How Swatantra is Bhardwaj of his caste identity?

Dr Rashid Ali and Dr Mohit Sharma*

When a society completely loses its sense of collective guilt, it naturally starts producing figures like Swatantra Bhardwaj, the man recently arrested by the Delhi Police over viral comments in which he is seen bragging about his high-level political connections and spewing blatant hatred against Muslims.

This isn't just another random streak of India’s exceedingly polarised political spectacle. It also signals the shift - how right-wing politics has changed the way people argue and disagree with each other. This sort of divisive politics no longer needs election campaigns and government propaganda. It is already there in everyday conversations.

But this is not what we want to argue about. The most important aspect of Bhardwaj controversy is also not what kind of political patronage he enjoys. It is about his caste identity which has become the flashpoint of how we traditionally look at caste. A few upper-caste commentators apparently distanced themselves from Swatantra Bhardwaj by asseverating, ‘he isn't a real Brahmin.’ Their framing of this assertion comes from a moral stance: ‘a true Brahmin would never do such things.’

They even invoked the famous Yuddhistra-Yaksha Samvaad from Mahabharata: ‘He who has studied the four Vedas is to be regarded as a wicked wretch scarcely distinguishable from a Shudra (if his conduct be not correct).’

This is where things take a curious turn. By admonishing him in such a way, people have stripped him of his identity. ‘Caste is purely about your conduct. It is no longer your birthright.’ Doesn’t this seem like an egalitarian argument? It truly is. But hang on! What decides what Brahminical conduct is? Isn’t it caste itself?

Reinforcing Caste Purity by Conduct

Ironically, Brahminhood here passes from a hereditary loop to a moral diploma. With Bhardwaj you are Brahmin because you are born as one. With Swatantra you are no Brahmin because you don’t behave like one. For the first time, in the history of Swatantra Bharat, caste seems to have made itself flexible.

But no matter how you quote or unquote ‘Bhagavad Gita or more precisely Karmanye Vadhikaraste, the category of caste denial emanates not from the deeds but from the caste itself. Swatantra Bhardwaj’s caste stripping has less to do with what Brahmins do. It’s more about what Brahmins don’t do. When Brahmins don’t do things, it’s always in relation to who the people are who do what Brahmins don’t do.

Here, denial or stripping functions in relation to those who are denied a foothold in the caste system. As per Yudhisthir-Yaksha Samvad, it is the Shudra. In modern morphology of caste, it is the Dalit. So, stripping away caste doesn’t take you away from caste. It becomes the route through which caste reasserts itself. It’s typical Sartrean (pertaining to Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism) in its inescapability, like famous characters of the play ‘No Exit’ Or maybe it struggles with Hegel’s formulation ‘Negation of Negation’. After all, negation of an identity doesn’t abolish itself. It reproduces itself in some other form. Ironically, this some other form is none other than the caste itself.

Fixed by a Dye

The Indian caste system operates on a structural logic reminiscent of Julius Caesar’s famous exclamation when he crossed the Rubicon River: ‘the die is cast.’ It is a system built on absolute social irreversibility. Once assigned at birth, caste is cast as a die. It locks a free individual into a socially hierarchical cage forever and eternally. Birth functions as an inescapable boundary crossing. Here, chance turns into destiny. The famous postcolonial thinker Frantz Fanon makes a startling revelation: ‘The Other, through gestures, attitudes and looks, fixes me in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye.’

Caesar’s die and Fanon’s dye mean very different things semantically, but both act as permanent fixtures when applied to caste. The Brahminical self cannot exist in a vacuum. It is built entirely through an ‘Other’ that it simultaneously manufactures and traps.

Therefore, the question of moral authentication is just a trap. Stripping Swatantra Bhardwaj of his caste identity by certain upper-caste hegemons marks a new beginning of what we call ‘Postmodern Brahminism’ in which a person’s actions are condemned apparently on basic ethical and political grounds, but this defence merely builds a purified image of the caste and lets a privileged few define that purity. This is how caste post-smarts modernity.

With Swantantra Bhardwaj’s birthright supremacy hitting a low, a new high of a refined language was constructed which masked birth and foregrounded conduct. This new vocabulary allows Brahminism to keep its cultural grip while appearing to rise above caste. When birth causes embarrassment, conduct offers respectability. Caste doesn't always survive by digging its heels into old prejudices. Sometimes, it survives by learning to speak the language of equality.

But this is just a mask. The difference between Swatantra and Bhardwaj is no difference at all. Bhardwaj can never be Swatantra of his identity. He will always have birth on his side, whether he is imprisoned or not. The prison of caste has no exit at all.

(*Dr Rashid Ali and Dr Mohit Sharma teach at the Central University of Jammu.)