SILENCIO Y RETÓRICA

N. R. Levin

We, the educated, urban, middle-class Indians, feel very uncomfortable talking about caste.

Considerations of caste reflect a sectarian and narrow worldview and remind us of rural India with its caste wars. We claim indifference to the question of caste, though our lives are inextricably

interlinked with the historical legacy of the caste system. In fact, it is so inextricably linked that often, we do not notice how our lives are governed by caste.

Caste once again became a burning issue in 2006 over the issue of reservations for other backward castes (OBCs). In what was dubbed by sections of the media as Mandal II, students took to the streets to protest the reservations and to press for the repeal of the Government of India order for 27 per cent reservations in the country’s premium educational institutions like the IITs, IIMs and, AIIMS. There were two major aspects of the argument against the proposed reservations: (a) that it was merely a plaything in the hands of crooked politicians out to grab vote-banks, and (b) it would compromise the merit of students and the reputation and standard of these elite institutions, which have earned a repute for the country in the world. In this highly charged emotional atmosphere, caste became the focus of discussion and it was predicted that it would divide India on sectarian and narrow lines. It was also predicted that the economic growth of the country would be affected because merit is increasingly tied up with the productivity criteria of the market and the norm of efficiency.

In all the debates that raged in the media and in popular discussions, it was often not acknowledged that the focus on merit itself made caste merely invisible, though it was very much present. For

instance, during these agitations and the debates around it, it was discovered that backward caste members had a marginal presence in the mainstream media (considered a bastion of meritocracy) and that there was an absence of their voices of dissent. Merit is determined objectively through entrance examinations, marks secured, etc. But it was only students who had access to a particular kind of education at elite institutions and had the benefit of coaching classes, who lay the maximum claim to that merit. It is well known among policy makers and educational experts that the majority of these winners are particularly drawn from urban, upper-caste households. What is disturbing is that a vast majority of the rural, backward-caste students are not able to acquire the merit, and remain tied up with traditional jobs or end up as informal labourers in urban areas. To replicate the success of the reservation policy in Tamil Nadu and other southern states, where more than 50 years of reservation has assured desired levels of socio-economic progress for backward groups, the Government of India decided to implement reservations extending to the country’s premium educational institutions like the IITs and IIMs.

This chapter attempts to engage with the contentious issue of caste, historically, by looking at the

social structure of India over a period of hundred years and the socio-economic changes the social structure has undergone under colonial and post-colonial regimes. The chapter will also engage with the thinking on the caste question in India by intellectuals and activists from Jyotiba Phule and B. R.

Ambedkar in the colonial times to the post-colonial sociologists of independent India.

CASTE IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD

Caste, as an institutional practice as we know now, had been shaped largely by colonial powers. For administration and governance, the colonial powers instituted a land assessment system and later conferred ownership status on many intermediaries to extract wealth in the form of land taxes and other cash revenues. It also introduced the Census of India by a decennial system for the enumeration of the castes and tribes of India. The idea behind the caste census was that the Indian society

essentially comprised castes, which are governed hierarchically by the norms of purity and pollution.

This resulted in the production of census reports that had the details of all castes, according to Brahminic textual principles. This consolidated the caste system to form a grid-like structure with a top-down model of hierarchy putting the Brahmin on the top and the Sudra/untouchable at the bottom.

Many caste association leaders challenged the census of 1902. Many of them demanded Kshatriya or Vaisya status. Many petitions were submitted to the governor generals and census commissioners for ‘corrections’ in the census reports. It led to widespread discussion of caste in various vernacular newspapers. Many tracts and pamphlets were produced to sensitise the reading public about the consequences. Caste had entered the emerging public domain.

It was assumed that each caste was different from another by an essential and ‘original’ criterion, that is, occupation. This essentialist argument of caste created a primordial self of each caste. Over a period, caste reformists could invoke this primordial identity to mobilize people behind them. The early mobilizations were intended to ameliorate the untouchable castes’ woes and anomalies.

In many villages, untouchables known as panchamas were not allowed to use public wells for drawing drinking water. Upper-caste men punished those who violated the norms by all violent means. Many lower-caste people, therefore, organized themselves along caste lines to build opinion against upper castes. The emerging institutional spaces like schools, colleges and medical facilities were restricted to the few upper-caste men. Many lower castes were forced to become scavengers in caste households. Lower-caste women often had to succumb to sexual exploitation by upper-caste men. Many lower upper-castes were made bonded labourers whereby they were forced to work for minimal pay with little hope of escaping their servitude.

