'The Age of OBCs in Indian Literatures'? Rethinking Indian Literatures and the Question of Caste Identity

The study of relationship between caste and literature in India has primarily been dominated by the Dalit Studies, which justifiably  interrogates the ' Sawarna-Upper Caste' hegemony in literary and cultural studies from the Ambedkarite position. Statistically speaking the Dalits, ( the former ' untouchables') who are usually categorized as ' Scheduled Castes' ( SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) by the constitution of India, form roughly 30% of Indian population as per 2011 census. Approximately 40 % of population in India comprises of a multitude of castes and communities classified as ' Other Backward Classes' or 'OBC'.  The Wikipedia graph about the OBC is informative.

Friends of South Asia or FOSA has put together a website Friendsofsouthasia.org which provides  useful information about this social category. It notes, " The OBCs comprise, by and large, the lower rungs of the Sudras who, in the past, suffered from varying degrees of ritual prohibitions applied to the a-dvijas (literally, those not twice-born) and remain till today socially and occupationally disadvantaged". It also notes, " "OBCs, by profession, being small cultivators, agricultural laborers, artisans and also being engaged in weaving, fishing, construction work, etc. and these occupations being common to SCs and OBCs, the status of OBCs cannot be treated as very much different from that of SCs ....OBCs constitute a majority of poor and backward population which produced a variety of goods and services, but on terms and conditions unfair to them."

However, in the study of sociology of Indian literature, the category of ' OBC' has not received the importance it deserves. One of the most significant statements comes from a renowned Marathi writer Vilas Sarang (1942-). In his provocative essay, " Marathi Sahityatil OBC Yug' ( in the magazine ' Khel' vol. 7, 2007) he attempts to theorize the relationship between this societal category and the poetics practiced by these writers in terms of the questions of identity. The essay is later anthologized as ' Marathi Vangmaiyatil Madhyamvarniya Yug' in his collection of essays Vangmaiyeen Sauskruti ani Samajik Vastav (2011).  

Sarang points out that this mass of ' Other Backward Classes'  is a heterogeneous and scattered one. It lacks any ' face of it's own'.  Historically, the modernist poets of the nineteen forties and the fifties in Marathi like BS Mardhekar or Vinda Karandikar were from the upper-castes. After the sixties, the Dalits and OBCs started making in-roads into Marathi literary world. While the Dalits were aggressive and assertive, the OBC writers were very often on the ' middle grounds'. Sarang points out that Bhalchandra Nemade, a major OBC writer of this period, failed to provide leadership as he remained closer to the identarian politics of ' grameen' writing and 'sub-culture' ( pot-sauskruti) politics.  As the time proceeds, the ' grameen (rural) literature' will give way to the category of ' OBC' literature, Sarang notes. In short, great shift in literary values is under way. 

Sarang remarks that in terms of literary practice, it did not have a poetics of its own. It often used the brahminical upper caste aesthetics, or used the Modernist idiom, or used the Dalit poetics or often followed the poetics of' grameen' or ' rural' literature. After 1980, Sarang argues, however the situation changed and the OBC writers started asserting themselves in poetry. Their preferred mode was 'realism' which gave rise to ' realistic  and unadorned poetry in Marathi.' They could not identify with the poetic idiom of the poetry of earlier generation be it conventional-romantic one or be it modernist one. It seems the OBCs' search for their own identity, their own face and their own voice will be critical for Indian cultural scenario.

Sarang's conceptualization, irrespective of its accuracy, is fascinating and has far-reaching implications for literary studies in India. It is interesting how he changed the title of his essay from ' OBC' Yug (2007) to ' Madhyam Varniya' ( of Middle Varna) in his collection in 2011, probably to avoid controversy. However, some questions need to probed further. For instance, why did the OBCs stay away from Dalit politics and poetics? What was the impact of the Mandal Commission implementation and the rise of OBCs as a force in Indian politics on the way Indian literature was read and written? What is the impact of  the swing of the OBCs towards the erstwhile upper caste party BJP ( see the statistics from the Hindu given below) on cultural politics of India, especially, the identarian ones? Specifically, with the OBC as a Prime Minister who has a thumping support from the upper-castes as well, what will be the trajectory of OBC identity politics in India? 

As the Friends of South Asia website tells us, the OBC is a dynamic category. What we need today is more contemporary sociological framework in the study of Indian literature to explain this dynamics and I don't think we are anywhere near to deal with this. 

