Caste And Class In Colonial India

Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of India’s Constitution enable the government to reserve seats in educational institutions and government jobs in favor of a “class” instead of “caste”. For instance, Article 16(4) of the Constitution allows the government to introduce quotas for “any backward class of citizens”. Over the years, the use of the word “class” instead of “caste” in the Constitution gave rise to a heated debate in the Supreme Court on the question of whether caste could be made the basis of reservations and whether “Other Backward Classes” could be identified on the basis of caste alone. A peep into the pages of legal history reveals that the word “class” was understood by the framers of the Constitution to mean “caste” or “tribe”.

A Linguistic Transplant

The words “depressed classes” and “backward classes” came to India from 19th century England, where society was divided into classes, not castes. The term “depressed classes” was used in the English language to generally describe the poor and downtrodden sections of society. For example, in 1849, an American politician wrote of the “depressed classes in Great Britain and Ireland.” A book published in New York in 1866 described how the mortality rates were high at hospitals in Paris that treated “the poorer and most depressed classes”. Similarly, the term “backward classes” in 19th century England was applied to the “middling” and “meaner” classes of society, i.e., those who were not members of the nobility and gentry. For instance, in 1870, an English writer explained how two-thirds of the undergraduates at Oxford University came largely from the “most backward classes in the country – the sons of squires, clergymen, and capitalists”, in other words, middling people, as opposed to the sons of aristocrats and gentlemen.

Initially, these terms were used loosely in India as well. For example, in 1917, Sir Henry Sharp, Educational Commissioner with the Government of India, prepared a list of “depressed classes”, which included a whole host of “backward and educationally poor” communities including some groups of Muslims. In 1885, the Madras government referred to the “backward classes” while discussing the level of education in its province, without really specifying who the backward classes were.

However, after some time, these words acquired very distinct meanings in colonial India. In 1918, Charles Roberts, an MP, made a speech in the House of Commons in which he referred to the estimated 60 million “depressed classes” in India as “untouchables” and “unapproachables”. This was perhaps the first time that the “depressed classes” were identified on the basis of “untouchability” alone. This definition soon gained ground. In the 1931 census, the label “depressed classes” was used only for those castes “contact with whom entails purification on the part of high caste Hindus”. These were typically communities that were reprehensibly denied access to temples, wells, and schools.

The term “backward classes” in colonial India meant different things in different places. For example, in 1902, the Maharaja of Kolhapur reserved 50 percent of the posts in his administration in favor of “backward classes”, which he defined as “all castes other than Brahmins, Prabhus, Shenvis, Parsees and other advanced classes.” In 1920s Mysore, “backward communities” were all communities excluding Brahmins. “Class” in both these places was defined on the basis of caste – excluding Brahmins.

In the late 1920s, the colonial Bombay government appointed a committee headed by a member of the Indian Civil Service, OHB Starte, to look into matters concerning the depressed classes and aboriginal tribes. Included in this committee was a relatively young Bombay legislator, BR Ambedkar. This committee opined that the term “backward classes” should be used to describe three communities:

1. The depressed classes (i.e., “untouchable” castes);
2. Aboriginal and hill tribes (i.e., tribes that were residing in forests, or those that had been doing so in the recent past); and
3. “Other Backward Classes”. This was perhaps the first use of the term which has now become a fixed star in the constitutional firmament.

Who were the “Other Backward Classes” in colonial Bombay? The “rough working” principle which was adopted by the Bombay government to identify them in 1933 was that they would “comprise classes which are approximately at the same stage of social and educational advancement as” the depressed classes (i.e., untouchable castes) and aboriginal and hill tribes, and “are so backward as to need special help”. This was unlike the regime in Kolhapur and Mysore where virtually all non-Brahmins were considered backward.

