martial caste and valor equalizes all warriors.

Dr. Ambedkar, also a Mahar, was sent to America and England to get Doctorates and was appointed Military Secretary by the Ruler of Baroda. Unfortunately, the clerks in the Administration feared this 'new broom' and successfully boycotted Amebdkar who then went on to rise high in pre-Independence India. Later he was a member of the Cabinet and helped draft the Constitution. Finally, he became a 'Boddhisattva' popularizing a new type of Buddhist Religion.

No matter how elite their college or how lucrative their careers, those born into a low caste remain stigmatized for life.

The only 'high caste' who molested a Mahar, was the American Preet Bharara who subjected Devyani to a humiliating strip-search. But it was some stupid White Diplomatic Protection officer- i.e. a jumped up security guard- who had laid this devilish plan to falsely accuse a 'Mahar' of 'enslaving' a high caste Christian.

Caste is also always hierarchical: As long as it exists, so does the division of people into “high” and “low.”

This quite false. Many religious sects are endogamous and thus 'caste-like'. But they don't fit into a hierarchy. Thus in North London, you have Gujerati merchant castes living cheek by jowl with Orthodox Jewish castes. One is not higher than the other. As they do business together, they become friendly to each other.

That distinguishes it from race, in that people in a caste system cannot dream of equality.

Why not? Who cares whether their neighbor is or isn't practicing endogamy? One reason the Gujerati and the Haredi get along so well is that neither suspects the other's daughter of making eyes at their son, or vice versa. At the top end of the scale there are inter-faith marriages and, it may be, this also happens at the bottom end. But these are exceptions to the rule. Neither side thinks the other is plotting to improve their own status by inter-marriage.

Equality of opportunity, in a Market economy, depends on being able to access Investment Capital and getting Credit on equal terms. Endogamous social units are particularly good at this. Indeed, this was a feature of European modernization. People belonging to a particular sect would help each other and pool savings. Look at the Quakers- poor agricultural laborers in the main- who over the span of a couple of Centuries became plutocrats on a global scale. Endogamy was strictly insisted on by these upwardly mobile septs. Tolkein's widowed Mum, for some reason decided to become Catholic. Her family immediately cut her off without a penny. Thankfully, a Catholic priest was able to see to the boys education and so they were able to take their place in the world.

Ambedkar's plan for his community had to do with their first adopting a prestigious type of worship and then getting ahead through Education, Government employment, till they were in a position to emulate the Chamar millionaires of Kanpur and grow rich through the Market. This is the only recipe to get ahead. Consider the Patels. At one time they were considered lower than the Kunbis (the Gaekwad was of Kunbi origin) whose land they took on lease. Now the Patels bow their head to nobody- though they have still gained a small amount of affirmative action simply as a matter of muscle flexing rather than because they are desperately in need.
Consider the Netflix film 'Meet the Patels'. It makes it clear that a Patel can pick a bride from anywhere for Marriage. Why? This agricultural caste has succeeded in every field, not just in India, but across the globe.

It’s significant that the great mid-20th-century Indian reformer B. R. Ambedkar called not for learning to “live together as brothers and sisters,” as Martin Luther King Jr. did, but for the very “annihilation of caste.”

Ambedkar succeeded in annihilating noxious practices. Though he himself married a Brahmin Doctor, he did not advocate giving up endogamy for Mahars because he understood that as a kinship network, it should pool resources for economic, educational, and socio-political ends. Ambedkar was also a religious reformer concerned with giving his people the most progressive and prestigious form of Religion so as to establish them firmly as a Social Vanguard in India's ascent from bondage.

Caste, in other words, is societal difference made timeless, inevitable and cureless.

Nonsense! Europe had a Caste system- indeed, in parts of France and Spain, there was a type of 'Untouchability'- but that withered away with the ending of serfdom and the increasing economic power of the 'burghers' in the Cities.
In England, at one time, the English were a despised caste. 'Presentment of Englishry' meant that if the 'Crowner' could prove that a particular corpse was English, not Norman, then no further investigation needed to be performed. The Law was not concerned with protecting mere two-legged cattle.

Caste says to its subjects, “You all are different and unequal and fated to remain so.”

If so, why talk about it? Why try to import it into America? India has Caste. It is a shit-hole. If you've managed to get to America, why try to import that nonsense into a wealthy country overflowing with milk and honey?

Neither race nor class nor race and class combined can so efficiently encapsulate the kind of of social hierarchy, prejudice and inequality that marginalized Americans experience.

