The attack in a  Sikh temple in Vienna and the subsequent clashes in Punjab have brought renewed focus on the internationalisation of what many Indians see as a domestic problem.

In August 2001, I heard Martin Macwan, a human rights activist, talk about raising the issue of caste at international forums, specifically in the context of the U.N. race summit in Durban that year. The move was however opposed by the government.

Macwan spoke movingly about how fellow activists had been killed while agitating for their rights.

Nearly a decade later, the debate on how to tackle caste still rages.

Those who want to highlight the issue on international forums, like at the Durban Review Conference at Geneva last month, see no problem in linking it to race since racial discrimination is a widely prevalent practice that helps people understand other kinds of discrimination as well.

Media reports say the Indian government remains opposed to this.

Some experts and newspaper columnists say caste and racial discrimination are similar.

They argue that the focus on race leaves out caste only because Europe’s experience has had more to do with race, and this should not be a reason for ignoring caste discrimination.

Both race and caste involve inequality and prejudice based on birth and descent.

Moreover, as the Vienna incident shows, with the Indian diaspora present in more than a hundred countries and numbering in millions, caste itself has been internationalised and is not a solely Indian concern.

Some say India’s commitment to international conventions and human rights is undermined if the plea of dissimilarity is used to put off raising the issue.

Others say race and caste cannot be equated.

They feel that different races cannot be identified in the diversity of the Indian population and therefore the issue of racial discrimination is irrelevant to India and cannot be likened to caste discrimination which is unique to Indian history and social experience.

In fact, anthropologist Andre Beteille argued that stating caste or any other kind of discrimination in terms of racial discrimination would be unscientific.

He said this may give a new lease of life to the concept of race.

Besides the Indian constitution bans discrimination based on caste, race, language or sex. After all, India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is ruled by a Dalit woman and many call this an example of India’s success at tackling the issue.

Should caste be treated as race? Is the Indian government’s stand justified?

Why did the murder of a preacher in a Sikh temple in Vienna spark riots in the faraway Indian state of Punjab, in which thousands took to the streets to torch cars, trains and battle security forces?

The root cause may lie in India’s caste system that Sikhism officially rejects, but that still grips swathes of India’s billion-plus people, including in Sikh-dominated Punjab state in northwestern India.

“Via Vienna, Sikh caste war returns, sets Punjab aflame” ran the headline of the Hindustan Times.

The preacher, Guru Sant Rama Nand, 57, was killed in a gurdwara in the Austrian capital in an attack by six men armed with knives and a gun.

He was from the Dera Sach Khand, a religious sect separate from mainstream Sikhism that has a large support base of Indian Dalits, or “untouchables”, and other lower castes.

The leader of Dera Sach Khand, Guru Sant Niranjan Das, 68, was wounded in the attack.

The thousands who went on the rampage in Punjab on Monday were mainly Dalits. Authorities have imposed a curfew in parts of the state, in which three protesters died on Monday in clashes with security forces.

The Dera Sach Khand sect was inspired by the 15th century spiritual leader Ravidas, himself from a lower caste. It differs from mainstream Sikhism, for example, in that it reveres living gurus such as Sant Niranjan Das. Some pious Sikhs find this concept offensive.

Traditional Sikhism recognises 10 gurus who led the community from the founding of the faith by Guru Nanak in the late 15th century. The 10th guru named the religion’s holy book, known as the Guru Granth Sahib, as his successor.

Sikhism does not recognise caste, but “the clash in a Vienna gurdwara and the mob fury are yet another manifestation of simmering discontent that Dalits in Punjab feel due to increasing social inequality and oppression in a society that was supposed to be free of it,” writes the Times of India.

In the relatively prosperous state, “caste prejudices and biases remain steeped among followers of Sikhism…facing-off in a festering, endless dispute over rights, rituals and religion.”

In such a context, the appeal of sects such as the Dera Sach Khand is easy to understand.

“The legitimacy given to these deras and the steady weaning away of the faithful from the gurdwaras has often rattled the Sikh clergy and its more hardline followers pitting them against the deras,” writes the Indian Express.

The caste conflict may have been the cause of the Vienna attack as well.

“Caste has moved beyond India with Indian diaspora as the latter does not move as individuals but takes its cultural baggage along,” Vivek Kumar, who teaches sociology in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told the Times of India.

