Varsity organises event to mark centenary of Sree Narayana Guru’s declaration

The first step towards “annihilation of caste” is to recognise its presence in the economy, sociologist Satish Deshpande has said. He was delivering a lecture titled “Namukku Jathi Undu, the long path towards a casteless society” here on Wednesday to mark the centenary of Sree Narayana Guru’s “Namukku Jathiyilla” declaration.

The event was organised by Thunchath Ezhuthachan Malayalam University.

Mr. Deshpande said that the economy should be rescued from its current ideological status as a force of nature. It was being treated as though it were a god-given immutable fate that humans had to bear. Mr. Deshpande said that its “social constructedness” should be exposed, specially in terms of caste.

“In order to do this, we must begin by emphasising that caste is a structural and not a volitional thing. Independent India’s society, polity, and economy have combined to supply with new structural foundations that are modern,” he said.

The annihilation of caste in today’s context did not mean its absence from public life, at least not in the immediate future. This, however, meant that the agenda was unviable. “We need to fight caste oppression, discrimination, and exploitation, in that order of social urgency. But what needs to happen urgently is the recognition of the presence of caste where it seems most absent, the economy,” Mr. Deshpande said.

The first task was to recognise and acknowledge that caste was everywhere and not only where it was loudly claimed. “We need to begin to attend to the ways in which all of us ‘have’ caste. We need to describe the things that caste does for us often behind our backs or without our knowledge. Only then we will be moving forward towards the annihilation of caste,” Mr. Deshpande said.

Were the Guru with us today, his proclamation for the 21st century would be “Namukku Jathi Undu”. “It is our duty to show how this proclamation is just radical as the Guru’s original proclamation was for the 20th century,” he said.

K. Jayakumar, Vice Chancellor of the university, was present.