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India’s prisons should not discriminate based on caste, including assigning “impure” work to inmates from disadvantaged communities, the Supreme Court has said.
The Supreme Court in India ordered that caste details of prisoners be deleted from prison registries in a push to combat discrimination.
Until now, prisons allocated inmates from oppressed communities to carry out menial jobs. The court found that promoting caste-based allocations of work in prisons goes against the country’s constitution.
A bench said legal changes to curtail the practice must be implemented within three months.
Court probe prompted by journalist
The petition to the court was filed by journalist Sukanya Shantha, who previously published an investigative report on caste-based discrimination and segregation in Indian prisons.
According to the report, prison officials would assign labor on the “purity-impurity” scale. This means the higher castes would handle only work that is considered “pure” and those lower in the caste grid being left to carry out the “impure” jobs.
In the verdict, however, the court ruled that prisoners from oppressed communities cannot be assigned menial, degrading or inhumane work merely because of their caste identity.
“We have held that assigning cleaning and sweeping to marginalized and assigning cooking to higher caste is nothing but a violation of Article 15,” the judges said.
“Such indirect uses of phrases which target so-called lower castes cannot be used within our constitutional framework, even if caste is not explicitly mentioned, ‘menial’ etc targets the same.”
Article 15 of India’s Constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
“All such provisions [enabling caste discrimination] are held to be unconstitutional,” the judges added. “All states are directed to make changes in accordance with the judgement.“
Deep roots of the caste system
India’s caste system, which splits up Hindus into different societal groups according to their birth, is thought by researchers to go back some 3000 years.
Hindus are divided up into classes – based on the principle of “varna,” which literally means “color” – the Brahmins (the priestly class), the Kshatriyas (the ruling, administrative and warrior class), the Vaishyas (the class of artisans, tradesmen, farmers and merchants) and the Shudras (manual workers). There are also people who fall outside the system, including tribal people and the Dalits, previously dismissed as “untouchables.”
Hindus are split into – different societal groups according to their work and birth
The concept of “jati,” meaning “birth,” also underlies the caste system and causes its differentiation into thousands of sub-groups based on lineage or kinship.
For centuries, inter-caste marriage was forbidden, and in villages, castes mostly lived separately and did not share amenities such as wells.
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As part of the Ruling, India’s Supreme Court declared that caste-based discrimination of prisoners, segregation of their work, and the treatment of inmates from the “Denotified Tribes” as “habitual offenders” within prisons, was against fundamental human dignity.
Furthermore, dividing prisoners based on their caste would only reinforce animosity, according to the top court.
“Segregation would not lead to rehabilitation… Only such classification [of prisoners] that proceeds from an objective inquiry of factors such as work aptitude, accommodation needs, special medical and psychological needs of the prisoner would pass constitutional muster,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said.
The judgment deemed that forcing marginalized caste inmates to carry out tasks such as cleaning latrines or sweeping, without giving them any choice, was a form of coercion.
15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
(1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to — (a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.
(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.
(4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
(5) Nothing in this article or in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of article 19 shall prevent the State from making any special provision, by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions referred to in clause (1) of article 30.]
(6) Nothing in this article or sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of article 19 or clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making, — (a) any special provision for the advancement of any economically weaker sections of citizens other than the classes mentioned in clauses (4) and (5); and (b) any special provision for the advancement of any economically weaker sections of citizens other than the classes mentioned in clauses (4) and (5) in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions referred to in clause (1) of article 30, which in the case of reservation would be in addition to the existing reservations and subject to a maximum of ten per cent of the total seats in each category.
Explanation
For the purposes of this article and article 16, “economically weaker sections” shall be such as may be notified by the State from time to time on the basis of family income and other indicators of economic disadvantage.
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