According to some reports, the attackers objected to the temple allowing a living guru to speak in the presence of the holy book.

But Vienna police say they are still unclear on what motivated the kiling.

The temple which was attacked is newer than Vienna’s two other Sikh temples and had been gaining popularity, but so far there had been no hostilities between the different groups in Vienna, said Bernhard Fuchs, an ethnologist at Vienna university.

And the city’s two other Sikh temples have distanced themselves from the attack and condemned it as against the basic tenets of the Sikh faith.

“The foundation of Sikhism besides brotherly love and care for others, is also the principle of non-violence,” they said in an open message.

“Based on these principles, the Sikh religious community in Austria therefore reject all act of fanaticism and condemned this outrageous attack in the strongest term.”

"Bewildingerly diverse" is the way Asghar Ali Engineer describes his native country, India. This 70-year-old Muslim scholar has written dozens of books about Indian politics and society, Islamic reform and interreligious dialogue. As head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, he works to promote peace and understanding among religious and ethnic communities through seminars, workshops, youth camps, research and publications. The centre even organises street plays in the slums of Mumbai to teach the poor about the dangers of communalism.

Our long conversation at the Centre in Mumbai's Santa Cruz neighbourhood of Mumbai during a recent visit to India provided a few key quotes for my earlier analysis and blog post on religion in the Indian election campaign. Since these issues are crucial to the general election taking place in India, I've transcribed longer excerpts from his answers and posted them on the second page of this post.

(Photo: Asghar Ali Engineer, 14 April 2009/Tom Heneghan)

What is the role of communalism in Indian elections?

"The BJP bases its whole politics around accusations that Congress uses Muslims as vote banks and does a lot of favours for them. 'The Muslims vote for Congress and we are against vote bank politics,' that's what they claim. But the BJP itself is basing its politics on Hindu vote banks, (especially) certain castes among Hindus, particularly the upper castes. But when they saw that upper class support cannot put them into power in Delhi, they widened their circle and tried to include some OBC (Other Backward Class) Hindus. Many OBC leaders have become militant Hindu leaders. They are more militant than the upper-class leaders. They see this as the only way to carve out their niche in upper-class politics. Dalits are lower than the OBC. Dalits generally vote for secular parties. Most used to vote for Congress, but now many caste parties have come into existence -- for example, (the Dalit politician) Mayawati. She's also widening her political base by including the upper class.

So are the politicians mostly to blame for using "wedge issues" between religious and ethnic communities to mobilise their voters?

(Photo: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, 9 August 2008/Pawan Kumar)

"Left to themselves, there would be no tension (between communities). But politicians have to face so many elections -- municipal, panchayat, state assembly, parliament - and during all these elections, identity has become important. Since the late 1980s, the Indian population has been polarised like never before. During all those years Congress was ruling, it was a sort of umbrella organisation trying to carry certain castes and communities with it. But not all castes and communities were getting justice, so other parties came into existence. You see it's 60 years of our democracy and each election brings more and more political awareness among the people ... All politicians make promises to Christians, to Dalits, etc. When the promises are not fulfilled, then some regional parties come into existence."

Why is communalism so persistent in a secular democracy like India?

"Our educational system injects communalism into the minds of young children. They grow up with those ideas, with hatred of Muslims. Nehru very much desired change in the education system but he never succeeded because it is a state subject, not a national subject, so they could do little to change it. The RSS, which is a major Hindu communal force, kept on training people in communal ideas and putting them in various cadres like teachers, police, army, bureaucrats, journalists ... We are a secular democratic country, fine, but in practice, communal ideas and violence have gone very deep into our system. India being such a diverse country, identity becomes more and more important. This is not like a European country. Now in the post-colonial period, multiculturalism became important (in Europe). But those nations were formed long ago. India has deep trouble forming a nation itself. Nation-building is much more challenging, all these identities come into play ... "

Here in India, migration is causing problems. Shiv Sena has its 'sons of the soil' theory and says all jobs should go to Maharastrians. 'Why are they settling here? Why are the coming to Mumbai?' they ask. So people were attacked. Interstate migration in India is like international migration in Europe. And India is so backward. There are so little resources to be shared among so many people."

