Anna’s thought-provoking post on caste yesterday generated a few links to defenders of the institution which I found intriguing. One defender argues that caste is nothing but cultural pluralism:
… as a truly pluralistic society, the Hindu India allowed each ethnic group, regardless of how numerically small it was, to retain its identity…Caste is a result of this spirit of freedom and pluralism. It is something to be proud of… I pointed out that in the casteless Christian West, the minorities have been forced to abandon their identities and instead have been made to imitate the dominant group in every aspect of life [Link]
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p>This is disingenuous because it entirely ignores the hierarchy and separation at the root of the caste system. What he’s trying to imply is that the caste system creates groups that are “separate but equal” except that he can’t even say that they’re even nominally equal (and we know how the whole “separate but equal” thing worked out).
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p>Another author goes the opposite direction and embraces the idea that caste is all about inequality but says this is good:
… jati and varnam are merely a codification of the fact that all humans are not born equal in their endowments: some are tall, some are fat, some are musically talented, and so on. Caste is about the ruthless Bell Curve, and is about as inescapable as race. It is neither good nor bad; it just is (casteism, however, is reprehensible, just as racism is.) In fact, caste must be useful, which is why it has survived for so long… [Link]
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p>Of course he doesn’t come out and say that it’s about groups being better than others, but when somebody says that “all humans are not born equal in their endowments” it’s hard not to conclude that they’re talking about a hierarchy. His social darwinism comes out loud and clear when he argues that the survival of caste as a social institution is evidence of its usefulness; he’s saying that caste must be a beneficial adaptation for it to have persisted.
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p> The final defense of caste is far more subtle, and comes from an IIM Professor:
The metropolitan elite and rootless experts have concluded that caste is bad. They have made it so that every Indian is expected to feel guilty at the mention of caste. Internationally, caste is a convenient stick to flay anything Indian, its religions, customs, culture.
But the caste system is undeniably a valuable social capital, which provides a cushion for individuals and families to deal with society and the state. The Western model of atomising every individual to a single element in a right-based system and forcing the individual to have a direct link with the state has destroyed families and erased communities. Every person stands alone, stark naked, with only rights as his imaginary clothes to deal directly with the state. [Link]
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p>The argument he makes is that caste based social capital has enabled within caste institutions which then allowed entrepreneurs to emerge:
Tirupur has become a hotbed of economic activity in the production of knitted garments… The needed capital was raised within the Gounder community, a caste relegated to land-based activities, relying on community and family network…. the point that is often still missed is that, in a financial sense, caste provides the edge in risk taking, since failure is recognised, condoned, and sometimes even encouraged by the caste group. [Link]
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p>He further argues that instead of using affirmative action to try to erase caste distinctions, social policy would be better devoted to empowering backward caste entrepreneurs. He even brings out the big guns in defense of his argument, a quote from Gurcharan Das arguing in favor of certain castes:
Gurcharan Das, the strategic consultant, writer and former vice-president and managing director of Proctor & Gamble Worldwide, says in his book, India Unbound, “In the nineteenth century, British colonialists used to blame our caste system for everything wrong in India. Now I have a different perspective. Instead of morally judging caste, I seek to understand its impact on competitiveness. I have come to believe that being endowed with commercial castes is a source of advantage in the global economy.” [Link]
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p>The problem with this last set of arguments is that they try to find something positive associated with caste rather than weighing the net social impact of a variety of different social arrangements. So of course social networks are good and helpful, but you know what – they’re better when they’re open to outsiders and they’re meritocratic. It’s nice to have somebody who can lend you money, but market mechanisms do this a heck of a lot more effectively than non-market ones. Lastly, anti-caste social policy is not at all remotely an attempt to create atomized individuals, so his dichotomy is falsely posed.
Dear Jakob This is in response to your thoughtful reflection.
I think you have only praphrased the two quite common arguments: -the caste system must be good (because it had been good for some) -It is the british who are to be blamed (the pseudo Indian marxist rant, on deeper level ‘denial’)
Here again, you are making a commonplace comment. Taking cue from the neo-classical blunder of assuming human as a ‘rational actor’. Forgettting all the advances in research on this ‘rationality’. I assume you are an economist, so you must be aware of the work of Simon, North, and particularly the recent work of Akerloff and Basu on triadic exchange. They have convincingly pointed out that in some exchange, particularly caste, the ‘individual choice of not to obey’ may not exist.
But what is more remarkable about your analysis is the ‘veil of ignorance’, Because you really come across as a genuine person and I do think that you are genuine.
Its like being an Indian leftist, whose either parents are in public sector or wife or brother or aspiring sons. Who truly beleives that market is bad. In all his earnest he plead to the state for providing for the poor, or open a NGO. Sometimes, in rage organize labor and prepare masses to revolt (incidentally organized labor is just 5 % in India, the left contribute to secure their interests and job security at the cost of 95% who are in unorganized sector) My question is why is the left is against the market? The answer to this won’t be found in the ‘ethical framework’ but somewhere else. I can only give you a hint ‘ look at the middle class composition (70 percent depend upon state either for salary, or subsidy, or protection’, the NGOs, left intellectuals and we are part of this)
The whole debate on capitalism, imperialism which occupy indian intellectual minds…is coming fron a Country where the sequence of development had been State, then civil society and then market. Unlike the West (Origin of Marxist thoughts)that followed the sequence of State-market-civil society (that developed a critique of market excesses). So, what is in the market…that is resisted? (read pranab bardhan on this) Is it fear of competetion. The loss of the priviledges…
But what caste has got to do with it? This has more to do with the ‘ethics’. If you go beyond the caste data to the caste narratives, you will find three distinct yet dominant strands. i.e the Pride (in relation to other caste), Jealousy (if someone from caste deemed low comes in the neighborhood with a bigger Bunglow) and Fear (of society, of losing face, more pronounced at the time of marriage- the perpetuation link).
