Caste in stone - Part 1 (Introduction)

Caste politics derives sustenance from centuries of erroneous scholarship that

began with the British colonial project in India. The theories so derived have
since been challenged by many scholars but the associated myths persist as
strongly as ever.
Co-authored by:
Sonalee Hardikar & Ashish Dhar
See
more
at:
http://www.pragyata.com/mag/caste-in-stone-part-1introduction-224#sthash.ABw1ypCS.dpuf
Scholarship, politics and media form a hierarchy of power, over the making of
perceptions or public opinion. Scholarship occupies the highest position
among the three as it largely sets the agenda of discourse in politics and
society. The tentative skepticism of scholars may find no place in the promises
of election manifestoes and the opinions as facts of drawing room
conversations but works of scholarship, by anchoring conversations to a given
premise, determine the way society reflects on the issues confronting it.
Take the notorious example of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) that made
itself the central concern of post-independence Tamil Nadu politics. The early
proponents of this theory claimed a Dravidian purity and systematically set
out to generate a corpus of scholarship and policies that would keep the divide
between the Aryans and Dravidians alive. Manifestos generated by the
narrative took precedence over poverty, education, housing and so much else
of consequence. The fact that the AIT was built on a very shaky ground at best
and at worst, was a colonial fraud played on Indians made no difference to the
ideologues of the Dravidian movement. They trumpeted some vague notions of
exploitation and oppression of so-called Dravidians by an imagined race called
Aryans at a hazy point in the distant past.
It is a truism that exploitation cannot be completely eliminated from any
society and therefore, to deny its existence in ancient Indian society would be a
delusional claim. But when a certain form of oppression that we witness in
contemporary society is believed to have continued for as long as our
civilization has been around, then it raises serious questions about the moral

foundations of the Indian / Hindu civilization and calls for a complete

severance from its ethos. The history of the West is witness to various kinds of
institutionalized exploitation like slavery, apartheid, misogyny, imperialism etc.
but none of them is treated as the defining feature of either western cultures
or western religions. For example, it is often stated that slavery, though it
flourished in the medieval west, was also ended by the same society that first
benefited materially from it because, in due course, it evoked strong moral
reactions from its members, who finally asked for its abolition. Here, the end of
slavery is seen as a case of moral victory of the western civilization and
something to be celebrated. But when it comes to certain marginalized sections
(Dalits) of contemporary Indian society, crimes against them are often
attributed to the basic tenets of Hinduism. It is assumed that it is from these
tenets that the first notions of caste are derived. The logical inference is that
for millennia, Hindus have not been able to end this monstrosity called the
caste system and therefore, the moral principles of Hinduism must be
fundamentally flawed. Readings on caste inequalities became the fulcrum of
Hindu studies in the colonial project and eventually, in the western academia
and they fit effortlessly with later Marxist narratives of class struggle and
liberation, with the result that an excessively large part of the Hindu worldview
is squarely ignored.
In this series of essays, of which youre reading the very first part, we will
take a deep dive into the common understanding of various aspects of caste,
as it is understood in the current times and try to decipher how it came to be
crystallized into the institution that it is today. This exercise, we must remind
the reader, is not a form of apologia and is rather aimed at freeing our
understanding of caste from political, colonial and popular distortions that
have got associated with it over the last few centuries. By carrying out this
exercise, we hope that we will add to the objective understanding of anyone
reading this and do our bit in improving the discourse on caste, which is the
very first step in weeding out the exploitative structures that have grown
around it. This is not to say anything about whether caste is necessary or
wholly avoidable, on which the reader can take her own independent stance.
A brief history of caste studies
Accounts of caste in Indian society by travelers in the pre-British era are
incidental and inconspicuous. There are casual references here and there to
the social organization of Indian society into tribes or groups and there is little

to suggest any uniform application of a religious principle across the length

and breadth of the land. The first mention of the word casta was by the
Portuguese as they tried to make sense of the social organization in India in a
language they understood. [1] The first systematic attempts to create a proper
theory of caste were made by Christian missionaries and then by lay
Orientalists employed by the British crown. These attempts started with
translations of what they deemed to be important Hindu texts and this marked
what later came to be known as the textual approach to caste studies,
wherein the Varna categories were used as important tools in the study of
Indian history. [2] At this point, the general consensus about what constitutes
a caste was clearly driven by the missionary evangelical zeal that demonized
Brahmins as the source of all evil in Indian society, given that Brahmins were
often the greatest hurdles in mass conversions that the missionaries wanted to
carry out. This is now known as the classical conception of the caste system
(CCC). By the time the British government prepared to carry out the first ever
census in India in 1872, the colonial scholarship had taken an empirical turn
in the study of caste, whereby the scholars sought to understand Indian
society by analyzing the field data collected by the administrative arm of the
empire. This shift in approach brought into focus the dramatic discord
between the theoretical textual approach and the observable, empirical data
collected over the years. [3] Clearly, where the theoretical speculation of the
missionary scholars should have helped explain and synthesize the data
collected from the field, it failed to make any sense of it. This schism went on
to become the defining feature of caste studies and exists even today.
It is here that one realizes the stark difference in requirements of investigative
rigor between hard sciences and social studies. A field such as Physics is
ruthlessly unforgiving when it comes to hypotheses on the nature of physical
reality. If a particular theory, howsoever elegant, is unable to explain even a
single instance of aberration, it is duly amended or immediately discarded, no
questions asked. Unfortunately, the same is not true on the humanities side of
the academia and the reasons for the same may be valid in their own right; but
it does lead to much political and rhetorical abuse. Coming back to the history
of caste studies, there were two broad consequences of this schism between
theory and data. One was driven by the deep human urge to explain things. In
the event that there is no coherent explanation available for an observable
phenomenon, people tend to go with the second best available explanation
even if it is wrong, which in this case was the CCC. The other consequence of
the schism was the way in which Indologists themselves handled the

