‘Backwardness’

Abstract

Abstract In connecting backwardness to caste the Indian Constitution as well as various national and state commissions recognised the formidable role of caste in backwardness of several marginalized communities, including some non-Hindus. Accordingly, the socially and educationally backward classes were identified as Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward classes which comprised numerous ‘bahujan’ castes. However, caste as criteria for assessing backwardness had come under severe criticism of some sociologists, civil society organisations and the Indian courts. Linking caste with backwardness and the contestations around this has a long genealogy in Indian history, to which one could connect the early Christian missionaries’ efforts to educate the ‘backward classes’, the colonial governments’ official policies of affirmative actions in favour of ‘low caste communities’ and Muslims, and the anti-caste politics of the Indian social reformers and their movements for empowerment of backward classes. This essay explores the genealogy of linking caste and backwardness in order to understand the limit and possibilities these debates offered in addressing multiple, layered and interconnected inequalities that required the state attention.