Now remove caste out of it, then what we have is Pride (as a relational concept) manifestating in a patron-client mindset, squeezing individuality out, seeking or dispensing favor rather than exercising ‘citizenship’ Jealousy (inability to accept others as equal) manifesting itself in the form of ‘lack of trust’ giving rise to flea market economy…giving rise to moms and pop’s stores rather that accumulated enterprises (I do accept that things are changing a little though a miniscule proportion among urban elites). Fear (of losing face to ‘invisible’ yet formidable society) manifesting itself in the dearth of individuality and entrepreneurship, being overly path-dependent, just look at the dating system, how hard it is to win over a girl or boy by manifesting individuality, but so easy to find the partner for life by just confirming (I am not saying it’s essentially bad though)
This is just a glimpse of how entrenched caste is, even extracting an ethical framework is not devoid of it. That leaves us to the question of what to do with it…atleast at the individual level. Can we jettison caste alltogether, I don’t think its wise (more so when any attempt may reinforce it further). If I have to take a high moral ground, I will say that what we can and should do is to create a renewed vision for the society, a collective aspiration for the kind of society we would like to have now, the kind of society we want to live in – and indeed, the question of who ‘we’ are? When I pay bribe to get my work done or just speak in english to get past the guard, in essence I am legitimizing a system that indirectly perpetuate caste system. Why not instead of using ‘connections’ we exercise our ‘citizenship’?
By having a vison it may be much easier to agree on the values that would characterize Indian society – such as equality diversity, solidarity, treating people by ‘who they are’, not by ‘what they have’ and so on –in this way we can harmonize conflicting claims much beter rather than raking the past and getting divided in camps of -for or against caste or reservations. Its time to recognize that a Brahmin is not a conspirator and neither does a Dalit incompetent. We as an individual are entwined within a system that dispense rent, to some more than the others.
The question remains ‘whether we can ever have the courage to stop seeking rent? The irony is often we have more incentives rather than the courage. ‘Individual insecurity’ is yet another manifestation of the caste.
🙂
The cretins who go to such absurd and desperate lengths to defend the caste system in which they are ranked high, see no intellectual or moral dishonesty in whining ad nauseam about other systems, such as white racism, in which they are ranked low. The hindu brahmin is as much of a “nigger” to white racists as a hindu untouchable. Whats remarkable is that this experience of being on the receiving end of unjust discrimination, to which they object strenuously, does not make these hypocrites realise the wrongness of their own casteism.
My sincere apology for the typo and grammar errors, I couldn,t use the spell check. Please ignore them this time.
hmmmm, so do away with the caste system, and then something else will pop up to take its place, and get rid of that, then something else, and on an on. as was said, human beings seem to have an inherent need classify others vis a vis themselves in any given society/community. many parts of asia do not have this same caste system, but do have the same social and economic inequalities. find ways to get rid of the attitudes that result in these socioeconomic equalities, and caste system becomes irrelevant. and i find it hard to believe one could completely get rid of individuals wanting to group themselves and others in a hierarchy where they likely come out on top.
Classic arguments defending the caste system tend to have critical flaws – the most common argument(which I daresay most of us brought up in progressive Hindu families were taught to believe, and our history textbooks certainly promoted this view) is that caste was meant to be meritocratic and fluid and was distorted and frozen over time, to which the natural counterargument is: why was it always hierarchical, and how did it come to acquire an ascriptive nature (i.e. treated as something essential that you are born into, like ethnicity) and be sustained by endogamy, and why bother to name castes instead of just sticking to professions? If caste has been ascriptive for the overwhelming majority of its presence in Indian society, why not address it “as it is” instead of as we’d like it to be, or harken back to some imagined golden age?
Another justification, which is somewhat contradictory to the first one (though often forwarded in tandem with it) is that caste works like community, a form of social capital, offering people a sense of identity and social networks and training in particular trades and therefore it should not be shunned but rather equated with any other form of group-ness (community, ethnicity, etc). Again the hierarchy issue and the ascriptive nature of caste pose problems for this argument. The hierarchical nature of caste, and the fact that castes are defined against those above and below them, and maintained by sometimes coercive means of keeping people within certain professions, poses huge problems for the liberal requirements of the social capital argument. And an ascriptive identity cannot be equated with voluntary or fluid social identifications, even though groups in civil society are never completely voluntary (Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani had an edited volume on this question a few years ago).
