Indian Communists and Caste

The Indian communists have constantly denied the relevance of caste in India. In their scheme of things the caste does not appear as a crucial thing. Here we will confine ourselves to Marxist framework. The Communists have always considered the caste to be a part of super structure different from the materialistic economic base . The super structure has no separate existence of itself. For its survival it depends on economic base. The economic base or distribution of land, labor and capital among different people is the real thing not the caste or estates as such. Thus if any given economic base collapses then its related superstructure must also collapse.

There was belief of Marx that caste being a part of superstructure will automatically fall down when mode of productions changes from Asiatic (? - what it means I do not know , perhaps even Marx was not clear about this) to industrial. but that did not happen. The Indian Communists innocently believed all this. Or may be they were happy such a though absolves them of their guilt feelings. All the front line Communists in India belonged to upper castes and hence not very keen on discussing shameful caste system of their forefathers and declared themselves as declassed. These declassed people were those from the privileged caste who had given up all material things and totally identified with the proletariat .

These declassed Communists completely ignored the caste and left the historical forces to eliminate it and in the process lost the reality of Indian society. They waited and waited for the Caste system to fall on its own as predicted by Mrax. They waited and waited ..... and waited...

The caste system did not fall in response to a change in economic base. A growing industry and development of urban areas should have seen the destruction of caste but it did not happen. The ignorance of caste resulted in a situation where the landless were not ready to support the party of proletariat. So in a land of poverty the supposed party of poor (Communist) was without the support of poor.

However the Communitst should have read Engles and Gramsci also. The caste is a part of super structure as well as part of false conscious. According to Engles it the false conscious that prevents unity among working class.

The caste's presence as a big part of "false conscious" that creates fissures in the base, is due to ( however hard some people try to deny it) cultural hegemony of Brahmins. this cultural hagemony is responsible for a divide between por and poor. This cultural hegemony needed to be attacked by Communists. Buut that did not happen.

Had the communists gone according to Gramsci they would definitely tackled the caste actively instead of passively waiting for it to fall down.

Te communists waited for caste to fall, meanwhile it was and is creating fissures in the newly formed base. thus the base was never strong enough to support communists. the caste identity kept on strenghthening itself and the result was rapid growth of the parties which had their support among a particular caste. And the Comminusts paid for it.