Varun Gandhi, an estranged member of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who is campaigning for the BJP, played the religion card with a speech that reportedly threatened to chop of the hands of any Muslims harming Hindus. This seems to have embarrassed the BJP. Why is he a problem for them?

(Photo: Varun Gandhi arrives at court for hearing on charges of hate speech, 28 March 2009/Adnan Abidi)

"The BJP leadership has to exercise caution. If they're seen as extremists, they will not be voted into power. But this young boy had no experience and thought he'd become a hero for the Hindu community with these strong words. Even the BJP had to distance itself, but then said he would be their candidate."

India's Muslim population, one of the largest in the world, is generally moderate in its politics. How do you explain this? "

Any majority tends to be more aggressive and assertive. As we see, Hindus are more assertive here and Muslims are more assertive in Pakistan. Right-wing Christians in America are more assertive. Muslims are in a minority here, a 15 percent minority. A minority cannot afford to be aggressive. Secondly, there is the impact of Indian culture. It is basically a composite culture. In any multi-religious society, you will find that the different religious traditions create a new tradition that is more moderate and less aggressive. The third important factor is Sufi Islam. In India, the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe in Sufi Islam, which is basically a peaceful Islam. Several things make Pakistani Islam more aggressive. First, it is in the majority. Secondly, Punjabi Muslims want to maintain their hegemony over other Muslims in Pakistan -- Sindhis, Baluch, Pathans -- so they tend to be more aggressive also in their Islam, in order to maintain their hegemony. Thirdly, the army is mostly Punjabi and it is using Islam with a vengeance to maintain its hegemony in Pakistan and to supplant democratic forces. And now the Taliban are another factor ..."

What about the Deobandis, the traditionalist school of Islam that inspired the Taliban? It originated in India and runs the influential Darul Uloom Deoband seminary north of Delhi.

(Picture: Jama Masjid in Delhi, 9 Dec 2008/Vijay Mathur)

"Indian Deobandis and Pakistani Deobandis are quite different. Islam is in the majority over there. The ulema have been politicised, they want and they use Islam. There is a very interesting phenomenon here. The Deobandis here are attacking terrorism and militancy. Deobandis have held largest demonstrations in India against terrorism ... They are puritan otherwise and against Sufism, but in the Indian environment, their behaviour is very different."

So do most Indian Muslims think secularism is best? "

Yes, here the Deobandis and the Jamaat-i-Islami, which is totally against secularism in Pakistan, support secularism in India. In fact, these days (the Indian) Jamaat-i-Islami is in the forefront of the secular democratic movement. In the early days of independence, Jamaat-i-Islami opposed secularism in India and refused to take part in elections. But after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the riots in Mumbai, they totally changed their policy and formed a secular democratic front that's spreading secular values today. The Jamaat in Pakistan is like the RSS and BJP here. But here its character is entirely liberal. "

The situation makes you respond. That's what I argue. Religion was instituted in certain circumstances and believers respond accordingly. If extremism pays, they will resort to extremism. If moderation pays, they will respond to moderation. Religion by itself is neither extremist nor moderate. It is human followers who become extremist or moderate according to their situation. It's a tool -- an instrumental cause, not a fundamental cause. Those who maintain that terrorism originates in Islam have to think, why is there this difference?"

Tell me about your centre's work in Interfaith dialogue and conflict resolution.

Politicians basically exploit misunderstandings, so we base our dialogue on issues. Take, for example, the issue of violence and religion - what is violence in the Hindu, Muslim and Christian traditions? What is the position of women in religions? Those issues create problems and misunderstanding. Unfortunately, those who condemn religion and hold it responsible for what happens in society neither know their own religion nor the others. But when we explain things to them, they start to understand ... "

(Photo: Hindu militant in Kolkata, 26 Sept 2002/Jayanta Shaw)

I conduct a lot of workshops for the police. They have such prejudices against Muslims, all based on ignorance. But they have seen things from one side only. When we hold workshops, prejudices are dispelled. We have more and more requests for these workshops in Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh. I've been holding these workshops continuously, sometimes invited to conduct workshops for the recruits, 3,000 - 4,000 in number.

