The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India by Rupa Viswanath

Author:Rupa Viswanath [Viswanath, Rupa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2014-06-05T14:00:00+00:00

Government and Landholders as “Co-owners of Property”

The debate over house sites would eventually be taken up in the lofty chambers of Madras’s Legislative Council. The structure of the government, in the aftermath of the Morley–Minto reforms of 1910, now included a legislative council of considerable political importance, with prominent Indians selected as representatives of various subpopulations—including non-Brahmins, businessmen, landowners, and Muslims—as its members.31 But at this time there were as yet no Panchama members. The landholders who sat on this powerful body demanded that the government order authorizing the acquisition of house sites in Tanjore be stayed. Legislative Council proceedings, furthermore, were taken very seriously at the highest levels of colonial administration, not least because they were published and frequently reproduced verbatim in newspapers. Indeed, the rancorous discussion on staying the house-site scheme was paraphrased and quoted extensively in The Hindu.32

In this discussion in the council, the deep-rooted sense among Indian elites that Panchama uplift must in some way amount to an abrogation of the principle of neutrality persisted as an undercurrent. But the radically new rationale on which uplift was based made such arguments difficult to sustain, and religious neutrality was no longer able to command the floor. Thus, when the issue of house sites for Panchamas in Tanjore was first raised in the council, T. Ranga Achariyar demanded to know at whose behest the order was being pushed forth, alleging that missionaries were behind the move.33 The government of Madras responded that it was on the basis of its own concern for the welfare of the Depressed Classes, and not at the insistence of those classes themselves nor Christian missionaries nor any other philanthropic bodies.34 This deceptively simple statement, which might even appear defensive, presents another telling instance of the emergence of the new government of the social that we have been tracking, evidenced by the state’s newly explicit embrace of its responsibilities for Panchama welfare. It is also, of course, misleading in one critical respect. In discussions confined to official circles, the fact that Panchamas themselves demanded redress whenever they met face-to-face with officials was adduced to show up the speciousness of the claim that the house-site problem was really no issue at all; to mirasidars it was presented as a matter of governmental initiative.

Achariyar further insisted that the government appoint a committee of both officials and nonofficials to fully investigate the Tanjore house-site scheme before the order was put into effect. At the outset he referred to the fact that he himself was a landowner in the district. He expressed the hope that this would not overly color his judgment but would, at the same time, afford him firsthand knowledge of the situation.35 Achariyar made two significant varieties of criticism. First, he painted Collector Wood, who had mooted the house-site scheme, as flighty and impetuous, honing in on the fact that, by his own admission, Wood’s suggestion that land be given to Panchamas along the lines of England’s Small Holdings Act was made without his even having read the act.

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