Most of us go through life without worrying about ‘who we are’ or our identity. We are born and grow up in a family. We go to school and find a job later. We get married and live happily. Life goes on. We know, of course, who we are. But it is not always a conscious knowledge. In the course of our life, we may come across others who are not like us, who speak a different language, practice another religion, enjoy different kinds of food, dress differently. As long as life goes on smoothly we do not bother about these people who are different. Identity becomes a problem only when our interaction with the other becomes a source of conflict, however small. Then we are not only aware of our identity; we want to defend it. The differences become sharper and even antagonistic. It is at such a moment that we start asking ourselves about our own identity. We seek to deepen our awareness.
In the previous essay, Dr. Nirmala Carta, has explored with the help of questionnaires, some dimensions of the self-identity, experienced by young people in Mauritius and in Tamil Nadu, India, in a comparative way. In this essay, I am not offering you an empirical study. I am not either directly commenting on her report. I am rather reflecting on the question of identity in Tamil Nadu, India in a general way, with some reference to the situation in Mauritius too.
My Identity: Social and Personal
Let me start with a question: “Who am I?” Sociologists often say that identity is socially constructed. I think that this is only partially true. I am born in a family. As I grow up, I learn its language and its world view. I am ‘enculturated’ as the experts would say. Such enculturation may often be unconscious in the beginning. I just live and absorb the culture of the group I am born in: its vision of itself as manifested in its way of life and rituals, its way of looking at the others and the world, its religious beliefs and rituals; its dreams and hopes. There may be a formal initiation at some stage. I feel in syntony with the others in my group. The group identity is, of course, primary at this stage.
This group identity is sharpened and strengthened when I meet another or others from another group. This encounter may take place when I have to go out of my own group context for whatever reason: the school, the market, the playground, the pilgrimage, etc. At that moment I realize that I am different from the other. My identity is no longer taken for granted. It has to be affirmed, preserved and perhaps defended in face of the other. When different groups live in a common socio-political structure, I perceive a unity-in-difference. I have my group identity different from the other. But we may also share a wider identity, because we speak the same language, belong to the same religion, share a wider regional and national culture, form part of a common political order. My social identity is then caught up in network of different identities. My identity is in relationship with the others. Such relationship may also be conflictual when there is a competition for domination or an attempt at hierarchizing the different groups, based on economic, social, political or religious power.
I am not merely a social animal. I am also an individual. As I grow up, even within my own group, I feel that I am not the same as others. I discover special talents, capacities, achievements, dreams and hopes that are my own. I may develop some of these in a competitive setting. I may also be interacting with wider cultural forces like science and the media that may give a personal trajectory to my growth. The group may try to subdue me. I may succeed in breaking away at some stage, putting my own self-identity before that of the group. I may become a part of other interest groups. My personal identity, therefore, has a history. Every adolescent today, exposed to education and the media, is living this history, though s/he may not always be aware of it at the moment.
My identity therefore has two poles, personal and social. If I become simply a member of a group, I lose my personality. If I assert myself to such an extent that I cut myself away from the group, I become isolated. My identity is a mediation between the personal and the community pole.
What makes matters complicated is that, while I am only one person, I may be part of many communities at home, at the work place, at political engagement, at the religious sphere, at the level of reflection, etc. One or other community may try to dominate at a given moment. But I cannot escape a certain diversity. This is especially true in modern urban situations. In a rural setting the diversity may not be noticeable. But in modern urban settings it is unavoidable.
The Caste System
One of the constants of Indian society is the caste system. A look at the practice of that system may help us to understand what I have been trying to say about identity and its link to community or, rather, communities.
A person is born into a caste. S/he cannot change that fact. I have heard of rituals that can change a person into a Brahmin. But it is purely a social phenomenon, not a real change. The caste is a hierarchical social system. There are higher and lower castes and also outcastes. The hierarchy is primarily determined by a system of ritual purity and pollution: how close can a person approach God ritually. How intimately God and the human can approach each other really or spiritually depends on the individual and the God. We have examples in Hinduism like Nandanar, who is close to God, though he is an outcaste. But even he cannot approach God ritually, according to the tradition.
A Complex System
But the caste system is not only a ritual system, but also an economic, social, political and cultural system. In traditional Indian society, the outcastes or Dalits are landless labourers. They did not own any property. They are service castes. It is the nature of their service that determines the level at which they are set in the caste hierarchy. A person who is involved in cleaning impurities is lower than a person involved in farm labour. One’s work determines one’s social status. So we have the hierarchy: menial and farm labourers, merchants and traders, administrators and rulers, intellectuals and priests. This is the social order. But in terms of political power there is a dialectic at the top. Real political power belongs to the rulers, though the intellectuals may be the power behind the throne. But together they dominate the rest. So the political power structure englobes the economic division of labour. A person like Mahatma Gandhi may claim that every form of work is sacred and has equal dignity. But the political dimension and the consequent dependence of those below on those above in the political scale denies such equality. Political inequality soon becomes also social inequality when the social relations between groups are conditioned by economic and political inequality. Social inequality slowly develops into religious inequality. Denied direct access to the higher gods, the subaltern castes set up their own gods. Social inequality makes sure that the gods of the subalterns also become subaltern gods in the pantheon. The structure of inequality thus becomes complete.