In 1933, the Bombay government passed a resolution which contained three “schedules” or lists containing the names of communities that would be considered depressed classes, aboriginal and hill tribes, and “other backward classes”. Schedule I contained a list of 47 “depressed classes”. Schedule II had 29 aboriginal and hill tribes. Schedule III was the longest list – it consisted of 125 “Other Backward Classes”. Though the word “class” was used in “backward class” and “other backward class”, it was really a euphemism for caste or tribe – all the communities in the schedules were castes or tribes. However, the term “other backward classes” was not restricted to Hindus alone. Included in the list of OBCs was the “Miana” tribe of Muslims. Interestingly, the “depressed classes” listed in Schedule I were soon referred to as “Scheduled Classes” in Bombay. Under the Constitution of independent India, they would be called “Scheduled Castes”.

The Best Possible Term

The drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly, under the chairmanship of Ambedkar, was responsible for adopting the phrase “backward class” in Article 16(4) of the Constitution. In the Constituent Assembly, KM Munshi, a Bombay leader, explained that they had used the “best possible term” which was available to them. “Backward classes” was not meant to convey only those communities that were considered to be “untouchables”. In Bombay, said Munshi, the term “backward classes” meant not merely Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but also “other backward classes who are economically, educationally and socially backward.”

Ambedkar had been a member of the Starte committee in Bombay which had come up with the term “other Backward Classes” in 1930. In the Constituent Assembly, he explained that they had “left it to be determined by each local Government” what was meant by the term “backward class”, perhaps in acknowledgment of the fact that there were different meanings of backwardness in places like Kolhapur, Mysore, and Bombay. A few years later, in a debate on the first amendment to the Constitution, Ambedkar explained that the backward classes were “nothing else but a collection of certain castes”.

The Mandal Era

In 1962, the state of Mysore decided to reserve 50 percent of the seats in medical and engineering colleges in favor of OBCs, in addition to reservations for Scheduled Castes (15 percent) and Scheduled Tribes (3 percent). In other words, the total reservation in the state was 68 percent. This was challenged before the Supreme Court in the case of M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore (1962). The court developed the 50 percent cap on quotas – the rule that reservations cannot exceed 50 percent of all available positions, which remains in place in a modified form even today.

In that case, the court virtually ignored the history of how the words “depressed classes” and “backward classes” were imported to India, and instead relied on the fact that the Constitution used the word “class” instead of “caste”. Speaking for the court, Justice Gajendragadkar said that caste could not be the “sole or the dominant test” for deciding whether a community was backward. However, at the same time, he seemingly adopted the Bombay approach when he held that the backward classes under Article 15(4) of the Constitution had to be “comparable to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes” in their backwardness. In other words, a community that suffered from several social disabilities was not to be considered an OBC unless it was as downtrodden as the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.

This changed when the Supreme Court decided the Mandal Commission case in the 1990s [Indra Sawhney v. Union of India (1992)]. In January 1979, Prime Minister Morarji Desai appointed a commission headed by a former Chief Minister of Bihar, Bindhyeshwari Prasad Mandal, to come up with a mechanism for objectively identifying OBCs. The Mandal Commission adopted criteria for selecting OBCs on the basis of their castes. The report was shelved for many years and it was only in 1990 and 2006 that OBC reservations were introduced in central government jobs and educational institutions respectively, on the basis of the Mandal Commission report. Recognizing that the words “caste” and “class” were used interchangeably in the colonial period, Justice BP Jeevan Reddy in Indra Sawhney’s case held that a “caste” could also be a “class”. However, abandoning the Bombay-Balaji approach, the court also held that in identifying OBCs, the government did not have to restrict itself only to those communities that were as backward as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

In short, the terms “backward classes” and “depressed classes” were not invented in India. They came to British India from 19th century England, which was a class-based society. However, these terms underwent a transformation upon being imported to India and the word “class” in “backward class” was understood here to mean “caste” or “tribe”.

Abhinav Chandrachud is an advocate at the Bombay High Court and the author of ‘Republic of Religion: The Rise and Fall of Colonial Secularism in India’ (Penguin 2020).

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.