Share this story!            

analysis: Caste in the agrarian social system —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

It is generally the feudal political culture that has sustained oppression and discrimination against the lower castes

What determines political affiliations and capacity to participate in any political action or articulate local, community interests? The answer — maybe tentative — is position in the social system, at least in the agrarian society that we have. There is a deep-seated social hierarchy and ranking of all castes. There are privileged and under-privileged or higher or lower castes. The lower castes are not well equipped to participate. And they are not sensitised to their citizenship rights, or even granted opportunities to move out of the old social relationships. The lower castes are a true subject of our feudal culture, completely devoid of their essential humanity.

The conception of civil and political rights is alien to the millions of lower caste individuals, families and groups. Under social oppression for who knows how long in the old world of the Indus, they have grown fatalistic about their fate, living conditions and low status conferred upon them by other social layers above them. They carry a heavy social burden of a lot of conforming to a standard of behaviour that the feudal lords imposed on their forefathers. We have seen remarkable social and economic mobility among the lower castes but only in cases when they had the gifts of modern education and professions. The lives of those who are stuck up in the rural environment and dependent on their traditional professions have not changed much.

Democracy, human rights, equality and civil liberties are as alien notions to the lower castes as they are to their lords. Most of them are just pushed to polling stations on election day to cast their votes by the local lords. Free will and self-determination, the well-known principles of democracy, are idealistic propositions in the traditional, caste and class-based society of Pakistan.

Caste differentiation, though not the same as in India, remains strong as a social marker. The lower castes of Pakistan have many groupings. The first category consists of those who are engaged in hereditary menial professions like shoemaking, carpentry, hairdressing, pottery, and weaving. Salient but less recognised in the lower castes are working on agricultural farms and in the households of major landowners. They are not wage earners, but get some grain at the end of each crop and very little cash for clothing and other necessities. They survive mainly as semi-slave dependents of the feudal lords. In the agriculture sector, there is also the pervasive phenomenon of bonded labour, with entire families working to pay back the loans they took to either feed themselves or procured for social or other reasons. Household servants both in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan are a much understudied and under-observed social category.

The question of the political rights of these castes and social groups is very important. Their dependent economic and social status makes them just a political appendage of the lords that they serve. They cannot think of any other political opinion or exercise a choice different from the lord. It was only during the populist era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, though himself a feudal lord, that the lower classes had their first awakening through his mobilisatory politics. He gave them a sense of dignity, pride, and a feeling of worth. They defied their lords for the first time in the 1970 elections to vote for the candidates of Bhutto’s party. His populist appeal, charisma and style of politics stirred an electoral revolt of the oppressed against their masters. That spirit and sense of freedom among the lower castes and classes did not last very long after the elimination of the founder of the people’s struggle in Pakistani politics.

The discrimination against the lower castes is deeply rooted in society and takes place at an informal level. Along with economic bondage is the fear of the state agencies like the police that their masters and lords use to keep them in servitude. Even a slight sign of rebellion is suppressed with the most severe punishment, which may take many forms, stealing of animals, theft, registration of false case in police stations, harassment by the lord’s tough guys, and in more severe cases, abduction of women. Illegal confinement and even jailing of lower castes in the private jails that still exist in the interior of Sindh and Balochistan is not too uncommon. Their unconditional social and political obedience is a condition for social and economic survival where the state laws and institutions are too weak to protect them.

Political liberty and exercise of free will in elections, let alone contesting elections, would be an unrealistic expectation from the lower castes in the feudal agrarian conditions of Pakistan.

Even with the harsh and oppressive environment in which the lower castes are kept, their masters have not earned their trust. Rather, they are always suspect for doing something different from what is expected. To make sure they would turn up for casting their votes, they are hauled early in the morning to the polling stations with families and minors. They remain under close vigil by the workers of the lords until they have cast their votes and departed back to their villages. Let me say this on the basis of my own observation and many reports that most of them vote due to fear and intimidation rather than exercise a real choice.

Quite often elections put the lower castes in a real dilemma when they are caught between many influential local rivals. They essentially make a choice between more harmful and less harmful and tend to vote for the one who might have greater capacity to do evil to them in case of their disobedience. They do not have effective legal remedies, local institutions to protect them, or independent economic means to move away to better places.

Physical movement and relocation is a part of economic and social mobility. There is a visible trend in the lower castes among others to move to major towns and industrial cities for better economic opportunities. Many families that have done so have shown others the way. A real transformation, however, has yet to take place, and that would depend on how the economy of the country performs in the coming years. That is the only way to end discrimination in the rural setting of a village.

Even the dominant castes in terms of numbers resort to feudal means of intimidation, physical abuse and trapping the innocent members of the lower castes in civil and criminal cases. Theft of property and animals are the weapons of choice in Punjab and Sindh. The land ownership pattern in Southern Punjab and Sindh, where big landowners also represent a particular tribe or caste, allows discrimination in all forms to be widely practiced.

In our view, it is generally the feudal political culture that has sustained oppression and discrimination against the lower castes. Will this change? My contention is that until the quality of democratic governance improves, the political and social conditions of the feudal age would continue to determine class and caste relations in our society. But once democracy and rule of law become consistent functional political patterns, a new political culture of equal rights would emerge that would provide for political space and institutional remedies to lower caste groups against discrimination and exploitation.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of “Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan” (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

Home | Editorial

Share this story!