The End of Higher Education in `Swarnim Gujarat'

In an unprecedented move, the Govt of Gujarat has decided to implement the Sixth Pay Commission pay scale instead of the University Grants Commission( UGC) Recommended Pay Scale to the university and college teachers. This means that their salaries will be at par with bureaucrats and govt officials. In no other states has the state government flouted the UGC norms so openly and with such impunity. The move can seen as a strategic back door implementation of what is known as Common University Act, an Act apparently made to bring about uniformity in Higher Education but also to reduce `burden of higher education' by promoting privatization and commercialization of higher education. The whole game is to encourage ` Self- Finance' educational institutes and contract based appointments of the teachers and discourage granted and subsidized education. Not that anything is grievously wrong with the concept, but the problem lies in the way it is implemented. The way the State Govt took teachers for granted and penalized them is outright unjust. No other state in the country seems to follow this ` Gujarat Model'.

The roots of problem in Gujarat do not just lie in the present economic situation, but also in the politics of Mr Narendra Modi and his admirers. One of the smartest manipulators of media, Mr Modi knows that he will get admiration even if he is demonized by media and his detractors and so he uses his media generated persona to float ` airs' of various sorts. Swarnim Gujarat is one such brain child. Swarnim Gujarat or Golden Gujarat has succeeded in creating a belief that all is well in the state of Gujarat and not just that this is the Golden Period.

Gullibility is one fundamental trait on which politics all over the world survives and thrives. Gujarat is no exception. Teachers and intellectuals probably are the most gullible people in the country today. Family members of the people who died drinking illicit liquor in Ahmedabad and the family members of children killed by Tantriks in the Asharam Bapu Ashram know that there is no such thing like Swarnim Gujarat . Neither do the family members of people killed in the Post Godhra riots and various minorities buy the idea of Golden Gujarat. It is not just that insignificant and ideologically impotent political party called ` Congress' which dislikes the state under Mr Modi, it is also a fairly large number of people in the BJP who hate Modi and his coterie. With the present decision of the Govt, Mr Modi might probably lose many of his admirers among teachers and he doesn't care about it. For, as long as you have the media,you don't need any other propaganda machinery.

The best part of this crisis is it provides the much needed ` reality check' to those who live out-of-sync with present times. Teachers and academic institutions are reputed for completely being out of touch with the actual world outside and these kinds of blows bring them back to normal.

The title of this entry ` The End of Higher Education' is deliberately ambiguous. For the ` the End' can mean the final collapse and it can also mean ` the ultimate purpose' behind Higher education. This is for the second or third time I am participating in teachers agitating against the govt in my short career of 13 years. The question is, why does the society and its representatives think that higher education is dispensable and insignificant ? Why is it that if the teachers go on strike for routine administrative things like the implementation of pay commissions are not seen as creating any serious problems for society? Teachers not going to work is no big deal for society. One needs to ask why. I have seen many highly reputed educational institutions, like other institutions of the society, completely shattered and biting the dust. Most of them have become ` by the mediocre, of the mediocre and for the mediocre', where loyalty to the authorities has actually become ` merit'. Probably this is because of the large scale upheaval caused by the forces of globalization and economic liberalization which went on a rampage after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The present economic recession has brought this bull-in-the china shop machine of globalization to a grinding halt.

This moment of crisis is indeed a moment of agitation and resistance to contemporary fascism bred on omnipresent media but it is also the moment of introspection: we have to find out what is the ultimate purpose and function of higher education in very specific and concrete terms and then restructure our institutions on its basis. This is the quest for ` the true end' of Higher Education in Gujarat and probably in India too. The post-Cold war ideological vacuum, which resulted in the disappearance of critical discourses from public life, was filled up with regionalism and fanaticisms of all kinds in the past two or three decades. One of the most important functions of higher education in India today is to promote a critical form of cosmopolitanism which resists fanaticisms of Modi-Raj Thakeray and so many others politicians world over, by restoring critical spirit to its public domain. It would mean moving out of the walls of colleges and universities directly into public spaces. And given the possibilities of new medias like the internet with its social networking sites, blogs and other platforms, I think the teachers of today need to do their critical ` extension' activities on such platforms. This might mean , apart from the usual academic seminar- research publications, the teachers would do well to reach out to the places where young people really are, apart from classrooms- that is in the space opened up by the internet.

The post-colonial thinking looked at how the idea of nation was `imagined' and `constructed' in the times of print media. The post global contemporary culture has created newer ways of creating communities with the help of social networking and blogging and hence a newer way of `imagining' nation which is NOT primarily based on regional and local cultures. Globalization which people once thought would bring about the end of nation has actually resulted in newer ways of inventing nation and hence newer nations. It is in the context of this newer ways of imagining nation and culture that higher education in India and elsewhere will have to find out its true ` end'.