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Vinod Pralhad Sonawane

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Gender Discrimination … • Gender division tends to be understood as

natural and unchangeable, However, it is not based on biology but on social expectations and stereotypes.

• it is reflected in the Sexual Division of Labour in most families.

• Women do all the work inside the house and men do all the work outside the home.

• In fact the majority of women do some sort of paid work in addition to domestic labour. But their work is not valued and does not get recognition

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• Religious diversity is fairly widespread in the world, it is not as universal as gender.

• Many countries including India have in their population, followers of different religions.

• Unlike gender differences, the religious differences are often expressed in the field of politics.

• Gandhiji used to say that religion can never be separated from politics.

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• What he meant by religion was not any particular religion like Hinduism or Islam but the moral values that inform all religion.

• He believed that politics must be guided by ethics drawn from religion.

• Human rights groups are demanding that government should take special steps to protect minority.

• Women’s movement wants the government to change Family laws to make it equitable.

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Communalism … • The problem begins when religion is seen

as the basis of the nation.• The problem becomes more acute when

religion is expressed in politics in exclusive and partisan terms, when one religion and its followers are pitted against another.

• This happens when beliefs of one religion are presented as superior to those of other religions when the demands of religious group are formed in opposition to another and when state power is used to establish domination of one religious groups over the rest.

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• Using religion is politics is COMMUNAL POLITICS.

• Communal Politics is based on the idea that religion is the sole basis of social community.

• Communalism involves thinking along the following lines.

• The followers of a particular religion must belong to one community.

• Their fundamental interests are the same. Any difference that they may have is irrelevant or trivial for community life.

• It also follows that people who follow different religions cannot belong to the same social community.

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• If the followers of different religion have some commonalities these are superficial and immaterial. Their interests are bound to be different and involve conflict.

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Communalism can take various forms in politics:

• The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs.

• These routinely involve religious prejudices, stereotypes of religious communities and belief in the superiority of one’s religion over other religions.

• A communal mind often leads to a quest for political dominance of one’s own religious community.

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• Political mobilisation on religious lines is another frequent form of communalism.

• This involves the use of sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal and plain fear in order to bring the followers of one religion together in the political arena.

• In electoral politics this often involves special appeal to the interest or emotions of voters of one religion in preference to others.

• Sometimes communalism takes its most ugly form of communal violence, riots and massacre. India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the time of the partition.

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Secular State :• Communalism was and continuous

to be one of the major challenges to democracy in our country.

• The makers of our constitution were aware of this challenge and that is why they chose the model of secular state.

• There is no official religion of the state.

• The constitution provides to all individuals and communities freedom to profess, practice and propagate any religion or not to follow any.

• The constitution prohibits discrimination on gorunds of religion

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CASTE AND POLITICS

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• Unlike gender and religion caste division is special to India.

• All societies have some kind of social inequality and some form of division of labour.

• In most societies occupations are passed from one generation to another.

• Caste system is an extreme form of this.

• What makes it different from other societies is that in this system, hereditary occupational division was sanctioned by rituals.

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• Caste system was based on exclusion of and discrimination against the ‘outcaste group’.

• They were subject to inhuman practice of untouchability.

• Political leaders and social reformers like Jyotirao Phule, Gandhiji, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and Periyar advocated and worked to establish a society in which caste inequalities were absent.

• Partly due to their efforts and partly due to other socio-economic changes, caste and caste system in modern India have undergone great changes.

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• With economic development, large scale URBANISATION, growth of literacy and education, OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY and the weakening position of landlords in the villages, the old notions of CASTE HIERARCHY are breaking down.

• The Constitution of India has prohibited any caste based discrimination and laid the foundations of policies to reverse the injustice of the caste system

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• Yet caste has not disappeared from contemporary India.

• Some of the older aspects of caste have persisted.

• Even now most of the people marry within their own caste or tribe.

• Untouchability has not ended completely, despite constitutional prohibition.

• Those groups that did not have access to education or were prohibited from acquiring it have naturally lagged behind.

• Even today there is a disproportionately large presence of ‘upper caste’ among the upper middle class in our country.

• Caste continues to be closely linked to economic status.

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Caste in politics …• When parties choose candidates in

election, they keep in mind the caste composition of the electorate and nominate a candidate from different castes so as to muster necessary support to win elections.

• When governments are formed, political parties usually take care that representatives of different castes and tribes find a place in it.

• Political parties and candidates in elections make appeals to caste sentiments to muster support. Some political parties are known to favour some caste and are seen as their representatives.

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• Universal adult franchise and the principle of one person one vote compelled political leaders to gear up to the task of mobilising and securing political support.

• It also brought about new consciousness among the people of castes that were hitherto treated as inferior or low.

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Elections are all about caste and nothing else ..

• No parliamentary constituency in the country has a clear majority of one single caste. So, every candidate needs to win the confidence of more than one caste and community to win elections.

• No party wins the votes of all the voters of a caste or community. When people say that a caste is a ‘vote bank’ of one party, it usually means that a large proportion of the votes from that caste vote for that party.

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• Many political parties may put up candidates from the same caste. Some voters have more than one candidate from their caste while many voters have no candidate from their caste.• The ruling party and the sitting MP

or MLA frequently lose elections in our country. That could not have happened if all the castes and communities were frozen in their political preferences.

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• The voters have a strong attachment to political parties which is often stronger than their attachment to their caste or community.

• People within the same caste or community have different interests depending on their economic condition.

• Rich and poor or men and women from the same caste often vote very differently.

• People’s assessment of the government and popularity rating of the leaders matter and are often decisive in elections.

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Politics in caste …• Politics too influences the caste system and caste

identities by bringing them into the political arena.

• It is not politics that gets caste-ridden it is the caste that gets politicised . This takes several forms.

• Each caste group tries to become bigger by incorporating within it neighbouring castes or sub-castes which were earlier excluded from it.

• Various caste groups are required to enter into a coalition with other castes or communities and thus enter into a dialogue ad negotiations.

• New kinds of caste groups have come up in the political arena like 'backward’ and ‘forward caste’ groups.

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Caste plays different kind of roles in politics …• In some situations expression of

caste differences in politics gives many disadvantaged communities the space to demand their share in power.

• In this sense politics has helped people from Dalits and OBC’s to gain better access to decision making.

• Several political and non-political organisations have been demanding and agitating for an end to discrimination against particular casts, for more dignity and more access to land resources and opportunities.

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• At the same time exclusive attention to caste can produce negative results as well.

• Politics based on caste alone is not very healthy in a democracy.

• It can divert attention from other pressing issues like poverty, development and corruption.

• In some cases caste division leads to tension, conflict and even violence.

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Thank you …