equal by law, unequal by caste - International Dalit Solidarity Network

Vol. 26, No. 2 Equal by Law, Unequal by Caste 295The plethora of laws and programs outlined above, thatcollectively comprise India’s affirmative action package for Dalits, standin perverse contradiction to the social realities that Dalits face. The nextsection seeks to answer the question of why the rule of law in India findsno traction as a mechanism of repairing the Dalit condition.IV. RULE OF LAW VS. RULE OF CASTEThe Rule of Law in India lives in the shadow of the Rule ofCaste. If law is understood as a set of rules backed by sanction, thenboth the legal system and the caste system can lay claim to the mantle oflaw with one significant difference: the caste system operates moreefficiently, more swiftly, and more punitively than any rights-protectinglaw on the books. Political theorist Hannah Arendt lamented the“poignant irony” of the discrepancy between regarding as “‘inalienable’those human rights, which are enjoyed by citizens of the most prosperousand civilized countries, and the situation of the rightless themselves.” 221The rightless, in Arendt’s opinion, were those stateless individuals whohad been deprived of what she saw as the most fundamental of all humanrights: the right to membership in a political community. 222 According toArendt, without citizenship status, inalienable rights do not come intoeffect. 223 Devoid of such membership with a people or a state,individuals lose “the very qualities which make it possible for otherpeople to treat [them] as fellow [human beings].” 224If citizenship is understood as a bundle of rights that includes,inter alia, the rights to personal liberty, personal security, equality beforethe law, freedom of speech and conscience, the right to own property,and the right to political participation, then Dalits fall far short of thatbundle. 225 As a system of law, the caste system relegates Dalits into analmost permanent state of exception. If castes are understood as nations,then as outcastes, Dalits are rendered stateless in their own country. AsSCHEME OF GRANT IN AID FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS, http://socialjustice.nic.in/prem/welcome.htm.221 HANNAH ARENDT, Decline of the Nation-State: End of the Rights of Man, in THE ORIGINS OFTOTALITARIANISM 279 (1985).222 Id. at 296.223 Id. at 300.224 Id.225 See generally J.E. Penner, The “Bundle of Rights” Picture of Property, 43 UCLA L. REV. 711(1996) (explaining genesis of “bundle of rights” theory of property).