"We have identified four groups which are crucial to promoting peace. Teachers, because education is very crucial. Second is police, of course, because they maintain law and order. If they rise above prejudices, they can control better. The prejudices are simply atrocious in communal politics, simply atrocious. There are such raw prejudices against Muslims. Third category is youth. Fourth is journalists. What they write in newspapers ... Just now our workshop is going on about peace and conflict resolution in Ayodha, which is the centre of this whole controversy. We hold workshops in all these sensitive areas."

Hindu nationalism, Muslim "vote banks", anti-Christian violence, caste rivalry -- Indian politics has more than enough interfaith tension to offer populist orators all kinds of "religion cards" to play. Coming only months after Islamist militants killed 166 people in a three-day rampage in Mumbai, the campaign for the general election now being held in stages between April 16 and May 13 could have been over- shadowed by communal demagoguery.

(Photo:Voters show IDs at a polling station in Ayodhya, 23 April 2009/Pawan Kumar)

But in this election, the "religion card" doesn't seem to be the trump card it once was. It's still being used in some ways, of course, but the main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has played down its trademark Hindu nationalism in its drive to oust the secular Congress Party from power in New Delhi. A BJP candidate who lashed out at the Muslim minority saw the tactic backfire. During a recent three-week stay in India, I found religious issues being discussed freely and frequently in the boisterous election campaign. But they were usually not the main issues under debate and not isolated from the pocketbook issues that really concern voters. Click here for the rest of my report quoted above.

(Photo: BJP leader L.K. Advani, 8 April 2009/Amit Dave)

This is one of those stories where context is king. Thanks to the internet and India's lively English-language media, anyone around the globe can find Indian reports highlighting the religion angle. One of the news magazines, The Week, ran an interesting cover story about the "high priests of hate." On balance, I think it looks a bit overdone -- it was written at the height of the Varun Gandhi controversy -- but it had this classic anecdote:

"A former BJP minister once said that he had won five times in a row using a simple trick: his men would make an issue of a Muslim boy marrying a Hindu girl or the death of a cow in a Muslim area on the eve of elections. He lost the last Assembly election when he campaigned with a development agenda."

But religion isn't just on the politics pages. Outlook, another news weekly, reported that an American investor long associated with the Hare Krishna movement has offered to build a huge Hindu temple in a planned Himalayan ski resort as part of a project previously nixed by religious leaders who feared it would desecrate the mountain home of their gods.

(Photo: Elderly voter helped to cast her ballot in Puri, 23 April 2009/Jayanta Shaw)

The Economic Times reported on its property pages that "more and more Indians want to have homes in religious centres." Real estate developers and analysts differed on whether the financial crisis would hurt this trend, some seeing a lack of faith in the market while others firmly believed these investments were good. And the tabloid Mumbai Mirror had this story about a court defending religious names on clothes.

While in Mumbai, I went to see Asghar Ali Engineer to talk about the role of religion in politics in India. He explained the central role of communalism -- the use of religious, ethnic or other loyalties to mobilise social groups -- in Indian politics. A noted Muslim reformer, interfaith dialogue advocate and head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Engineer said:

Communalism is not actually a conflict between two religions but between the interests of two or more communities. It is using religious identity for political mobilisation. That is where religion becomes a tool. Religion is not a fundamental cause, religion per se does not cause any problem. Nobody is fighting whether Islam is right or Christianity is right or Hinduism is right. The main point is what the government does for Muslims, for Christians, for Hindus... The BJP bases its whole politics around accusations that Congress uses Muslims as vote banks and inclines towards them, does a lot of favours for them. 'The Muslims vote for Congress and we are against vote bank politics,' that's what they claim. But the BJP itself is basing its politics on the Hindu vote bank.

India is not a nation in the classical sense as in Europe. France, for example, is built on the French language and culture. But India is a bewilderingly diverse country and we have made it one nation. Declaring it a nation was easy, but in the process of nation-building, all these forces have come into play. Whatever development takes place is not based on justice. It is highly skewed. Some religious communities get much more than others, some castes or regions get much more than others. That is why this question of identity has become so important. Those who are left out use their identity to mobilise their people. Similarly, those who are privileged see a threat when other communities mobilise, so they also have to use their identity to ward off this threat from lower castes and backwards religious communities. This is the interplay of religion and politics.

