But before we point fingers at them, it’s best to remember that, in essence, the Hindujas have displayed the same characteristics that practically define cross-caste and class relations across India and among Indians. (Representational)
In Sociology and Anthropology departments across India, students are required to read a seminal work by French sociologist Louis Dumont’s most important — and most controversial — work. In Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Dumont looked at caste not merely as a system of social stratification or division of labour: Rather, it is a social fact, an ideological, religious and ritualistic system that sets up a society and civilisation based on an idea of purity and pollution, of – in opposition to the values of the Constitution and most humanistic, egalitarian worldviews – intrinsic inequality.
Tomes upon tomes have been written criticising Dumont’s work from the Right and the Left as orientalist, simplistic, generalising, etc. Then comes a case like the one involving the Hindujas — one of the richest families in the world — and Homo Hierarchicus is before our eyes. At least one of the “civilisational values” that is now so celebrated, flagged by Dumont, is on display — entrenched inequality.
Prakash, Kamal, Ajay and Namrata Hinduja were accused in Switzerland — where they live — of human trafficking and exploiting their domestic workers. The more serious charge of trafficking has been dropped, and the Hindujas are appealing to a higher court against the exploitation charges. They are accused of grossly — and illegally — underpaying their workers, hiring people without the proper documentation, restricting their movement and, according to the prosecution, spending more on their pet dogs (per capita) than their domestic help.
Predictably, understandably and perhaps even correctly, Indians are judging the billionaire NRIs for their alleged behaviour. But before we point fingers at them, it’s best to remember that, in essence, the Hindujas have displayed the same characteristics that practically define cross-caste and class relations across India and among Indians. Let’s look, then, at our own “middle-class values”.
The shiny New India — the spoilt children in a South Delhi park, the pure-bred dogs of Gurgaon that go viral on Instagram, the “safety” of a gated community in Noida, provided by guards in costumes (a uniform, usually, brings respect) — is kept glossy by people we would rather not see. They are kept apart, their movements restricted to separate service entrances and lifts. They are informally employed, almost universally with no guarantees of paid leaves or notice periods or increments.
Every so often, a story of upper-class and upper-caste entitlement (economic and social privilege continue to have a considerable overlap in India) takes a violent turn: Videos of security guards being assaulted, reports of domestic workers being confined and abused feed the social media outrage machine.
Of course, most people are not billionaires and for a family like the Hindujas, the money spent on formal, well-paid workers would likely have been less than the legal fees incurred for their alleged crimes. But such reasoning presumes economic rationality rather than exploitation of the feudal kind, based on identity, on “purity and pollution” in a society where hierarchies are essential, not emergent.
It turns out that the billionaires are much like the rest of us — members of a curious species called Homo Hierarchicus.
aakash.joshi@expressindia.com
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First uploaded on: 25-06-2024 at 10:13 IST
