By shifting the focus to the Indian continent, we were able to consider a case of total resistance to the concept of equality as an identity and society of equals, at the heart of the European and North American conception of equality. Christophe Jaffrelot has shown that in India, the question of inequality is posed in fundamentally different terms due to the caste system. Justified by a cosmogony in which the metaphor of the social body is central, inequality is fundamental. Established according to the dual criteria of the relationship between the pure and the impure, and the social division of labor, the caste hierarchy is locked by endogamy and must be seen as a "system of graded inequalities" that prevents alliances between workers to dislodge the elite.
C. Jaffrelot reminded us that, to correct these inequalities, the political class did not resort to redistribution policies but to positive discrimination policies. First implemented by the British with regard to untouchables (for whom public jobs and places in elective assemblies were reserved), they were continued after Independence, but never extended beyond the lower caste. These policies failed to correct inequalities, as they were designed to create an elite, not to equalize conditions; moreover, they mainly benefited urban populations.
C. Jaffrelot emphasized that, from 1991 onwards, statutory inequalities were coupled with inequalities generated by liberalization. Economic reforms boosted growth to an average of 7% a year, and benefited the entire Indian population, albeit at a very different pace. Liberalization has thus profoundly widened inequalities and led to the emergence of two Indias: the "India that shines" (in the West and South) and the "other India" in the Northeast, distinguished by very high illiteracy and poverty rates.
Christophe Jaffrelot is CNRS Research Director at CERI/FNSP. He is the author of Inde: la démocratie par la caste. Histoire d'une mutation socio-politique 1885-2005, Paris, Fayard, 2005.