It’s rather ironic that many from upper-caste backgrounds who dislike the political mobilisation of lower-caste identity and the idea of caste-based reservations on grounds of meritocracy (I know Gurcharan Das is in this category, and presumably the IIM prof quoted above is, too) might then turn around and defend the usefulness of caste as an indicator of innate ability. It’s the old “we’re up here because we’re smart and they’re down there because they’re stupid” argument that is common among elite groups rationalising racial or ethnic hierarchies everywhere, and it’s painful to hear it from folks who are presumably intelligent. I remember reading about a group of Tamil Brahmins who formed a political group claiming they were discriminated against by reservations to the extent that they were like “the Jews in Europe,” and terribly oppressed. It’s easy to dislike caste-based privileges when they work against you, and easy to rationalise them as working to promote meritocracy when they work for you. And it’s also easy to see caste-based political mobilisation and the continuing relevance of caste as the “fault” of lower caste groups who have the most at stake in raising awareness about caste and how it works against them, while not recognising the ways in which upper-caste behaviour and privilege and prejudice also keep caste alive as a political and social hot-button issue (similar to the way in which many elite WASPs in the US ask why black folks are so angry and insist on keeping racial identity alive in political debate when we all agree on legal equality now).
Never underestimate the ability of people to find rationalisations for hierarchies that work in their favour, or that are deep-rooted in them, though. I remember a very dear family friend, extremely well-educated and liberal doctor who lived and worked all over the world and had sent his kids to school in England, where they had pretty much grown up, suddenly freaking out when one son wanted to marry a woman who was Indian but from a different region and caste, and bringing out the most bizarre genetic arguments against marrying outside your “own.” The popularity of the “bell curve” argument among many defenders of caste is another example, I’ve met a number of (very intelligent) folks of a south indian brahmin background who insist that south indian brahmins are successful because they’re just smarter than everybody else. You don’t have to reject the idea that people are born with unequal levels of intelligence and ability to find the idea of a bell-curve distributed by ethnicity or skin colour or caste problematic.
Rigid societal hierarchy existed in the West in medieval times:
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/langland/pp-pass7.html (start at second paragraph)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being
But for some reason it ossified in our culture.
ROFL.. well said.. while I appreciate your attacks on the “caste supremacists” I’d not just use the “Brahmins” as targets. I think a generic term like the “upper castes” is the right one. The problem with the initial approach is that other upper castes hijack the “anti-caste-supremacy” movements and turn it into an anti-Brahmin movement like what happened in Tamilnadu.
Ever hear of market failure. There are lot of people (eg Domestic Maid, Drivers, Watchmen) who wouldn’t qualify for borrowings from the market (banks or other legal means) and have to rely on loan sharks. Film makers in Bollywood getting their money from the mafia.
Greed, for a lack of better word, is good
Yet the Indian government propagates it through Reservations and Quotas. Elections are fought on caste in many states in India, primarily in UP & Bihar. Mayawati did not win the UP elections on a platform of development, better services to the electorate but a simple mathematical equation Dalit + Brahmin + Muslim > Yadav + Muslim. Hence, Dailt + Brahmin + Muslim = Power.
In fact Mayawati has proposed reservation for poor Brahmins and other poor upper castes.
The neighboring state of UP, with a population equal to the combined populations of France, Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium elected a DALIT as a chief minister. Who says Bihar won’t elect its dalit chief minister.
In contemporary Indian caste wars its no longer Brahmin vs Dalit but land owning Other Backward Classes (OBC, yes the C is Class and not Caste) vs land less Dalits.
Non-Brahmin’s last point is an important one, caste struggles are much less about Brahmins vs Others than they used to be as Brahmins have got pretty much urbanized in most parts of India and don’t play the same role in rural hierarchies as they used to, and often those who benefit from some caste reservations (OBCs) are capable of exercising their own power and repression against those further down.
If you eat pork(or something like that) in Arabia, you are dead.
If you eat Beef in India, you are only outcasted.
Picture the most self-important, “holier-than-thou” person you know… someone with a really elevated idea of himself…
…picture him seated on the toilet, with a really bad case of diarrhea.
Popes, kings and brahmins are all equal on the porcelain throne.
Huh? How does eating pork/beef relate to caste discussions?
And FYI, you can buy pork without any problem in most Arab countries – ham, bacon, etc (though pork sausage is difficult – sniff). It’s easier than trying to find decent pork products in Delhi, which is a pet peeve of mine.
”The neighboring state of UP, with a population equal to the combined populations of France, Germany, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium elected a DALIT as a chief minister. Who says Bihar won’t elect its dalit chief minister” So what if they have enough numbers to elect a chief minister…it doesnt mean that all of them are going to be free from discrimination and social stigma…it just means that one of them(the chief minister)gets to enjoy the good life, who ofcourse is going to take as much opportunity as he/she can to grab/steal as much goodies as they can before it’s time to leave the post.It doesnt do much to erase the institutionalised racism/discrimation which has been a major part of Indian culture for the last 4000years…Of course according to some, the caste system,sati,devadasi system are an elaborate Mughal/British/Missionary plot to keep the poor Hindus in ignorance about the glories of the Hindu culture which has been a light to the rest of the world, leading to the Industrial/Technological revolution which the west has taken over from India…
I think he explicitly mentioned Saudi Arabia. I’m just curious. Is pork available in Saudi??. Only a few days back I read that 3 french non-Muslim workers were killed because they were found on the road to Mecca. It is hard to believe you’d get pork in Saudi..
Sorry, I’m too sleepy..
Not true. Quite a few groups, maybe most, accept (or internalize) the ‘superiority’ of certain other groups.