There is only one thing which encapsulates all the problems of 'marginalized Americans'. It is a lamentable lack of millions of dollars in the Bank.

Babasaheb Ambedkar fought for the ‘annihilation of caste’ believing that social equality could never exist within a caste system.

If Ambedkar wanted to annihilate caste, why did he get affirmative action for 'scheduled castes'? Why do Dalit parties want this to be perpetuated? The answer is that the scheme puts money in the pockets of some Dalits. Money is the great equalizer.

Is America casteist?
In Houston, that sense of profound exclusion emerged in most post-presentation discussions about caste.

Why? Because this guy teaches a worthless subject. Had he been showing them how to create and market an I-phone app so as to become millionaires there would have been a profound sense of inclusion, not exclusion, among his young audience. The problem with teaching Grievance Studies is that all you feed is Grievance. You destroy optimism. You destroy life-chances. Why do kids listen to some guy from a shit-hole country telling them America is bound to become a shit-hole? I think, it is because they are too well-bred for their own good.

As children, the students there noted, they had grown up in segregated urban neighborhoods – geographic exclusion that, I would add, was federal policy for most of the 20th century.

Why did they grow up in such neighborhoods? Chances are, because their parents could not afford to move. So the real problem here is money, not 'Caste'.

Many took on unpayable student loan debt for college,

Why were the loans 'unpayable'? Because the instruction was crap.

then struggled to stay in school while juggling work and family pressures, often without a support system.

This is also true of young people doing worthwhile courses. The solution is not far to seek. Get rid of shite courses and concentrate resources on those who are learning useful stuff.

Several students also contrasted their cramped downtown campus – with its parking problems, limited dining options and lack of after-hours cultural life – with the university’s swankier main digs.

These students have admirable spirit. Why can't the University teach them useful stuff?

Others would point out the jail across from the University of Houston-Downtown with bleak humor, invoking the school-to-prison pipeline.

So, these are smart kids. They have their wits about them. Thanks to them, no magical caste system will take root in America. It can fuck off back to India- except the Indians don't want it either.

Both the faculty and the students knew the power of social networks that are essential to professional success. Yet even with a college degree, evidence shows, Americans who grow up poor are almost guaranteed to earn less.

If the degree is crap, yes, that is indeed the case.

For many who’ve heard me speak – not just in Houston but also across the country at book readings for my 2017 novel, “Ghost in the Tamarind” – the restrictions imposed by India’s caste system recall the massive resistance they’ve experienced in trying to get ahead.

What actually happened in the Tamil Nadu, Prof. Shankar wrote about? The Anti-Brahmin movement triumphed by the Sixties. Sadly, the dominant castes continued to harass their Dalit labourers. This shows that Money mattered, Caste did not. The Brahmins were bullied and cowed. Yet, the Dalits at the bottom had it worse, not better. Only by geographical and social mobility could they get ahead. Incidentally, the Far Left proved even more lethal to the Dalits than the majoritarian Anti Brahminism of the dominant castes.

They have relayed to me, with compelling emotional force, their conviction that America is casteist.

They had no knowledge of casteism, more particularly 'Untouchability' and 'madi' rules of purity. They did not have power to assent to an untruth- viz. that in America, high caste people must have a bath after touching a low caste person. It would be unthinkable for a White person to have a Black cook or Hispanic maid.

India did have this type of craziness because of a primitive type of 'pathogen avoidance theory'. As medical science advanced, India started to get rid of the roots of this type of thinking. But India is very very poor. You can find all sorts of superstitions alive and well in the boondocks. By contrast, America is rich and educated. It is sheer stupidity to pretend that it has the same problems as backward parts of India.

Caste in the US and India
This notion is not unprecedented.
In the mid-20th century, the American anthropologist Gerald Berreman returned home from fieldwork in India as the civil rights movement was getting underway. His 1960 essay, “Caste in India and the United States,” concluded that towns in the Jim Crow South bore enough similarity to the North Indian villages he had studied to consider that they had a caste society.

Berreman deserves some praise for exposing the Cold War agenda of American Social Science- things like Project Camelot. Like Galbraith, he was alerting the Ivy League elite to the plight of poor rural folk in the Appalachians and the Deep South thus laying the foundations for Johnson's 'Great Society' reforms. However, like the Myrdals, Berreman did not have an Economic theory of what he observed. Ackerloff made a start in this direction- his Nobel speech reveals that his study of Caste helped him formulate 'efficiency wage' theory- but, to be frank, nobody has bothered to come up with a proper theory of Caste. Why? The thing is idiographic, not nomothetic. Anyway, studying Social Anthropology is a one way ticket to cretinism.

