We all have that one word, one image, or perhaps something less tangible that reminds us of a short unhappy stint in the past. For my sister and me, that word is Mandal. When the anti-Mandal wave hit our country, I was in school. I was 15 and my sister was 17. We had simple, middle-class, school-going lives with moderate ambitions. In one week in 1990, all this was submerged by the Mandal spell.
Mandal reminds me of my popular sister looking for her younger sister’s company during break, as her whole class had decided to boycott her. Mandal reminds me of my close friends deserting me as though playing a part straight out of a children’s film on the power of peer pressure. Mandal reminds me of innocent, apolitical, loving youngsters overnight behaving like political leaders.
After 15 years, even today, I can feel the volcanic tension of my class. I remember how I sat there alone, my gaze stuck to my desk, as looking beyond meant dealing with faces blown out of proportion with inexplicable hatred. My haughty elder sister saddened beyond measure that her teacher was purposely choosing to ignore the hostility. I remember sitting with her in the sports ground sharing each day’s stories, feeling distraught and confused.
The ostracisation reached its peak the day my sister entered her classroom to be greeted with the ‘thought for the day’ scrawled on the black board that said: ‘V.P. Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ramvilas Paswan hai, hai! aur Shalini Yadav hai hai!’ Mandal had created two separate blocs and we became each other’s ‘Other’. In response to the writing on the board, my sister gave her mute defence, again on the board. She simply wrote, “I am out in the creamy layer.” Some friends ‘came back’, as if her saying that she didn’t benefit from the ‘quota’ made her a co-sufferer and thus they all became ‘victims in solidarity’.
{{/usCountry}}The ostracisation reached its peak the day my sister entered her classroom to be greeted with the ‘thought for the day’ scrawled on the black board that said: ‘V.P. Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ramvilas Paswan hai, hai! aur Shalini Yadav hai hai!’ Mandal had created two separate blocs and we became each other’s ‘Other’. In response to the writing on the board, my sister gave her mute defence, again on the board. She simply wrote, “I am out in the creamy layer.” Some friends ‘came back’, as if her saying that she didn’t benefit from the ‘quota’ made her a co-sufferer and thus they all became ‘victims in solidarity’.
{{/usCountry}}It is interesting to note how easy it was to push aside the bonhomie we shared as a class for six years in just one day. Imagine the stress and pressure our youngsters constantly deal with in their quest for decent careers. Most of them are already competing beyond their abilities.
Like the saffronisation brigade, Mandalisation too has the capacity to shape and polarise caste identity on the lines of religious identity. Multiple identities will mushroom their poisonous heads. Each fighting the other for the same pie. India’s plurality is its strength. Our politicians seem to have decided to push the envelope till it becomes our weakness. The question they need to answer is, can history govern the future?