The comments contesting your viewpoint demonstrate that the “internalization theory” is deeply flawed. You should read caste origin stories, especially Harijan/Dalit origin stories. Many of them claim they were screwed out of their status by devious upper castes or think they are “fallen Ksatriyas.” A better way of looking at it is the “I am better and distinct” idea. I’ll give an example: Ambedkar advocated a mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism so as to “unite the oppressed” Gail Omvedt write this recently about the results fifty years on:
Developments since Independence have left such hopes unfulfilled. Buddhism in India has remained a Dalit Buddhism and the Republican Party has remained a Dalit-only party. Buddhism has even been a feature of specific Dalit castes — Mahars in Maharashtra, Chamars to some extent in Uttar Pradesh. The second major regional Dalit castes (Matangs, Madigas, etc) often stress their Hindu identity in reaction. > link
Why would the Matangas and Madigas resist the Mahars? Because they don’t want to fall under Mahar purview and dominance, and are very proud of their traditions, thank you very much.
The caste system has a hierarchy by definition.
That definition has about as much descriptive value as Biblical accounts of the flat Earth. Go to an Indian village and ask a Jat or a Chamar whether he thinks a Brahmin is superior – he will laugh in your face.
So according to you what will do much for the Dalits.. Converting to other religions.. 🙂 There are truths and lies everywhere. We just need good pairs of careful eyes to find out.. (not sleepy ones)
I think “Sati” is more of a missionary plot than anything else.. First it is not widespread allover India and localised to a few upper caste households in Bengal and Rajpuatana. Second at the same time that brits were abolishing Sati, they are taking out whatever meagre rights that have been offered to Brit women at that time. definitely these guys are not champions of women rights.. It is part of “civilizing the heathens” project. “Sati” makes for good propaganda value.
disease (or rather epidemics) that was brought by the colonisers. I have read that the Spaniards presented the natives with clothes worn by “small pox” victims. “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamons was very informative..
Well you will have one lucky sod who will grab/steal as much as he/she can lay his/her hands on but it still breaks the glass ceiling where other Dalits can now dream and work toward greater empowerment. We had a Dailt president in India but thats a ceremonial position with no real power.
If Obama wins it will not change the situation for African Americans in USA greatly but a AA kid born a single mom in a ghetto can dream to follow in his footsteps with the knowledge that a glass ceiling has been broken. It took 214 years after independence for a African American to be elected as a governor of a US state and has not yet elected a president or vice president outside the White, Christian, Male background.
Social progress has been faster in post independence India with 6 members, 4 Muslims (1 acting) 1 Sikh & 1 Dalit, of minority communities serving as head of state. One Sikh as head of government. You had many Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains who have served as Chief Ministers or Governors or the Supreme Court.
How did caste originate?
Social progress has been faster in post independence India with 6 members, 4 Muslims (1 acting) 1 Sikh & 1 Dalit, of minority communities serving as head of state. One Sikh as head of government. You had many Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains who have served as Chief Ministers or Governors or the Supreme Court.
By that logic there is more social progress for women in Pakistan/Bangladesh than in the US. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh have had female heads of state.
There is a reason why the caste system is alive and well in modern times – the other Indian system of arranged marriages, which mandates same-caste matches. Thus the institution remains intact and the number of one-caste Indians with a strong caste affinity keeps on multiplying.
I have relatives and acquaintances in India of my caste who grew up in the melting pots of Mumbai and Delhi and ended up marrying people of other castes and even other religions. In their lives, caste is a very remote concept. Their mixed-caste children – not that such a definition officially exists – have practically no interest in caste.
Dating leading to marriage is still an urban and upper-class practice in India and not likely to become the norm for 90% of the population in the near future. So the caste system is not likely to suffer dilution from inter-caste marriages anytime soon, but there is a glimmer of hope. Caste affinity is weakening as the population becomes more urban and falls into the urban norms of losing touch with extended families and traditions.
A disclaimer – I did’t mean to be judgmental on the issue of arranged marriage. It has its own virtues in the Indian context.
Saudi Arabia is an exception, you can’t get pork there, but in every other Arab country you can, AFAIK. I don’t think the person who asked that rather irrelevant question was really interested in the minutiae of pork consumption so much as trotting out the old chestnut of “caste isn’t so bad because other people do worse things.” I should have just ignored it.
1491 is a revisionistaccount. The fact is that America is built on White Supremacy, also known as “Manifest Destiny”which involved all sorts of treachery and broken treaties to achieve. The genocide of the Native Americans is one of the most spectacular displecements of a people in history, extremely immoral and cruel.What then the talk of equality in the wake of all this?
They were delivered into office through birth (Benazir Bhutto) or marriage (Khalida Zia), unlike the Dalit Chief Ministers (Mayawati and Sushil Kumar Shinde) or President(K R Narayan) in India.
By that logic there is more social progress for women in Pakistan/Bangladesh than in the US.
Europe would be a better example of female empowerment than US. You have had female politicians from non political families elected as heads of government and head of state. You just had an election where a single mother with four kids contested for the presidency of the French republic. I doubt that would happen in the US.
The word caste stands for many different things in india: a system of personal ethnic markers, of communities with distinct cultural practices, and, yes, of discrimination in the public sphere based upon caste/jati origins (casteism). The last is similar to racism and needs to be treated like racism. This article conflates all three, IMHO, a poor starting point for a broad discussion of the subject.
There is very substantial historical evidence, provided by respected historians like Kosambi and Thapar, that caste is an adaptive device for people with many different traditions to live together and a kind of evolution from tribalism. This was not some kind of wonderful arrangement but a pragmatic one. Those who feel it is inherently disgusting etc. should first take a look at the fate of the askenazic jews in Germany or the native peoples in the New world. Some interactors have noted this but have ignored the additional aspect of cultural erasure: even when the “other” is allowed to survive, their cultures are completely erased. This is quite distinct from the varna/jati-based model in which groups are free to practice their own traditions.