Granted, 2018 is not 1960, and the contemporary United States is not the segregated South. And to be fair, caste in India isn’t what it used to be, either. Since 1950, when the Constitution of newly independent India made caste discrimination illegal, some of the system’s most monstrous ritual elements have weakened.

What caused these changes? The answer is that Economic forces reshaped both countries for exigent reasons. America had to make its workforce more productive or risk losing the Cold War. India had to feed itself after Johnson made food aid conditional on support for the Vietnam War. In both countries, power shifted away from elites to Kaleckian 'intermediate' classes. In India, this meant Berreman's chum, the poet Ved Prakash Vatuk, lived to see his brother's pal, Charan Singh, become Prime Minister.

But that shift to 'intermediate' classes seems to be running out of steam. Both India and the US face a nightmare of social exclusion for smart, decent, young people whose life-chances have been destroyed by a Credentialized Ponzi scheme of a Higher Education racket.

The stigma of untouchability – the idea that physical contact with someone of lower caste can be polluting – for example, is fading. Today, those deemed “low caste” can sometimes achieve significant power. Indian President Ram Nath Kovind is a Dalit, a group formerly known as “untouchable.”

But Jagjivan Ram could have become P.M in the mid Seventies. K.R Narayanan, after a career in Diplomacy, became President in 1997. More significantly, Mayawati first became Chief Minister of the biggest Province in India in 1995.

Still, caste in India remains a powerful form of social organization. It segments Indian society into marital, familial, social, political and economic networks that are enormously consequential for success. And for a variety of practical and emotional reasons, these networks have proven surprisingly resistant to change.

The way forward is to work with existing endogamous communities to ensure they can mobilize resources to come forward under open markets. This means cultivating an entrepreneurial ethos rather than pursuing 'Grievance Studies'.

Casteist ideologies in America
At bottom, caste’s most defining feature is its ability to render inevitable a rigid and pervasive hierarchical system of inclusion and exclusion.

Caste does not have this magic power. Suppose it did. Then every country would try to introduce a Caste system so as to preserve the existing gap between 'Haves' and 'Have nots'.
By contrast, there have always been some nutters who say that the only way to bring about Equality is by abducting and raping women of the higher social class. This was actually tried in Zanzibar. The experiment did not turn out well.

What working-class Americans and people of color have viscerally recognized, in my experience, is that casteist ideologies – theories that produce a social hierarchy and then freeze it for time immemorial – also permeate their world.

If so 'working-class Americans' are as stupid as shit. They have given themselves an excuse to quit their jobs and shack up in a crack-house.

Take, for example, the controversial 1994 “The Bell Curve” thesis, which held that African-Americans and poor people have a lower IQ, thus linking American inequality to genetic difference.

This wasn't 'controversial'. It was plain wrong. On the other hand, with current methods, it is impossible to establish any meaningful result in this connection.

More recently, the white nationalist Richard Spencer has articulated a vision of white identity marked, caste-like, by timelessness and hierarchy.
“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created unequal,’” he wrote in a July 2017 essay for an alt-right website. “In the wake of the old world, this will be our proposition.”

That's what happens when you take a guy with a room temperature I.Q and send him to fancy Liberal Arts Schools. The wonder is, he hasn't tried to bite his own head off.

Add to these ideological currents the evidence on the race gap in higher education, stagnant upward mobility and rising inequality, and the truth is damning. Five decades after the civil rights movement, American society remains hierarchical, exclusionary and stubbornly resistant to change.

In other words, America remains America. Only by imposing Caste on American Social Geography can America hope to turn into a shit-hole like India.

Caste gives Americans a way to articulate their sense of persistent marginalization.

So as to catch up with India on all relevant socio-economic indicators of well-being.

And by virtue of being apparently foreign – it comes from India, after all – it usefully complicates the dominant American Dream narrative.

Cool! Now a White guy can get to sue another White guy for caste discrimination on the grounds that the latter is a 'Boston Brahmin' while the former is a 'pariah' just coz he married his sister-mommy.

The U.S. has a class problem. It has a race problem. And it may just have a caste problem, too.

Why stop there? Why not add that the US has a problem with suttee (burning of widows) and thugee (strangulation of travellers) and everybody committing seppuku (slicing open their bowels) all over the place. America must listen to stupid Professors from shithole countries. Otherwise Witch Doctors will roam a land already overrun by Nazis and Fascists and the Spanish Inquisition.