The interplay of these structures may change in the course of history. For example, during the colonial period in India, when the Christian Europeans and their local followers dominate society, the others feel subaltern. But their reaction was twofold. On the one hand the Hindu elite try to reform society and its superstitious practices like polytheism, child marriage, and the burning of widows on the funeral pier of their husbands, inspired by their Christian overlords. On the other hand, leaders like Swami Vivekananda and even Gandhi extoll the spiritual riches of Hinduism for which the material West is no match. One may be politically subaltern, but not religiously. But once India becomes free of colonialism, the Hindus seek to assert their superiority both politically and religiously, while the Christians try to maintain their religious superiority. A concrete manifestation of this would be the assertion of their right by the Christians to convert others to their religion, while the Hindus pass anti-conversion laws. A similar tension can also be noticed between the Muslims and Hindus. In the global scenario, the Hindus in India may still feel inferior economically and politically. But they want to catch up in these areas and assert their proper role in the world. This quest for equality may also attract some Christians and Muslims. This explains the rise of Modi in the recent elections. It is not merely a quest for development, but also for power and status in the community of nations. The identity of an Indian, in such a context becomes very complex.
The Dalits in India
Let us come back to our caste system and see how it is affected in a changing India. For clarity’s sake let us focus on the Dalits, which means ‘crushed down’ and is the name given to themselves by the outcastes. As India was moving towards independence, Dalit leaders like Ambedkar did not think that a democratic order based on the equality of one vote per person would bring about equality, not only in the political, but also in the other spheres. So he proposed a communal voting system in which each group like the Dalits, Christians and Muslims would vote for their own representatives in parliament in proportion to their presence in the population. Gandhi stoutly opposed this system as harmful to the unity of the country. So a compromise was reached according to which a proportionate number of Dalit representatives would be elected from constituencies set apart for them, but they would be voted for by all the people in that constituency. When the Indian Constitution was made later the Christians and Muslims did not want such a communal representation, but decided to throw themselves on the good will of the people – the majority. Ambedkar, as the main drafter of the Indian Constitution, also made sure that untouchability was made illegal. Besides, the Dalits – or the Scheduled Castes, in Constitutional terms – were also provided reservations, proportionate to their presence in the population, in educational institutions and in government employment. Such reservations were meant to be only for a short period. But they have actually become institutional and a vested interest and have helped only a small minority to come up in life economically.
Movements for Change
Movements for change are not absent. We have had a Dalit chief minister in the largest state in in India, Uttar Pradesh. A Dalit has been the President of the Republic. There have been ministers, practically in every State. They had become a vote bank, nursed by some political parties, though this seems to have loosened up in the recent elections. But they are not really present in a meaningful way in the political power structures – except at the mercy of the dominant castes. Dalit parties have not succeeded by themselves.
The modern educational system, introduced by the British and supported by the missionaries and others, has made education accessible to them. The growth of technology and industry has made it possible for them to get out of the limited labour framework of the village and secure various new kinds of employment opportunities and also move out of the village social structure into more urban areas. While the caste system may still be rigid in the villages, in the urban areas it is loosening up. But the caste is also an endogamous unit and that line is difficult to cross. Though in modern urban situations people of different castes do fall in love, marriage with Dalits still remains a problem and in some cases leads to the murder, by the dominant caste groups, of either or both of them. In modern urban society, religion may not be a very active factor. Therefore, with regard to the caste system, especially in relation to the Dalits, the economic and political factors may have loosened up. But the social and cultural factors still remain strong. This means that both at the level of the individual and of the community identities caste remains very much a factor.
The caste is not merely an element of social organization. It is also a social support group. When an individual faces a problem in life and is looking for a support group, it is often the caste that provides such support, not the economic organization, especially in a capitalistic economic order, nor the political party, not even the religious group, if the religious groups also practices caste discrimination. This will be true of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists, besides Hindus.
The caste, since it is determined by birth, has been compared to race or ethnicity. Some attribute the very origin of the caste system to discrimination between conquering and conquered races in the course of many foreign invasions to which India was subject over the centuries. This explanation could however be questioned.