dissonance. Instead of admitting to failure in formulating a robust theory of

caste, probably because it would throw them out of business, the scholars
declared the gap between theory and data was a unique feature of the caste
system.
Following are some of the areas in which the CCC has completely failed to
offer any genuine insights into how Hindu society is organized and in the
subsequent essays in the series, we will take up these themes individually and
offer deeper analyses of each of them. We will also offer a Hindu view of these
items so as to clear the air regarding how the native perspectives have evolved.
We do not aim to make any contribution to the colonial project of caste studies
but hope that we can at least call out the many bluffs that have resulted in
much violence, bloodshed and injustice in this country, if not by fanning
political conflict directly, at least by fortifying the previously existing prejudices
with their erroneous scholarship.
Purusha Sukta
A few months ago, when the JNU controversy was making waves in the media,
a video by Professor Nivedita Menon was doing the rounds, in which she
claimed,

Hindu society must be one of the most violent, to the roots violent society in
the world. Surely, nothing in the world can compare to the deep-rooted
violence and intransigence of the caste system. That is something we can
proudly claim India has contributed to world culture.
Most caste activists have heard of the hymn of Rigveda called Purusha Sukta
and they have been taught that a particular verse in it is the fountainhead of
all caste-based oppression in Hindu society. However, it can be confidently
deduced that very few of them, if any, have actually read it or even read about
it outside of a political context. A common translation of the verse is:
The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rjanya made. His
thighs became the Vaiya, from his feet the dra was produced.

In our analysis of the Purusha Sukta, we will explain what it really talks
about and how the particular verse of this hymn makes a radically different
statement than the claims made by western interpretations.
Hierarchy
All major darsanas of Indic knowledge borrow heavily from each other and are
not contained in watertight compartments, as a result of which, there is a
remarkable consistency in the salient elements of the Indic worldview. It is
generally observed that most universal phenomena described in the Hindu
worldview are cyclical as opposed to linear, time being the most oft-quoted
example. We will examine the available evidence to the best of our ability and
show how the social order of Hindu society was not, at least in principle, a topto-bottom hierarchy in terms of the flow of power.
Caste and Race
One of the most common mistakes that western Indologists and an increasing
number of colonized Indians commit is to understand caste within the
frameworks of race and racism. [4] This particular error makes a caricature of
the real dynamics of Indian society and the repercussions of the same are very
serious for our understanding of Indias history and politics.
Endogamy
Traditionally, endogamy or marriage within the community is considered to be
a definitive feature of the caste system. World renowned scholars, from the
previous centuries to now, have unambiguously spoken in favour of this view.
Alas, there is much evidence to contest this and indeed many scholars have
done so. In this series, we will try to shed some light in simple de-jargonized
English on this anomaly and will show how endogamy is not a defining feature
of jatis or varnas. We will try to establish that where endogamy was practiced,
the reasons were pragmatic and socio-economic as opposed to religious.
Etymology
In addressing the above-mentioned points, we will also pay special attention to
the original meanings of the Sanskrit words as derived from their primal
sounds. This is especially important in the context of Sanskrit. As Rajiv
Malhotra has previously highlighted, there is a sacred dimension to the

language that must not be ignored, if one is to get a genuine emic perspective
of the social institutions derived from it.
History
To understand contemporary caste politics, it is imperative to first gain some
knowledge of the history of caste-based violence and the various social reforms
that have taken place at innumerable points in Indias history, spread
throughout its geography. There have been many who have taken up the cause
of the exploited and their contributions to this struggle must be
acknowledged so that lack of information does not become the cause of a new
cycle of violence, which has sadly happened multiple times in the past.
With each of the above analyses, we will try to equip anyone who has a
genuine desire to understand the context and intricacies of the myriad
problems confronted by dalits in modern day India. In no way are we interested
in downplaying the many instances of violence against the marginalized people
or negating the long history of their struggle. By highlighting the lacunae in
sociological studies, we hope to empower with the right information anyone
who wants to contribute in their own way, big or small, to the betterment of
Indian society and ending the insane politics around the real problems of the
victims.
Banner: Tantric folio: Vishnupada. Rajasthan, probably Mewar, circa 1820-40.
References
[1] Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan: On the Difficulty of Refuting or Confirming
the Arguments about the Caste System
[2] [3] Nicholas Dirks: Castes of Mind
[4] Oliver C. Cox: Race and Caste: A distinction