There is also substantial evidence that many indian kings were sudras/lower-caste. The historian kosambi notes that the famous Chandragupta Maurya had insignificant caste origins and that even today the “more” jati may be found in Bihar. And where would we be without the cowherd Yadavas, kin of Bhagwan Krishna himself? Some leading hindu cultural figures are also of low-caste backgrounds such as Valmiki, author of the Ramayana.
Faux-profundities like “market mechanisms do this a heck of a lot more effectively than non-market ones” in discussing the social capital mechanism provided by caste dont really add upto much. Nazi germany was a market economy and black slaves were bought and sold in the US markets all the time. There is nothing inherently ethical or liberating about market mechanisms.
Markets are one mechanism, cultural practices and group solidarity are another mechanism for mobilizing capital. For a long time (till 1950?), financial markets in the west were in fact closed to all but white men, usually of north european origin!! Hows that for a unique combination of jati-based mobilization crossed with capitalism??
The hindu brahmin is as much of a “nigger” to white racists as a hindu untouchable.
Neat. Baiting the caste defenders by throwing the N-word at them. You’re too f**ked up yourself to start calling others names. And nice try with the quotes.
Exactly.
Because it obviously has sucked for a while “as it is,” and harkening back to the original intent actually provides value such as dignity of labor and the importance of all jobs in a society.
Think of it as going back to the Ten Commandments and really following them.
(Speaking of the dignity of labor, how many of you know the name of your food-slinger and custodian at work/school and talk to him/her on a regular basis?)
My last comment on this post:
The caste system has been abolished and Brahmins really have no more socio-political power, yet as Non-Brahmin says, “the Indian government propagates it through Reservations and Quotas” and it’s kept alive as a bone of contention for obvious political gains. I entered the comments section in this post (and ANNA’s) quite reluctantly because almost all discussions on shunning Hindu caste aren’t really about shunning the hierarchical nature of caste or the disintegration of all castes, but a collective pot shot at Brahminism. This is unacceptable on so many levels. A Brahminical caste system is “idiotic and wicked,” but a caste system that exists in India today “which is not Brahmin vs Dalit but land owning Other Backward Classes vs landless Dalits” is acceptable and isn’t taken to task here? What rot! Thanks for playing Straw Man. Drive through.
Again, all of MY comments object to the caste system as a whole, but celebrate the identities of the individual castes themselves as different manifestations of Hinduism and not casteism. Thanks.
Reply to Xtraview #51:
Dear Xtraview,
I neither paraphrased nor endorsed any of these two arguments: “the caste system is good (because it had been good for some)” or “it is the British who are to be blamed.” I find both arguments nonsensical. The point is this: the current description of Indian society in terms of a caste system is both empirically and conceptually flawed and it has the weird consequence that most of the Indian population for the past millenia consists of immoral human beings. Given its empirical and conceptual flaws and this kind of consequence, instead of reproducing the dominant story about the caste system, we would better examine the nature of this story and its historical development. Otherwise, we will just restate what Protestant missionaries, colonial officials, Indian intellectuels, western social scientists have been saying for two hundred years without getting anywhere.
The statement “the caste system is good” does not make sense, because it is unclear what it refers to. If it refers to the existence of a variety of jatis in India, I don’t think we can attribute predicates like “good” or “bad” to such a phenomenon. We do not have the required understanding to come to an ethical judgement about the phenomenon of jati as such. If it refers to the petty, immoral and cruel behaviour of certain members of some jatis towards other jatis, then I would say this is bad and evil. If it refers to “the fixed caste hierarchy with its four varnas,” then I would say: if such a fixed hierarchy were to exist in any society, it would be bad.
About: “It is the British who are to be blamed.” This is the kind of story Nicholas Dirks and others like to tell: the British created the caste system together with the Brahmins, so they are to blame for its hierarchy and discrimination. This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the British. They did not create any system in Indian society, but rather a description of Indian society in terms of “the hierarchical caste system.” They were not alone in giving such a description of caste: the foundation of this image of a caste system was laid by earlier European travelers, merchants and missionaries.
“The caste system” described an entity in the experience of these Europeans. When they landed in India, the Europeans seemed to know in advance what would be the basic structure of its native traditions. As instances of false religion, these would consist of priestly hierarchies and fabricated laws that deceived the believers into idolatry. From the seventeenth century onwards, the descriptions were unequivocal: Indian religion had taken the form of sacerdotal slavery, a tyranny of priests, who were incidentally called “Brahmins†here. Like their Catholic counterparts, the Hindu priests had kept “the religious books†and “the sacred language†to themselves so as to protect their worldly interests. They were supposed to have imposed the caste hierarchy in order to manipulate the believers into obeying the Brahmin interests. This is the foundation of the entire story about “Brahminism” and “caste hierarchy.” It merely reproduces the Protestant attack of the Indian traditions. So, instead of talking about the evil “Brahmanism,” we could reflect about whether we have actually encountered this so-called “Brahmanism” somehwere in India, or only seen it in textbooks, libraries and documentary films that reproduce the Protestant colonial understanding of India.
Yours,
Jakob
Maitri, I understand what you are saying completely. You’re not defending the system or the subjugation of anyone, you’re just defending your identity and the specific culture you grew up in. I don’t think anyone should fault you for that, and certainly no one can take that away from you.
