In India, traditionally, as elsewhere, there were only two
classes, the ruling class or the aristocracy and the poor, who included the
laborers, small farmers and the artisans and the landless, shall we say in the
language of Karl Marx, the working class. There was an in between class called
Jamindars or the tax-collectors, owing allegiance to the King and collecting
land revenue on King’s behalf from the farmers. They also rounded off as money
lenders of last resort to the hard pressed farmer, especially when the monsoon
failed or some other calamity struck. The king and his nobles and the
aristocratic classes were the ones who set the fashion, bought the hand-crafted
articles made by the artisans, giving them a market and generally gave
employment to the poor and the workers, by way of their life-style. There was
no middle class. This was the scenario when the Hindu kings rules the country,
called Bharat (not India, for India was a later concept that developed during British
times), and this more or less continued during the Mughal period, excepting that
the aristocracy constituted Muslim nobles and their equivalents. And this
continued also during the British rule for a long time.
Then the British introduced three concepts: one, English
education and education for all; and secondly, opening up of the lower levels
of government employment to all Indians without discrimination of caste, creed or color and thirdly, throwing open access to law courts to all
citizens under the British Empire in India. These three measures brought in a
sea change in the country. The out-castes among the Hindus, who constituted the
majority of the poor in the land, were the Dalits. The last caste or class of
the Hindu hierarchy was Sudras and they constituted a mixture of many castes
and color, but were also equally poor and only slightly better off than the
Dalits, in social and economical status. It is this group that greatly
benefited by these egalitarian measures introduced by the British and surged
ahead, of course not so equal to the first three caste communities, who were
already forward and went further ahead benefiting from the English education
and the job opportunities. This would form the bulk of the middle class in
India later on.
Under the British rule, during the turn of the twentieth
century, the Brahmins and other the upper classes, having undergone good
education, were highly resentful that they should be denied access to the
highest civil service of the land, the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Politically
awakened, but still under the protégé of British government, they formed Indian
National Congress (INC), mainly to agitate and get favors and concessions from
the rulers and not so much as to get freedom for the country. This was the beginning
of a minuscule of an enlightened and educated middle class in India. The poor masses remained poor and plenty, as usual. It was Gandhi, who on his return
from South Africa after a successful Non-cooperation movement there, galvanized
the masses in India under the banner of Freedom struggle and thus empowered the
poor, the nameless and faceless masses of India.
All over the world the middle class had been the cause of
major revolutions. The French Revolution which shook the world was driven by
the French middle class. The moneyed middle class in Europe is credited with powering
the Industrial Revolution. There had never been any great revolutions in India,
during her long and checkered history, mainly because people were lulled into
believing that their status in the present life was due to the wrong deeds or
good deeds (karma theory) done in the past lives and hence they have to accept
the present situation without any murmur, and do well the allotted duties of
that status, so that in the next life they can hope to upgrade their status to
a higher caste (reincarnation theory). Even the Freedom struggle was not a
revolution, but only a mass agitation, employing the democratic forms of
dissent and agitation, learnt from their rulers and employed cleverly against
them! That was the ingenuity of Gandhi.
It was in the independent India that the real middle class
developed. Education opportunities were open to all, without distinction of
caste or class or creed and the bulk of the down trodden got educated. They
were empowered. Caste and class distinctions started to melt away at least in
the urban areas. Today’s Information technology (IT) crowd one sees in
metropolitan cities like Bangalore or Chennai are these empowered middle class,
who are educated, employed, open to progressive ideas and raising their voice
against any violation or injustice in the society. Not that they are fully
empowered or awakened, but they are there, unmistakably, a power to reckon
with. It is this middle class with purchasing power that the Multi-National Companies
eye with interest to sell their wares, in the consumerist globalized
capitalistic market.
The middle class is not without its woes. They are
intermediate to the rich, aristocracy of yester years and above the very poor
and laboring class. They really are the professional class – doctors, engineers,
teachers, IT professionals and so on. They have their middle class morality, in
that they emphasis education as an escape route from poverty; they work hard in
their profession to come up in life; They desire for social respectability,
and material wealth; importance is given to family. One will see strict
authoritarian fathers who enforced discipline and morals. The very rich have no
need for morals and the very poor cannot afford the luxury of morals, but the
middle class live by their morals.
It is from here all problems start; within the middle class
we can distinguish lower middle class, middle-middle class and the upper middle
class. The lower middle class has just emerged from the poor strata and must
work hard to go up in the social ladder; so the pressure on children to study
well, get good marks, so they can get into some good schools and colleges and
work their way to a professional course; financial struggles as the father
educates the children, with the mother also working or not working, are enormous; sacrifices by the parents are a plenty, just to see that the next generation
climbs up the next ladder in the society. There is struggle for survival and
not much enlightened minds or thinking over there.
The next middle position is just that – a middle rung. The struggle
is still there and all the above characteristics are reinforced. It is only in
the next rung of upper middle class, the necessity to keep afloat recedes and
people get some time to think and develop their potentials in various ways –
they have the leisure and time and money to indulge themselves in what they want to do and an open
mind develops with reading habits and frequent exposure to foreign culture and
countries. Artists, writers, educationists, reformers, innovators, adventurists, all develop.
But what a struggle it had been to reach up to this strata! Also independence
of both the sexes develop as well as financial independence of women and many
families end up in divorce, without having the will to adjust and put up with
the infirmities of characters of both the genders. Stress, suicidal tendencies,
depression, anxiety disorders, loneliness, addictions and many other emotional
turmoil develop and afflict the rich and the powerful. Was it all worth it? One
wonders!
The agonies to catch up with the rest and the ecstasies of having
caught up, but with numerous side effects, is that the destiny of human
progression and development? It need not necessarily be so.
More about it later; I think we need to take a break here.
Good bye friends, until the next blog.
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