Other Identities
Another differentiation of identities in India is religious. India aims at being a secular country. It does not privatize religion as France, but tries to treat all religions equally also in the public sphere. The Constitution grants freedom to practice and propagate religion. But at the same time, it wants to protect the minorities: religious, linguistic, etc. The minorities have the freedom to have their own educational and cultural institutions to protect and grow in their minority cultural and religious identity. But strangely this protection is not granted to the majority, implicitly identifying the majority with the nation. This means that the parliament can legislate for the majority. The majority Hindus are, of course, critical of this. Why should the national parliament, which also has Moslem and Christian members, legislate on Hindu institutions, while the minority religious groups are protected from such interference from the Hindus? Today the different religious communities are governed by their own civil codes concerning marriage and inheritance, though the Constitution had proposed that the country must move towards a common civil code. One of the demands of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been the establishment of such a common civil code, which the minorities, especially the Muslims, who have special marriage and divorce laws, have been resisting.
Another source of pluralism in India is the languages. There are 18 major languages and hundreds of dialects. The States were divided according to the languages. But recently some States have been further divided for non-linguistic, but other historical, reasons. The latest division is that of Andhra Pradesh into Telengana and Seemandhra.
So the identity of an Indian can be very complex as s/he belongs to a variety of communities, more or less important. They may be socio-cultural (caste), regional (linguistic), national and international (religious). Today, given the media of communications, there are also relations with Indian migrants, either historical like Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. or more resent like the Non-Resident Indians in the USA, Europe and the Middle East.
Personal and Community Identity
So what is my identity? As we have seen above this question can be answered at two levels, personal and social. My personal identity is something very personal to me, which consists of my natural characteristics (qualities), talents, achievements, etc. It is also affected by my economic, social and political status. For example, belonging to a subaltern caste may create in me an inferiority complex. My identity is also social. It depends on the multiple groups to which I belong, starting with the close and wider family, caste, language, religion, economic and political status and citizenship. Which of this is primary depends on the context. In contemporary democratic societies, the national identity is the basic one. Each one is supposed to have basic human rights and freedoms and opportunities. There is a basic equality at this level. This basic national community, however, is divided into various smaller communities. By offering minority rights to religious and cultural groups and educational, economic and political reservations to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes some subgroups in the nation are set apart. There is some inequality involved in this. There is a danger that they become eventually vested interests. At the political level other caste and religious groups may become vote banks, though this is not inevitable and may fluctuate, as experience has shown. Caste groups affect community life. The caste system itself is not that much challenged today. As sociologists have suggested, the caste groups may become interest groups. Some of them have become political parties. The Constitution itself speaks in terms of abolishing, not the caste system, but untouchability. But this can affect only the public sphere, not the private socio-cultural sphere.
Social discrimination and inequality between communities is a given everywhere. We cannot imagine the Caucasian, Hispanic and Afro Americans treating each other as socially equal in the USA. Europeans will find it difficult to accept the Muslim migrants from various countries as social equals. Through inter-marrying the border lines may blur a little. Discrimination may also be less in the context of multi-ethnic religious groups. The caste system is not a racial grouping, in spite of the claims of some Dalit groups who see in such identification some political benefits, seeking to claim special rights as indigenous peoples, for example. The Dalits themselves have many endogamous sub-castes, hierarchically organized. With overall economic progress and increasing inter-marriage the caste system may eventually weaken and become insignificant, though it may remain one of the social markers. The challenge today is to live multiple community identities, but in a context of collaboration, not discrimination, much less conflict.
Conclusion
Since Dr. Carta’s study is set in a comparative context between Tamil Nadu (India) and Mauritius, I shall conclude these reflections with some reference to it. In Mauritius there is a clear sense of national identity. Everyone feels a Mauritian. But beyond that there is a multiplicity of community identities based on religion, ethnicity, social status, etc. At a political level there are four groups: the Hindus, the Muslims, the Chinese and the General population. The Chinese is a multi-religious ethnic group. The General population is Christian, but made up of many ethnic groups: the Creoles, the Whites, the Indians and Africans. The Creoles may tend to dominate this group as they are a majority, while the Indian (Christians) defend their identity as different from the ethnically mixed Creoles. At the level of politics the four major groups follow a communitarian system abandoned by India in favour of popular democracy. Internal pluralism and tensions are inevitable among the Chinese and the General population. These may not be absent also among the Hindus, who may belong to different castes and to different places of origin in India like Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Bihar.
Thanks to migration, multiple community identities are becoming common in most parts of the world. The values that one needs to promote in such a situation are basic human freedom, rights and equality at the political level, the respect and recognition of community identities and their rights and their peaceful and collaborative interaction at all levels, and the promotion of social equality between individuals and communities. Beyond political and inter-cultural interaction, we need to promote also socio-religious interaction and collaboration. In a world in conflict, peacemaking and reconciliation may be an immediate priority. But behind and beyond that we need to build up the world, locally and globally, as a community of communities.
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.