In short, the agitation is a product of multiple absurdities by the state. It exposes the degree to which reservation has no connection with fairness, has created new forms of domination in the social justice garb, and that sends the message to every community: you better mobilise on community identity if you want to be heard. It is not a coincidence that just days before this agitation, there was a call for Rajputs in Rajasthan to mobilise as a single community to demand benefits from the state. This pattern is, in various forms, going to be repeated in many states: communities clamouring to be included in one category or the other, or for further sub-classification.

Our classifications have become absurd from the point of view of social justice. It is fatuous to think that there are some ‘objective’ facts of the matter that can determine why Meenas should be ST, but Gurjjars not. In fact the whole historical process by which communities like Meenas went from high caste, to “criminal tribe” in the British sense, to ST, is an object lesson in how the state has used identities for its own purposes. The only antidote is a politics of justice centred on a radically new paradigm of how we understand deprivation.

This agitation also exposes the fragility of the state in Rajasthan underneath its glossy veneer. In a prescient article in 1990, Iqbal Narain and P.C. Mathur noted: “The day when the placidity and civility of Rajasthan politics will be rocked by the power drive of the agricultural castes, while bound to happen, is difficult to predict.” That placidity and civility has long been eroding, though not simply by the power drive of agricultural castes. That civility was assaulted by the Hindutva brigade that has openly legitimised raw assertion in Rajasthan politics. Caste has always been salient in Rajasthan but there was often at least a semblance of civility and reciprocity. There used to be a joke about Bhairon Singh Shekhawat when he was chief minister: “If you wanted anything done you simply went to the leader of the opposition. The CM would not say no to him.” Whether true or not, this story was an acknowledgment that a cross-cutting dialogue was still possible. One of the precipitating factors in the recent crisis was that government did not consult relevant leaders who could have directed the agitation in a peaceful direction. And the BJP was presumptuous about its capacity to defuse it unilaterally.

... contd.