Ennis – There is absolutely no empirical evidence as to what is at the root of the caste system. You are simply repeating the evil hindu hypothesis which links the “caste system” to scriptures and brahmin oppression. There is an ongoing study being carried out in the villages of Karnataka state for the past four years, the results of which indicate that none of the jatis questioned were aware of a link between any scripture or any ideology and the existence of their jati. Nor are they aware of any jati heirarchies. There have been a number of comments on this thread that indicate the same thing. It is interesting that people who identify with the jati system, live and breathe it so to speak, do not view it in terms of separation but rather in terms of belonging.
Secondly, the further down the socio-economic ladder one is, the more one is tied in to their jati and dependent upon it.
I think the burden is on you to answer why you choose to describe something as a form of oppression and separation when the people who live and breathe it don’t see it that way. How is your distorted representation not a form of bigotry? Secondly, you need to explain why people continue to depend upon their jati relations if it is of no use to them. You cannot simply ignore this question, which is one I have raised on SM many times.
Meanwhile, oppression and crime should be treated exactly for what they are – oppression and crime. Nobody’s denying that. It is disingenuous of you to seek your escape hatch via this route. In any case, your attitude is the widely-prevalent one and does not seem to have brought us any closer to an understanding of what we are dealing with.
Maitri – Please dont take this the wrong way. But would you say (for example) the practice or Madi or not eating at non brahmin peoples houses or food cooked by non brahmins is a different manifestation of Hinduism or just an outdated practise of treating women and non brahmins as less than equal? Doesnt holding on to some practices like these along with other benign practices like listening to Suprabhatam or Vishnu Sahastranamas, going to the temple etc make a follower complicit in something that is inherently wrong?
I am all for celebrating ones identity, but unconditional celebration of all things in the past without reflection is just blind ritual not an identity.
P.S – I agree with you that we need to avoid about anti brahmin diatribes when making points against casteism.
Theories on caste resistance
In the context of Caste system in India, the Coase theorem would dictate that market-impeding institutions such as caste system should be eroded away by market forces. The Theory predicts that, in highly competitive markets, discrimination will prove to be a transitory phenomenon as there are costs associated with it and the resultant erosion of profits will act as a self-correcting dimension of discrimination. Yet belying the logic, caste system persist and even growing stronger in some areas. Similarly, political scientist Fred Riggs (1964) also argued that that many developing societies (including India) will lose their internal cohesion as a result of their encounter with modernity, not much different from the social scientists who predicted caste will eventually lead to class. However, contrary to expectations the caste is still relevant today and discussed here.
So the question remains why does caste system resist erosion?
A detailed review of theoretical and empirical work is undertaken by Deshpande (2000), for the purpose of the discussion I highlight key explanations:
According to Osborne (2001), “caste†as a cultural proposition, has remained a useful ideological and political construct as it facilitates the formation of pressure groups on a government that has many rents to dispense and many factionalized citizens eager to seek them. The reason it persists is that while seeking rent from State, the choice facing citizens is whether to obtain rents via caste or some other means. Given that caste-membership requires little in the way of organizing costs and it is easy to verify, the continuance of these identities becomes a powerful cultural force in Indian society.
Akerlof (1984) provides explanation of caste economy which may be self-perpetuating. He writes “. . . usually the greatest rewards go to those who do not break social customs . . . the models of statistical discrimination and caste explain why economic rewards may follow those who follow prevailing social customs.â€
One of the key insight offered was, while economic transactions in a free market system are dyadic (buyer, seller), those in a caste system are triadic i.e. (buyer, seller and community), any one who refuses to punish defector (not observing caste restrictions) is sanctioned (or fear sanction) by the other members of the community. This ‘assumed’ as well as ‘real’ fear of reprisal maintains the caste system. (Akerlof 1976, Basu 2000) This can be also rephrased as: the probability of a transaction between person X and person Y depends on prior transactions (in relationship) unlike exchanges (assumed in most neo-classical economics) where X and Y are independent of each other (in competition). He demonstrated that economics in a caste system will have sub optimal equilibriums and a critical mass of coalitions is needed to shift the equilibrium. However, his model fails to explain what makes the ‘attitudes’ against dalits derogatory? His model predict possibility of coalition forming among Dalits but underestimate the power of upper castes to prevent such a coalition or the vulnerability among lower castes to form such coalition in the first place. The increasing violence against dalits is testimony to such backlash.
Kuran (1987), argument is that the system continues because the most oppressed are in fact its supporters. This support could be either forced because of fear of reprisal or genuine, due to a mistaken fatalism. This simplified version ignore huge chapters out of India’s history that are replete with social and religious protest against the caste system as well as dalit narratives that speaks of daily struggles.
Scoville’s, (1996) explains caste system as an alternative to reliance on market system, according to him compartmentalization of caste based occupations, as hereditary, compulsory and endogamous support non competitive labor market institutions. This insight seem plausible however the “Jajmani matrix†based on reciprocal obligations within caste system that he developed connote ‘fairness in exchange’ ignoring the issue of surplus, i.e. who (which castes) appropriates it within the hierarchy and the dimension of exploitation inherent in the system.
Despite the direct relationship of economics and caste system, the reserach on caste has been conspicuous by its absence. However, the silence over caste in the academics is breaking.