More from that interview in a later post. For more on the Indian election, see the Reuters India website and its special section on the 2009 election. Click here for a slideshow of election pictures.

Here's a video from the second round of voting on April 23:

Much has been written about the imminent arrival in New Delhi of the Third Front, the joker in the Indian political pack that has talked itself up as a serious alternative to the two national parties in the 2009 parliamentary elections.

The difference they tout is of being more inclusive, bringing into the public fold social groups neglected or oppressed by the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Whether this claim, that some take rather very seriously, is sustainable is the moot question. The answer may be no, if the history of this rag-tag group that has emerged with near-decadal precision since 1967 is any guide.

The rise of these parties was part of a process of the broadening of Indian democracy, bringing into the public sphere middle and lower castes, religious minorities and tribals in their own right.

But this broadening has not completely gone hand in hand with it a deepening of democracy, empowering these traditionally subordinate groups.

Rather, critics argue it has become the cultural equivalent of the failed trickle-down theory in economics, bringing immediate benefits to the elite amongst them, entrenching some at the cost of others and widening social disparities.

The Congress party, ruling India uninterruptedly for the first three decades of independence, had as its power-base the landed elite, and its relationship with the subordinate groups was that of a patron and a client.

As some of these groups prospered economically from increased agricultural incomes, they began demanding a larger share in the public sphere. These groups were largely of the middle castes — what is today termed Other Backward Classes in official parlance — and comprised petty landowners and peasant proprietors.

Their aspirations were tapped by the various socialist parties which traced their roots to the left-leaning factions of the pre-independent Congress, factions that had actively led peasant movements in the 1920s and the 1930s.

It was also this upsurge that led these parties to implement job reservations for the Other Backward Classes — the official parlance for these castes — in the states they ruled, much before 1990 when New Delhi made it a national law.

But where they failed was to build upon this silent revolution to ensure a fundamental change in the role of the state as patron doling out (limited) resources. They did not ensure a process of economic redistribution that would benefit all.

Rather, many analysts argue they followed a policy that redirected resources to groups that had reaped the benefits of reservations, and had entrenched themselves as a new elite.

Separated thus from the ideological motivations that gave them birth and nurtured them, critics say most of these parties exist solely for the perpetuation of the cult of the leader and their policies are simply to ensure the dominance of groups that back them.

If one adjective had to be used for the motley crew of the Front, it may be “pragmatic.” The argument goes that it makes no difference to any one of them if India became a client state of the United States or of Tanzania or whether monetary policy is biased towards maintaining growth or containing inflation.

Each of them has slept with almost everyone else, supported policies across the spectrum, bonded with reformists, communists, communalists, secularists, pseudo-secularists, appeasers, all the various other terminological curiosities that pepper the Indian political glossary.

It is this pragmatism that may ease any fears of these parties. There might be degrees of accepting a globalised and liberalised world, but none of them have lost much sleep over ideology or practice, or would be averse to being gently nudged towards that direction.

(Reuters file photos of labourers standing at a road construction site in Bihar (Top) and a policeman keeping guard as voters queue up to cast their votes outside a polling station in Patna in the 2004 general elections)

Will a Dalit, or “untouchable” become India’s Obama? That is the question being posed by some commentators in the India press after the United States elected their first black president.

One Dalit woman, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh known as Mayawati, is the first person to come to mind. Her astonishing rise from Dalit teacher to head of India’s most populous state has led to speculation she could be a prime ministerial candidate in 2009.

For an interesting article on the subject, read “Waiting for India’s Obama” by T.K Arun.

Unlike the United States, which directly elects a president, Mayawati could win power in parliamentary system through negotiations between India’s political parties after the general elections, due by May.

There is evidence her Dalit-based party could become the third biggest party in the election, becoming a

possible kingmaker.

In one sense Mayawati could represent an even greater revolution than Obama in a country where Dalits have been oppressed for centuries and who still suffer the kind of discrimination that reminds oneself of the United States’ Deep South in the 1950s.

On the other hand, as some commentators point out, Mayawati parades her caste to win over Dalits. Obama reached out across the race spectrum and did not use his colour. He campaigned mostly on policy. Maywati has made headlines as much for allegations of corruption and excess — such as erecting statues in her honour — as original policy ideas.

