Caste & cleansing

The Kerala Human Rights Commission has asked the secretary, taxes department, for an explanation on a bizarre incident. After the then inspector-general of registration, A.K. Ramakrishnan, retired on March 31, his office and official car were allegedly washed with cowdung-mixed water. Ramakrishnan complained to the commission that this incident took place the very next day, on April 1, and that to dodge the charge that his office was being specifically “cleansed” because he happened to be a Dalit, the entire office too was sprayed with this mixture. As reported in this newspaper, the office of a panchayat president at Elanthur had been similarly washed with cowdung water after it was vacated by a Dalit.

The commission has sought a reply by May 7, and it would be right to wait till then before passing judgment on the incident. But the very fact of the complaint is a reminder of the demeaning and dehumanising ways in which caste creeps into even those spaces we had thought to have been long liberated from ritual hierarchies. At worst, of course, the slight administered to those perceived to be of a lower caste is deliberate — and in each case that this happens, there must be disciplinary action, to make the point that this amounts to outright discrimination and simply cannot be allowed to pass unchecked. But even the more generous view that often the slight is caused inadvertently is problematic. Administrators have to be conscious of the nuances that consolidate inclusiveness.

Purification rituals that are coded with caste hierarchies do not convey inclusiveness — in any situation their survival is a reminder of our unfinished democratisation. But when they occur in a public space, they are that much more deplorable.