The Christian missionaries along with the reformists opened their institutional spaces to the lower castes to help them get access into public offices. Jyotiba Phule and other reform-spirited men

challenged these conditions of the lower-caste majority by petitioning and complaining to the British authority against the errant upper-caste men. Through all these agitations and caste-based movements, caste gradually got politicized. Phule started the Satyashodhak Samaj for lower-caste men to

challenge the upper-caste dominance and the san-skritizing tendencies of fellow caste men. He argued for the universalization of education for all, including men and women. His support for widow

remarriage was challenged by the orthodoxy. His movement did not last long but the ideas were taken

up by the reluctant nationalists.

In Madras too, responses to census commissioners increased with the introduction of the decennial census after 1881. Castes like Palli or Vanniyan asserted a Vaisya status. In 1901, caste associations were formed to protect self interests like participation in administrative and other official bodies apart from seeking admissions in educational and medical institutions.

Western ideas of rationality, equality and scientific education were open to all sections including the untouchables. The Christian missionaries encouraged many lower castes to enter these institutions and facilitated the spirit of reform among them. Major reformists like E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as Periyar, actively participated in agitations and movements against caste rigidity.

His Justice Party promoted self-respect of the backward-caste people in Tamil Nadu. The British government took the initiative of positive discrimination or reservation in Madras and other areas for backward castes. Consequently, the educated among the ‘lower castes’ began to be appointed as government officials. Many from these castes also started to join the national movement led by Gandhi and others. The national movement, thereafter, took caste as a social evil and started agitations for temple entry for all Hindus. At the invitation of ‘lower caste’ Congress leader T. K.

Madhavan, Gandhiji started the famous vaikam satyagraha in 1924 to assert the right of all untouchables to enter temples. The agitation continued and later became a national issue and eventually resulted in the decree that guaranteed temple entry for all. Thereafter, the national movement led by Gandhiji assured lower castes of alleviating their problems in the emerging

independent India. In one of his articles on caste, B. R. Ambedkar defines caste as the chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy.¹ He said that any attempt to do away with caste has to take into consideration the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Thus, for him, democracy is not merely a form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellowmen.² Thus, caste was perceived to be a hindrance to the development of democracy in India and it could only be achieved through the

annihilation of it. Mahatma Gandhi accepted this: Through a famous pact called the Poona Pact with Ambedkar, caste was taken as a social evil to be eradicated as part of the national movement. The freedom movement led to the independence of India and soon after, Nehru, along with others

including Ambedkar, drafted the Constitution of India. The Constitution guaranteed equal opportunities to all and, as part of the social welfare measures, abolished untouchability and recommended the implementation of reservations in government jobs as well as educational institutions.

WHAT IS AN INDIAN SOCIAL STRUCTURE?

A social structure, according to many sociologists, is a set of social relations conditioned by the material circumstances like socio-economic conditions. We can say that caste is the institution by which the Indian social structure is identified. What makes caste a distinctive social institution of India? Is it the innate sense of inequality or the status-maintaining occupations per se of a particular caste? It is assumed that each caste has traditionally one occupation and it is hierarchically

differentiated according to the rules and status, which assign to it a lower or higher rank. Thus, a Brahmin performs priestly duties, a Kshatriya is a warrior, Vaisya is connected with trade and agriculture and a Sudra provides manual labour to all three of them. It is also said that each caste is ranked by the purity and polluting nature of their respective occupations. The Brahmins traditionally occupied a higher status in society due to their priestly functions. It is status that gave power to those groups who were dominant in their respective areas. They retained social and economic clout to assert their political dominance over other social sections that were weak. This was maintained by their control over the resources and denial of access to the needy. Women and Dalits were supposed to bear the burden in return for the services they rendered to the dominant groups.

Defining the Nature and Function of Caste

According to sociologists like Andre Beteille,³ caste is the fundamental social institution of modern India. The English word ‘caste’ might mean either varna or jati. Varna refers to an ideal model, a plan or design of society. Jati refers to the actual social group with which people identify themselves and it forms the basis on which they interact with each other. There are only four varnas—Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra—and they were the same and were ranked in the same order among Hindus everywhere, from ancient to modern times. The very peculiar nature of the Indian caste

structure is that it has a hierarchically ordered stratification in which people are segregated according to the social group they belong to. Each caste is supposed to have a traditionally defined occupation and they stick to it mostly, even though changes have been brought about in its nature and function in the last century. This has been made possible largely by the colonial influences and new economic forces. Membership in a caste is by birth, and caste is extremely important in marriage. Most Indians marry within their caste. Jatis are many in number and often internally segmented. They vary from one region to another. For example, Brahmins, who are usually understood to be at the top of the social order, may not have dominance over others and some other caste, which may have control over the area. Thus, in many areas, it is those intermediary groups like Bhumihars and Yadavs in rural Bihar and Jats and Rajputs in Rajasthan and Lingayats and Vok-kaligas in Karnataka that wield social power in many regions. In the past, each caste was associated with a distinct traditional occupation and a caste might be divided into sub-castes in keeping with differences in occupational practices.