Ramchandra Guha“Why Indian intellectuals and activists are hostile to the market†writes “behind this (hostility to market) lie the prejudices of caste and class. Indian social scientists are, almost to the last man, of Brahminical, or at least suvarna , origin. And their conditions of work are far removed from the production process . They do not have to go about the messy business of entering the market-place; instead, they are subsidized by the stateâ€.
Similarly, Kaushik Basu reflects ” “it is often thought of as politically and morally correct behavior not to take account of a person’s group or community identity….But, if, as research analyst, we ignore a person’s identity markers, we risk missing out on a critical factor, which may explain why a person is so poor and this could handicap our efforts to design good policyâ€
What a load of nonsense! Whats funny is that you are actually serious. Next you will insist that the Manu Smriti was written by christians to discredit hinduism 🙂 Get real.
Varna and jati are two different things. To deny that there is a hierarchy in hindu casteism is to lie through your teeth. Which is exactly what all the numerous glorifiers of casteism are doing here.
This opinion is probably belated but I do just want to comment because I feel rather strongly about how the concept of caste system has been maligned. Pardon me if I come on too strongly about this and I would like to clarify that I mean no offence when I am stating my opinion.
Please also excuse the rambly-ness ( is there word which would express that more coherently?) of this post, its nearly 3 am and I haven’t had enough coffee to justify intelligent comment.
Historially, the caste system, as it was originally set out in the Vedas was a segregation of society that were based on circumstances THEN. Each person born into their caste, whether brahmin, kshatriya, vaishnava, shudra had a duty that had to be fulfilled that would ensure that society would be functioning effciently. The point of the caste system was a division of labour – for example, the Kshthriyan as the king/warrior had the duty, his dharma, to ensure that the kingdom was safe and so on. And it did work, because hey, we’re here aren’t we.. Nobody was fighting caste wars in the epic Hindu stories, were they? (well, not to my knowledge…they all seemed too busy fighting amongst family =])
So in logical conlusion,the CONCEPT of the caste system wasn’t inherently bad, it was just a method of governance that worked in the circumstances when it was first implemented in. What I do agree with is that the caste system in place now sucks. As with anything, simply implementing a structure rigidly without acknowledging the differentials is a receipe for disaster. So, when India became democratic, the caste system should have been discarded because that system cannot be sustained in a democracy, simply because democratic ideals lay upon the notion of equality, which the caste system is not based upon. The concept of the caste lay upon the fact that people were different and ackowledging it and exploiting the strengths of the differences to make a functioning society, not a democratic one. Right now, it is just a square peg in a round hole.
So the parody of the caste system in India is simply all about politics. No politician really cares about the welfare of the dalits, its simply because they are the biggest voting group and in India, everything is done for political power. So the caste system is invoked in the name of politics so that politicians can garner support – You, the common man, are being opressed because you are a dalit. What has this government done for you? Nothing. Vote me in and I’ll make a difference- Caste has just become politicised and is merely a tool of politicians. When these ideas are presented to the target voters, most of whom are usually poor and uneducated, they just accept it blindly. And this is a perpetuating cycle. How else does one explain the constant sub divisions of casts that occur as and when political parties merge and seperate? Suddenly, the same guy who was screaming discrimination at one party would be liasoning with him in the next elections – that’s not about caste, that’s about politics!
To MOST sensible educated NRIs and Indians, I believe caste is more of a cultural identification. Its more of a way certain practices are carried out. Differnt caste systems, for example, have different methods of carrying out ceromonies such as marraiges and death rites. Being a so- called upper born, like brahmin, is not something that most people parade around because Indian society seems to espcially demonise them as the perpetuators of the caste system when the truth is far from it. Brahmins, don’t enjoy special privileges and in fact are discriminated against in favour of affirmative action. ( permit an AH HAH! here. Affirmative action takes place as a by product of the ironic inequality of capitalist democracy – which was not really an issue in the caste system as was practiced then because everybody had a positive role in society – again in favour that the inherent concept of case is not evil etc.) And let’s not even get into the whole thayirsatham (curd rice) issue =D
Like I said earlier, the castes themselves don’t matter, you being upper born or not has no real value in India.. its just about politics and being the flavour of the month. And until the masses realise that they are being played by the politicians, the bastardised version is just going to go around and create more misconceptions and senseless violence. And I truly believe the way out of this is education, which is pretty much the answer to all the problems .
Prema, You have no understanding of what Jakob de Roover is saying and yet you rage on! If you have actually lived in India, you would know that nobody knows anything about Manu Smriti and it has zero impact on any real dynamic in India except for missionary and western colonial inspired studies on denigrating India and Indian culture and that goes for Brahminism (what is this mythical beast) as well. Jathi in India is simply not perceived through those lens and it is not productive to continue using that lens if inequities in Indian society is what you are trying to address.
Is this deceit or denial?
A fine example of cognitive dissonance. How do you manage to object to a system yet celebrate what that system has wrought?
The Caste System itself is a manifestation of Hinduism, what else? Or do you agree with silly jakob that it is a colonial protestant construct?
Could anyone tell me how Manusmrti, a Sanskrit text written many many centuries ago, is in any way relevant to understanding the Indian society today or even a few hundred years back? The practice of European Orientalists, and Indian intelligentsia imitating them, of taking certain sentences from the Manusmrti and then claiming these constitute the foundation of the Indian caste system is a bit peculiar, no? Imagine taking a fragment from the Bible and saying this is the foundation of European societies as they exist today. We would not get far in making sense of European societies. Still, we have been doing the same for Indian society. What makes such a silly move plausible?
