Black or white matters in India

For five years America has been a stain upon the world with its cold-blooded invasion of another country, Iraq, in the name of democracy.

More than a hundred thousand Iraqis have died, a few thousand Americans have given up their lives, the backlash from the region is having huge repercussions across the world, and the world has, generally, become a much tougher place to live in.

And now Barack Obama has come along with his mantra of change and charged the American imagination long enough into making him a nominee for president. In a few more months, there could even be a black man in the White House.

Even if there isn't, fact is that America's Iraq experience has not only angered the world, it has caused huge waves of self-revulsion within America.

It speaks for the greatness of America that for the second time in 30 years, after it was humiliated in Vietnam, the people are speaking up to take ownership of a second humiliation in Iraq.

But where does this leave the rest of the world? Even if America is ready for an African-American man as president, with a Muslim middle name, is the rest of the world ready for such a man?

As far as India is concerned, the Obama phenomenon is being carefully weighed and considered from all sides. Will he be in favour of the Indo-US nuclear deal, that is, if the Congress party can finally get its own act together and weigh in favour of it?

Will an Obama administration unleash a second human rights whip worldwide making nations such as India cower in its Kashmir mess? Will America carry a big stick and loudly revert to telling us all what to do - something the Democrats are apt to do really well?

Worst of all, is Barack Obama really a white man in black clothing?

All the stereotypes are being discussed in Delhi's drawing rooms these days, but the fact is that the ambivalence in India for Obama, and our preference for Hilary Clinton, is as much about the lack of familiarity with the former (the Clintons have wowed Indians for years in the US) as much as it is about colour and caste-conscious India.

First of all, there's little doubt that 200 years of the British Raj has only accentuated India's predisposition to hierarchy. Whether or not the Indian caste system was begun, 3,000 years ago, as an attempt to regulate labour, fact is that India's upper castes have so oppressed the lower castes that the system, even today, resembles a latter-day slavery.

Examples of upper caste humiliation are rife in the badlands of north India, and far too common to be told here.

But with the Raj years, India further internalised an aversion to dark skin and preference for fair skin colour. That is one of the reasons skin-whitening creams are all the rage in India, and growing their exports abroad.

Sociologists such as Dipankar Gupta of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and Ashutosh Varshney, well known political analyst at the University of Michigan in the US, aver that caste clashes in India are akin to outbreaks of violence that used to take place in the American South some decades ago, because the more powerful communities - Whites in the US and upper castes in India - were trying to show the other side their rightful place in the social order.

Gupta and Varshney also agree that while no formal slavery exists in India, the caste discrimination of the Dalits, until recently widely known as "untouchables", is pretty much akin to slavery.

But they also point out that when people from villages migrate to the cities, in search of jobs, etc, caste labels tend to be much less important. The big city shows no mercy to thousands years old differentiations.

That's the point, then. The city only recognises your capacity to perform a certain service, irrespective of the colour of your caste. It's a straightforward contract, money for your job. Significantly, implicit in such a contract is the power equation between two people, the job-seeker and the job-giver.

Influential people

If the job-giver wields power, such as Mayawati, the Dalit chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, and thereby one of the most influential people in the country, then it doesn't matter to all her upper-caste state subjects what her caste is.

So long as she is able to share the fruits of her power with them. That is why we have Satish Mishra, an upper caste Brahmin, by her side at all times. He is there at every photo-opportunity, at every state Cabinet meeting.

It seems she can't do without him. Clearly, he's made a career choice. Hanging out with an "untouchable" chief minister is far more important to this Brahmin because of the power he also gets to wield.

The reason Indians recognise power is because they have had to learn to deal with several kings and despots of varying castes and faiths over the centuries.

They've all ruled over India, the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus. There have been Slave Kings and upper-caste Emperors, Muslim emperors who married Hindu princesses and Hindu rajas whose armies were led by Muslim generals.

India has seen them all.

That is why a black man in the White House will hardly surprise India. There might be the initial charge of surprise, a disbelieving shake of the head, but the gasp is much more to do with the fact that someone from the bottom of the pile has made it to the top.

If Obama wins, India - and the rest of the world - will hope that he will recognise all the dreams and aspirations of the poor and the powerless and strike a big blow in the Third World's favour.

Jyoti Malhotra is the Diplomatic Affairs editor of Mint newspaper in India.