Anshul Kumar
“The fact is that the governing class in India blinded by self-interest is unmindful of the absurdity of the argument of naked efficiency and being conscious that it has the power to convert its opinion into law does not bother what the servile classes have to say on the point. The governing class does not bother to inquire into the ways and means by which it has acquired its supremacy. It does not feel the necessity of doing so, partly because it believes that it acquired its supremacy by dint of merit and partly because it believes that no matter how it acquired its power it is enough that it is in a position to dictate its policy on the servile classes.” ~Dr BR Ambedkar in Mr Gandhi and the emancipation of the Untouchables
Dr. Ambedkar held very insightful and prophetic opinions about the ruling class of India, primarily Brahmins, even before the formation of the Indian state as a Constitutional Republic. He used the terms governing class and intellectual class interchangeably to refer to the ruling class of the Indian subcontinent.
His fundamental critique of this governing class was that this class of men considers itself the sole guardian of the entire population of this nation, including the working classes. This class doesn’t want to question its own hegemony over the law, policies, and institutions that it holds, but is always eager to define what is best for the servile classes without even considering their opinion.
This ruling class is strategically non-reflexive and uses its intellectual armoury to legitimise the deplorable and damned condition of the servile classes, the ‘untouchables’, along with other backward classes.
If one traces the history of the Indian nation state, the idea of reservation was put to judicial scrutiny as soon as it was made a constitutional mandate, after which the parliament was forced to amend the constitution to keep it safeguarded and under constitutional status. I am referring to the Champakkam Dorairajan vs GOI case of 1951, in the Supreme Court of India.
Even though the Constitution of India, a document of modernity, has clearly paved the way for the emancipation of the ‘untouchables’, its radical potential was always sabotaged by the Indian ruling class, which never accepted it in toto.
One of the reasons that the ruling class of India today panders to the BJP RSS-led vision of India is the aversion of the BJP RSS to the constitution of India, which it wants to ‘Decolonise’. ‘Decolonisation’ in the Indian context is a slippery slope which is almost an euphemism for radical Hinduisation of the Indian Constitution, which the Hindu right thinks is largely a Western document ill-suited to the needs of the Republic of Bharat, as they like to call it nowadays.
Even in sociological literature, little is mentioned or studied about the ruling class as a social group with collective class interest. On the other hand, for most of the sociological literature, the subject of study is always the ruled class.
The French sociologist couple Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon were pioneers in studying the bourgeoisie, the elites, and the ruling class of the French society. Most of their work is published in French, with little to nothing available in English.
In an interview, they gave to Mikael Palme and Bertrand Réau, they said, “The value of our work is that it shows that the dominant class is heterogeneous, but that despite that heterogeneity, it shows solidarity in defending its class interests. There are huge disparities in economic wealth within that class. If you take the list of the 500 biggest professional fortunes in France, you can see that Bernard Arnault, who has been number one for several years, has 400 times the amount of the person ranked 500. There are no disparities to such an extent in other social classes.”
Their extensive work on the culture of the economic elite or the ruling class clearly points out that, despite having more economic disparity or inequality among themselves than that exists among the working classes, the super-rich rarely have any class conflict.
On the other hand, the working class, with much more economic equality as compared to the ruling elite, displays more class infractions and conflicts, which are absent among the ruling class.
This is not just accidental but strategic as Pincon-Charlot and Pincon further argue, “ the basis of membership in the dominant class under the capitalist system is holding the titles of ownership that enable the exploitation of others’ labour. Thus, membership in this class rests on the radical and arbitrary antagonism of class relations. And all of its members are mobilized to defend the capitalist system in its current neo-liberal phase.”
What it implies is that, despite the significant economic inequality among the ruling class as a social group, the ruling class never allows for any infractions among itself. On the other hand, it employs and uses any infractions among the servile or the working class as an excuse to break the class solidarity among them, simply because it has the capacity to rule in the realms of law, policymaking, and as an agent of intellectual heritage that is legitimised through years of reservation.
This is the Idea behind the Sub-Classification of the Schedule Caste List.
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Anshul Kumar is currently pursuing MA in Sociology at JNU.
