Reservations in Doubt: The Backlash Against Affirmative Action in Gujarat, India

Abstract

DURING 1985 a bitter conflict erupted in India over one of the ruling Congress Party's longest-standing policies: the preferential treatment of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. The first two groups of historically peoples had been receiving reserved quotas of positions in legislatures, educational institutions, and government employment since 1950. For several years, however, opposition to the administration of the reservation system, and to its expansion to include other backwards, had been mounting in various parts of India. Ironically, it reached its most violent dimensions in Gujarat, the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, and in the centennial year of the nationalist movement which Gandhi led to independence. In brief, the Gujarat troubles began when the Congress government of Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, largely composed of members of these disadvantaged groups,' announced on January 10, 1985 that the reserved quota for backward class candidates in universities and government employment would be raised from 10 to 28 percent, in addition to the 21 percent already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes. This meant that 49 percent of positions, the maximum the courts had deemed permissible, would now be reserved. Demonstrations against the increase became violent after the March state election in which the Congress won the largest victory ever recorded in Gujarat. The new Solanki government offered to postpone the reservation increase, but the violence intensified. Rioting, which included elements of caste, class, communal, and police-citizen conflict, became so uncontrollable that the Indian army was called in to restore order. It could not do so completely. All told, some two hundred and seventy-five people died in the orgy of arson and murder, and an estimated Rs. 2,200 crores (1 crore = $1.25 million) worth of damage was done to