The emergence of a large number of modern, relatively caste-free occupations has greatly weakened the specific association between caste and occupation. But there is a different kind of association in practice now. In the superior, non- manual occupations, professionals are mostly from the upper castes and those in the inferior, manual occupations are mostly from the lower castes.

The enshrined principles guaranteed in the Constitution were not implemented properly. Many of those deprived sections were left out of the purview of the welfare and development initiatives of the State. It led to many questions related to ‘caste’ as the fundamental sociological problem exclusively of India, which has to be the focus of any study of rural India. The discipline of sociology was in the forefront of rural studies all over the world in the early 20th century.

Rural sociology as a disciplinary form of enquiry was initially the prerogative of colonial

administrators for whom the absence of a proper market economy in land relations and a village of caste-based hierarchical social order were synonymous with the image of unchanging Oriental India.

This understanding was instrumental in the colonial legitimacy of British rule over India. Thus, under colonialism, commodification of land, rural indebtedness and the rise of a new social class happened with changes in socio-economic conditions. The challenge of most Indian sociologists like M. N.

Srinivas was to have different disciplinary forms of enquiry other than that was prevalent.

According to Srinivas, the Indian social structure and cultural patterns are characterised by unity as well as cultural diversity. He goes on to add, the institution of caste may be mentioned as a typical example of the paradox that is Indian society.⁴ The institution of caste that is sui generis of the social structure in India is typical of Hindus, but cuts across diverse religious groups such as Sikhs, Jains, Muslims and Christians. To him, the essence of caste is the arrangement of hereditary groups in a hierarchy. Generally, each caste is divided according to occupational differences, but no caste is invariably associated with a single occupation. Thus, castes living in a village or a group of

neighbouring villages are bound together by economic ties. Inter-caste relations at the village level constitute vertical ties. They may be classified into economic, ritual, political and civic ties. Srinivas says it is the functioning of a village as a political and social entity that brought together members from different castes.

As in many parts of British India, the lower castes were serfs or slaves, either attached to the land and liable to be transferred along with it or attached to the land owner and liable to be sold by him.

The economic forces released under British rule enabled the law abolishing slavery to be translated into reality.⁵ But the agricultural hierarchy is mixed up in different ways and degrees with the caste hierarchy in several parts of India. The caste system together with the inequalities of land ownership produced a deeply stratified society, but that did not prevent the village from functioning as a

community. The rural pattern of life is largely organized around land, still the most important source of wealth. Under British rule, the village became, however, incompletely a part of the national as well as international economy. In post-independent India, the tendency of the villages to be sucked more and more into the political economy of market relations were more visible.

These changes in the socio-economic fabric of rural India were the focus of most of Srinivas’s writings. In his words, to see the monster machine pull down huge trees and cut through blocks of earth was an experience, which they (rural villagers) would not easily forget. Modern technology did indeed perform miracles, and human labour appeared pitiful in contrast.⁶

This process is best illustrated by Beteille’s example of Sripuram village of Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu. This village was selected for the study as it had a multi-caste presence. In earlier times, one’s social position in Sripuram was defined largely in terms of one’s membership of a caste, sub-caste, a lineage or a household. But the situation has changed drastically by the visible forces of social change like migration to urban areas and nearby towns, remittances and investments of money back at home. All these have partially dissolved the rigid and segmented form of caste hierarchy by sometimes subverting the social codes of dominance. Many of these groups adopted the rituals and ceremonies of the dominant upper castes to identify themselves positively against the prevalent norms, positioning them stereotypically.

It is to map these social changes that Srinivas introduced concepts like Sanskritization in his

influential study on social changes happening in contemporary India.⁷ For Srinivas, Sanskritization is a process by which a low Hindu caste or tribal or other group changes its custom, ritual, ideology and way of life in the direction of a high and frequently twice-born caste. Sanskritization has been a major process of cultural change in Indian history and it has occurred in every part of the Indian

subcontinent. Dominant castes set the model for the majority of people living in rural areas including, occasionally, Brahmins. Along with Sanskritization, Srinivas coined another term called

Westernisation to denote the changes introduced by more than 200 years of British colonialism. The term subsumes changes occurring at different levels including technology, institutions, ideology and values.

But another equally important concept of Srinivas’s dominant caste, aimed to represent the

conditions of limited forms of social mobility happening in rural India, drew attention to the important changes that Independence had brought. Post-Independence land reforms had transferred legal

ownership rights in land previously owned by absentee landlords to the erstwhile tenant castes. These castes were also the most numerous and they formed the large vote banks that helped the leaders of these castes to gain unprecedented levels of political power in many regions. In this way, the

combination of the vote and land rights converted the former tenant castes into dominant castes. We

combination of the vote and land rights converted the former tenant castes into dominant castes. We