I went to Mayawati’s birthday party in Lucknow this year. There, she had the various top public figures, from police chiefs and civil servants and politicians, finger feed her with cake. Most of them were upper caste.

Will she be asking the same of Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi after the general elections?

Last month, authorities in a southern Indian state fined people caught urinating in public view for a few days.

This week, officials in a remote town started offering people money for using public urinals.

Quite amused reading these news items, I wonder whether we are witnessing the winds of change finally in India or are we just watching another piece of local image-building exercise before elections ?

In India, a drive to ensure cleanliness in streets for a week or so is a common exercise, but people often forget such drives in a hurry and the street corners are suddenly smelling again and people using handkerchiefs and sometimes masks to cover their nose.

But the novel idea of asking people to earn money by using a public urinal was certainly worth noticing I thought.

 Dozens of people are queuing up to use toilets in Musiri, a remote town in Tamil Nadu state, where authorities are succeeding in keeping street corners clean with the new scheme.

 The urine was also being collected and tested for its efficacy as a crop fertiliser, an official of Tamil Nadu’s  agricultural university said.

The poor of Musiri, are earning upto a dollar a month and very happy to keep the street corners clean.

 Will initiatives like fining people or offering money work in a country like India, where basic sanitation eludes millions and people flout rules without bothering about the law ?

Two statues were in the news this week, both controversial in their own way. First, Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, ordered a 45-day-old statue of herself be pulled down to be replaced by a bigger one.

Then Mumbai announced it was building a statue of Shivaji Bhosle, a 17th-century Hindu warrior king more often known by the honorific title Chhatrapati Shivaji. The statue, city officials said, would grace Mumbai’s Back Bay and be taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Mayawati’s self-aggrandisement has provoked a mixture of amusement and scorn. The Hindustan Times pointed out that it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to spend public money on statues of yourself. Amit Varma, who blogs at India Uncut, worries we are at the start of a slippery slope: how long before Mayawati wants a statue of herself taller than Lady Liberty?

But perhaps Mayawati’s chutzpah serves a greater good. Mayawati is both a woman and a Dalit, the name given to those born into the bottom of the Hindu caste system. Neither group, on the whole, has traditionally enjoyed much power in Indian society. Maybe Mayawati intends her statues to herald that changes are afoot? Perhaps she really is India’s Lady Liberty?

Mumbai’s leaders, at least, have chosen to honour a figure whose place in history is more established.

But is Shivaji the best person to be immortalised as India’s New Colossus?

Although the statue is being planned by Maharashtra state’s centre-left Congress-NCP coalition government, Shivaji’s name is more closely linked with the nativist politics of Shiv Sena (the Army of Shivaji), a party in Mumbai which believes that India is an essentially Hindu society and that Mumbai’s long-term residents have greater rights than more recent arrivals to the city.   

True, Shivaji was a Hindu who fought the Islamic leaders of the Mughal empire and annexed vast swathes of their land to create the Maratha Empire. But some scholars, including Rafiq Zakaria, have argued that Shivaji’s name has been misappropriated by Hindu nationalists. Shivaji fought not for Hinduism, but for religious freedom, according to Zakaria. 

“To show bigotry for any man’s own creed and practices is equivalent to altering the words of the Holy Book,” Shivaji wrote, referring to the Koran, in a letter to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who was felt to lack the religious tolerance of his more liberal predecessors. “Islam and Hinduism are terms of contrast. … If it is a mosque, the call to prayer is chanted in remembrance of Him. If it is a temple, the bells are rung in yearning for Him alone.”

Thanksy Thekkekara, the state government official who told me about the planned statue, said Shivaji was chosen because he was one of Maharashtra state’s “greatest icons” who fought against oppression, including the “Muslim oppression of the Mughals”.

She said he was a was a “great protector of the weak sections of society, including women and the poor.”

What do you think? Is there someone else more deserving than Shivaji of being cast in bronze 300 feet tall and set on a pedestal out in the Arabian Sea? And with the cost of installing the statue expected to be in excess of 1 billion rupees, about $25 million, is this a luxury Mumbai can do without?
 
 

There is no doubt that India is a deeply unequal society, that people at the bottom of the pile face discrimination, and struggle for the opportunities they need to raise themselves up. But is the answer caste- or tribe-based quotas in government jobs and universities?

