THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES 167
CHAPTER 10
MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES
Politics is nothing if not realistic. There is very little in it that is academic. It is therefore follows that before passing any judgement on any scheme of politics it is essential that one must consider the ground plan.
Someone may ask what do I mean by “Ground Plan”. To me the ground plan means the social structure of a community to which the political plan is sought to be applied.
It needs no argument to show that the political structure rests on the social structure. Indeed the social structure has a profound effect on the political structure. It may modify it in its working. It may nullify it or it may even make a mockery of it.
In the case of India the social structure is built up on the caste system, the special product of Hindu civilization and culture.
The caste system is so well known that one need not wait to explain its nature. One can straight proceed to show what effect it is likely to have on Linguistic States.
There are some peculiar features of the caste system which must however be noted—
(1) Castes are so distributed that in any given area there is one caste which is major and there are others which are small and are subservient to the major caste owing to their comparative smallness and their economic dependence upon the major caste which owns most of the land in the village.
(2) The caste system is marked not merely by inequality but is affected by the system of graded inequality. All castes are not on a par. They are one above the other. There is a kind of ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt.
(3) A caste has all the exclusiveness and pride which a nation has. It is therefore not improper to speak of collection of castes as a collection of major and minor nations.
I am sorry, I cannot illustrate these points by reference to facts and figures. The census which is the only source of information on these points fails to help me. The last census omits altogether the caste tables which had been the feature of the Indian census ever since its birth. The Home Minister of the Government of India who is responsible for this omission was of the opinion that if a word does not exist in a dictionary it can be proved that the fact for which the word stands does not exist. One can only pity the petty intelligence of the author.
The consequences of the caste system on politics are quite obvious. The interesting part is to see what effect it has upon elections which is the foundation of Representative Government which is reared up on a system of single member constituencies.