Is This How “Casteism” is Measured? Yogendra Yadav’s Casteist Salvo

 

Is This How “Casteism” is Measured?

Yogendra Yadav’s Casteist Salvo

Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

Recently, a clip about “upper-caste casteism” being “exposed” by the suave Hindu-hater, psephologist and political activist Yogendra Yadav is apparently being publicized everywhere. It is claimed to expose in a nutshell the stranglehold of “upper caste” students, or the bias against “lower caste” students, in activities even among the modernized “Gen Z” (i.e. those born after the year 2000) in universities and related circles. What brought to this to my notice was a tweet sent to me from the following twitter handle:

https://x.com/haraappan

This tweeter writes in Tamil, and clearly his main agenda (as per the name of his twitter account) is to claim that Tamil people are “Harappans” and that “Aryans” invaded India and displaced a “Dravidian India”: i.e. a pure “Hate-North, Hate-Hindi-Sanskrit, Hate-Hindu” Dravidianist ideologue. But that would be beside the point if he had a valid point to make. But does he? The following is the tweet:  

https://x.com/haraappan/status/1992436050556571960

“Blast to the core 10 upper caste gives opinion for all the people in India”

 

Twitter (X) itself highlights this issue as follows under the heading “Yogendra Yadav Questions Lack of Caste Diversity in Student Panel”:

“On the Indian debate show 'Take That' in early October, activist Yogendra Yadav challenged a group of about 10 Gen Z students on their lack of representation from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. He compared it to an all-male group discussing women's issues and urged them to gain perspective by spending time in villages. The moment fueled conversations about elite disconnect, merit versus inclusivity, and whether such panels truly reflect India's diversity, with some praising the critique and others calling it divisive or hypocritical given Yadav's own OBC background.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.”

 

The Google AI Overview on this:

“Yogendra Yadav Questions Lack of Caste Diversity in Student Panel”

“Yogendra Yadav recently questioned the lack of caste diversity in a student panel during a discussion, pointing out that all ten students present identified as upper-caste, despite Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (SC/ST/OBC) making up an estimated 70-80% of the Indian population. 

Yadav highlighted the panel's composition while participating in an event, likely organized by a group called "Mo.Of.Everything" which has posted clips of the exchange online. 

Key points from the interaction:

·         Lack of Representation: When Yadav asked how many students on the panel belonged to the SC/ST or OBC categories, the answer was zero.

·         Questioning Legitimacy: He explicitly questioned whether a panel of ten upper-caste individuals could authentically represent the views and realities of "Gen Z India".

·         Analogy: He drew an analogy to a hypothetical all-male panel discussing the world or an all-white panel in South Africa discussing the state of the country, asking why the lack of caste diversity was not seen as equally "odd". 

The incident sparked a debate on the representation of caste and privilege in modern Indian student and media spaces”.

And all those who delight in venting their spite and casteist biases have made this a basis for spreading caste animosities throughout the media and social media.

 

In actual point of logic, the onus (if there is any onus here) of explaining why the student panel did not include a single member from among OBC and SC/ST students (the reports do not mention whether it included non-Hindu students) falls entirely on the students in the panel, or the persons who appointed them, or the particular group which organized the discussion in the first place (even the actual topic of the discussion is not mentioned): the above Google AI overview ambiguously tells us it was “likely organized by a group called "Mo.Of.Everything"”. The specific persons or group responsible (if anyone) should be questioned or held responsible or answerable, not Hindu society or “upper caste” society/students, as sweepingly being done here.

If it was indeed that group itself “which has posted clips of the exchange online”, to indict Hindu society or “upper caste” society/students, instead of answering or accepting the charge themselves, that makes the whole thing all the more fishy and suspicious: was the whole issue planned with exactly this in mind?

But, in the absence of actual information about the subject of the discussion, the exact entity “responsible” for the “caste” composition of the panel, the ideology (if any) of the panelists and their organization (whether “Mo.Of.Everything” or whatever), etc., it would be better to look at the issue with unbiased honesty.

Firstly, it cannot be that the specific (if any) university, college or institution, which organized the panel, did not itself have any members of the OBC or SC/ST categories in their midst. If we have “Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (SC/ST/OBC) making up an estimated 70-80% of the Indian population”, surely we also have reservation systems which ensure that “Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes do not  make up 0 %” of that specific (if any) university, college or institution, which organized the panel.

Is it then anyone’s contention that students (or ”Gen Z” youth) from that specific university, college or institution belonging to the “Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes” were expressly prevented from becoming members of the panel even when they wanted to be in it? If so, then definitely the onus, responsibility and answerability for this lies on the organizers of the panel, or on the group (“Take That” or “Mo.Of.Everything” or whatever) and not on Hindu or “upper caste” society on the whole, on whom the group seems to be trying to foist the onus, responsibility and answerability.

But, if there was no deliberate and calculated exclusion based on caste, should there indeed be any onus, responsibility or answerability on anyone? Maybe those people interested in the particular activity in question (the discussion panel) just simply happened to not include persons from the “Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes”. This happens in situations all over the world: people do not generally indulge in different activities in proportion to the percentage of their caste, language, regional or religious identities in the total population.

It is woke ideology (I have already written a lot on this) and hate-ideology-obsessed-politicians like Yogendra Yadav who make identities of all kinds into weapons or instruments of discord and division, even more than the people who actually represent the identity-politics themselves. Of course, today, and in the future, it is these very people who call and will call the tune in India and the world. Sad, but true.