Reservation for the OBCs, the mandir-masjid conflict and reservation for women have one thing in common. They are based on the idea of ``compensatory discrimination'' which has rocked Indian political life for a decade. On closer scrutiny, it is found that this concept is integral to the romantic ideologies of the post-Hegelian phase. Like Marxism, Nazism, Zionism, it chooses to set right certain wrongs through a biased analysis of history and compensate the perceived sufferers for their deprivation. It is radically different from the Christian-Islamic notion of ``charity'' that seeks to help the downtrodden and has no yardstick to perceive some as more deserving than others. The results of Mandal and Mandir are clear, it is worth investigating if reserving seats for women in Parliament and the state assemblies would follow another trajectory.

When socialist systems collapsed elsewhere and India, too, was faced with the challenge of leaving its socialist cocoon, one among the many means adopted to resist the transition was the Mandal Commission Report. Its professed aim was to promise jobs in the public sector to the middle castes for their upliftment. But the real reason was to protect the public sector so as to retain the ``command economy'' under the new name of ``social justice''. The disastrous results of this step are now obvious. Besides caste dissensions, the economy is stagnant, infrastructural changes stalled and foreign investment rebuffed.

Reservations as ``compensatory discrimination'' does not seek to eliminate the caste system, it merely aims to uplift some castes at the expense of others. Moreover, theorists of reservations are not clear about the process of upliftment. They have borrowed the model of ``affirmative action'' from societies which do not have any rigid caste-based hierarchy of jati (endogamic family) and varna (class based on the principle of purity) but only classes created by economic disparity. In such societies economic advancement of a person, family or group, brings about a confirmed position into a higher class. But in the Indian system, prosperity alone has never upgraded the status of a caste (jati) into a higher varna. Upward mobility into a higher class (varna) has been a complex phenomenon which takes place after generations of struggle by a particular jati, which also has to acquire the behaviour patterns of the next higher varna in food, social conduct, ritual and so on.

Today's reservations policy does not provide upward caste mobility to a jati, although it may provide economic prosperity to some individuals. The beneficiaries have now a greater interest in sticking to their ``down-trodden'' jati label to ensure further benefits. There's no advantage now in a tiller (bhumihaar) revealing himself as a kshatriya, as Shivaji did at his coronation. The ``uplifted'' person thus lives in a schizophrenic state. Part of him wishes to move up into the higher varna and another part preserves his caste certificate. Reservation has created new perversions, evident especially in not only the forward castes, but even the majority of OBCs and ST/SCs feeling cheated since the benefits of reservations are gobbled by the creamy layer of each category. Yadavs make hay, while Telis sulk.

A similar ``compensatory discrimination'' for the Hindus by reclaiming the sacred sites of their famous temples from the ``structures'' or mosques built on their ruins, was at the root of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The whole endeavour was steeped in cultural self-pity and lacked the ability to place Indian events in world history. Iconoclasm has taken its toll not only in India but all over the world. In Greece, the Christians erected churches from temple rubble on nearly all the sacred sites of the earlier Olympian religion. For Hindus today, compensation for past injuries can only lie in freeing themselves from fear of religious fanaticism of all kinds, including their own.

The most damaging outcome of the Janmabhoomi agitation was its adverse influence on the economy. Collection of funds for the Janmabhoomi campaign by the Sangh Parivar was, to say the least, a dubious venture. Described by many as a counter to divisive Mandalism, the movement did not revitalise the Hindu community by breaking barriers of caste and orthodoxy. It was only the leadership that benefitted from it.

While Mandir is on the back-burner of the BJP and Mandal a cause for despair, the fervour for reservations has found new pastures: one-third seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The issue is seen in terms of the universal problem of gender inequality. Hence credence is being sought for vague, romantic notions like women as leaders being more solution-oriented, less antagonistic, and so on. Fears have been aired of Parliament being reduced to a dolls' house, an upper-caste beauty saloon. While these are insubstantial criticisms, what is dangerous about women's reservations is that it could, as in the case of Mandal and Mandir, entrench the creamy layer in a position of leadership.

To maintain that the desire to dominate is weaker in women than in men, is an illogical argument. Just as mothers-in-law often assist in bride-burning and help reinforce patriarchy, female legislators may find it convenient to keep their positions by perpetuating the status quo. Women's reservations in legislatures, therefore, has no meaning without an agenda free from political ideologies. In fact, the more independent women candidates are the better, as they can pursue the women's cause more effectively. The agenda itself will best evolve from national discussions, but it must prioritise the elimination of glaring social evils like forced prostitution, excessive child-bearing, wife-beating, dowry, purdah and female infanticide.To implement the women's agenda and change the social fabric should be the priority of women parliamentarians and not to demand more jobs for women or promote the parties they come from. This means a protracted battle against male politicians from whom one-third seats have to be wrenched. Political parties will always try to derail the women's agenda by making female legislators serve the electoral agendas of a predominantly male leadership. The Mandalites have already harmed the feminine cause by demanding a reserved quota along caste lines within women's reservations. This is the biggest danger because women's problems are not class, caste or electorate specific, they are universal.

The writer is a professor in Delhi University

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.