This week, the debate is back in the headlines, as the Gujjar community takes to the streets again, blockading India’s capital to reinforce their demand for more quota-based jobs . Nearly 40 people have been killed in the latest violence, most shot dead by police.

I am not qualified to say whether quotas are right or wrong.

On the one hand, they reinforce caste identity and rivalry and seem to fly in the face of a secular India. On the other, they can be a useful tool in forcing an end to discrimination and giving people a leg up.

But one thing seems clear to me. Relying solely on quotas, or reservations as they are called, as a substitute for real policies to address discrimination and inequality, seems inadequate.

Take the case of the Gujjars.

Already considered a disadvantaged group, the Gujjars want to be reclassified further down the caste and status system so they qualify for more reserved government jobs and university seats. Already classified as an Other Backward Class (OBC), they want Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.

What has developed is a race to the bottom.

Once the powerful Jat caste were also given OBC status in 1999, the Gujjars had to share the OBC pie and felt they were not getting enough. But if they are granted ST status, they are bound to take jobs set aside for other ST groups like the Meenas, and a Meena backlash seems inevitable.

At a more fundamental level, the whole issue underlines the inadequacies of India’s education system.

Gujjar youth have enough education to want more opportunity, but not enough education to compete for private sector jobs in the modern Indian economy.

Last year, when the Gujjar agitation began, the chief minister of the western state of Rajasthan promised more investment in education in Gujjar-dominated areas to address that very concern. That offer has been repeated this year, but dismissed by Gujjar leaders as too little, too late.

Two weeks ago, my colleague Alistair Scrutton warned that pressure was growing for more caste-based quotas in India’s private sector.

But what the Gujjar story seems to show is this. Quotas on their own, as a sticking plaster over the wound of discrimination, are not enough.

Real political will, to invest in education for all of India’s one billion people, is absolutely fundamental to address the underlying malady.

The issue of redressing the imbalance of Hinduism's ancient caste system by creating job and college entry quotas for lower caste and other disadvantaged groups in India seems to be gaining headway in an election year. Now it may be the turn for private industry.

Parties across India's political spectrum appear to be seeing caste-based reservations, as the quotas are known, as potential vote winners. It is a sign again that caste consciousness will become ever more important in what in theory is a secular Indian state.

Now multinationals enjoying the fruits of an Indian economic boom may find they are not immune. Much to the horror of many industrialists worried about their international competitiveness.

India's Supreme Court has already this year upheld a government policy to reserve about half of all state college seats for students from lower castes, in what some call the world's biggest affirmative action scheme.

Then, the Indian Express quoted on TuesdayHindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Gopinath Munde as demanding quotas for lower castes in private companies. His comments were not endorsed officially, but the caste issue was out of the bag for a party that could well win the next general election. The Hindu nationalists' election strategists must realise they could win millions of votes with such policies before a general election due by early 2009.

Turn a few pages of the Indian Expressand there is a full-page advert for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, known as the "Queen of the Untouchables" and the potential "king maker" in the next general elections. Celebrating her first year in power, she proudly espouses her move to introduce quotas to private companies participating in state partnerships in her state, India's most populous. It was the first prominent policy in India to include private business into the quota system.

I recently returned from Bangalore covering the Karnataka state election in southern India where the Janata Dal (S), the main regional party, made headlines by proposing to reserve about a third of seats in IT companies in Bangalore for local Karnataka residents.

IT multinationals are currently free to hire from anywhere in India -- a policy that has increasingly annoyed many local Karnataka residents. Karnataka has its own language and many feel they are discriminated against as highly-educated Indians move to their state to work .

Most leading businesses have shunned the idea of quotas, worried it will worsen their competiveness in a global market, especially in the fast moving world of IT.

For those that think that all this talk of caste quotes in private industry is just small parties playing politics, remember it was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a 2006 speech, who first raised the spectre of quotas in private industry.

He then called on companies to take voluntary action to help lower castes get jobs, a statement at the time widely seen as a warning to India's booming business sector to act or face possible legislation.

India's economy may be booming, but this debate highlights how these religious and social issues of inclusiveness could dictate the election campaign. And then companies may find they are not immune to the issues of caste and Hinduism, no matter how proud they are of their global branding.