As I said, the Europeans were convinced from the earliest encounters, that they would find “false religion†in India. This implied the natives would be aware of the existence of the biblical God and strive to obey His divine law, but the devil and his minions would have deceived the believers into a false understanding of this law: evil priests imposed their own fabrications as God’s will. The Indians would follow the principles as though these embodied sacred law. Therefore, to understand Indian society, one needed to identify the texts, which the Hindus mistook for the biblical God’s revelation of His law. One had to find their “ancient law giverâ€Ââ€â€the equivalent of Moses and Mohammed. This would be the key to the cipher of Hindu religion and society. From the start, the British embarked on an obsessive quest for this Hindu sacred law and its textual manifestations. They retrieved all kinds of textual fragments, until they decided that the Manusmrti or the “Code of Manu†was the text that contained the original laws mistaken by the Hindus for the biblical God’s revelation. Since then, colonial and colonized minds have insisted that Manusmrti is the foundation of Indian society, without seeing the absurdity of such claims.
I mean, after all, apart from a few dry pundits and ‘progressive’ intellectuals, no one in India seems to know about the Manusmrti, let alone its content, and the average Indian doesn’t care about such texts. The same was true in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; throughout this period, British colonials who actually traveled through India, kept coming to the conclusion that such texts were unknown to the “Hindus.” Can anyone, then, explain to me how the Manusmrti is relevant to this discussion about caste in contemporary India?
Yours,
Jakob
Pathetic. Whats “fked up” is your reading comprehension. And the abominable system you seem to cherish. Its not me who is calling brahmins “niggers” but white racists who I am quoting. If you think its “fked up” to call people demeaning names then lets see some intellectual honesty from you: do you also agree that its “f**ked up” to call people untouchables? And to treat them so inhumanely? Yes or no?
And if you are in denial about brahmins being called “niggers” by white racists, here’s some evidence to help pull your head out of the sand:
http://www.cayuga-cc.edu/people/facultypages/felter/sepoy.htm
“William Howard Russell, correspondent for The Times, visited Cawnpore after its recapture and penned his reflections in My Indian Mutiny Diary ( 1860). British racism in India was apparent as was the dawn of a reconsideration of the British imperial mission: “Nana Sahib moving about amid haughty stares and unconcealed dislike. ‘What the deuce does the General ask that nigger here for?’ .
http://www.sawf.org/Newedit/edit02192001/musicarts.asp
“In the essay “My Everlasting Flame” [Chandrashekhar’s] wife, Lalitha, reminisces thus:….. Now why did Mr. Hutchins make this statement to me on two different occasions? There is no question he must have remembered how Dean Gale of the Physics Department had refused to allow Chandra to lecture at the campus. The refusal was blunt: he did not want this black scientist from India to lecture in his department.”
Both Nana Sahib and Chandrashekhar were highly prominent brahmins. One was a Peshwa the other a Nobel Laureate.
Ah, nothing like a good discussion on caste to get the day going 😉 FWIW, I think Jakob is partially right about Manu. Patrick Olivelle, who recently translated Manu, believes that the code was a document created by Brahmins as a defensive response to Mauryan hegemony in early India, and that it was not particularly enforced. The Mauryas are considered shudras, and yet they cobbled together India’s largest empire until the British era. Anyone interested can read the book introduction here.
I agree completely that almost no-one has read the Manusmriti and that almost no contemporary Indian walks around with its sayings in their heads and conducts their business according to it (which is actually why I thought Deepa Mehta’s opening and closing quotes from it in Water were cheap shots). I think we can all agree that the orientalist assumption that Indian society could be explained by classical religious texts was silly. And the classic four-fold varna order doesn’t explain all that much about lived caste and jati relations in India today, though the principles of hierarchy and purity-impurity relations persist between key castes (this is particularly true for Dalits).
Having said that, it does not mean that a religously-infused sense of hierarchy has nothing to do with today’s caste system. Nor does the fact that most dalits or “lower castes” would not consider their caste undesirable or know about the Manusmriti or structural inequalities mean that these inequalities don’t exist and shape the lives of those same people. There’s a comparison to be made with 18th-19th century racialist ideas and the contemporary position of African Americans. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was at least partially justified by racialist ideas, even though the slave trade has involved people of all sorts of ethnicities through history. A set of ideas became institutionalised socially and set up unequal power relations between ethnic groups, supported by economic interest and coercive power, and these relations over time informed cultural beliefs and social habits so effectively that people “lived” the principles of racialism even if they hadn’t articulated or read about them (just as you don’t have to have read Adam Smith to participate in a capitalist economy). The social and economic legacies of those inequalities are still with us even as their legal and textual bases have pretty much disappeared. Similarly, one could argue, landless dalits who stick to certain low-value occupations are where they are not because they have read the Manusmriti and agreed to live by it, but because of the legacy of caste roles and opportunities and the social acceptability of “uunch-neech” thinking (social “betters” treating them as dirty, untrustworthy, uppity if they try to get an education, etc).
Blaming the problems of caste on a missionary-colonial conspiracy that sought to demean Brahmins or trying to rationalise it as an organicist division of labour that was really not inegalitarian, now those are silly arguments that don’t deserve a response – those who believe that sort of thing will believe anything.
At least you acknowledge that the caste system is of indigenous origin, unlike that crackpot jakob who claims that it is the colonial white christian’s construct; and that it continues to exist, unlike all these liars who keep insisting that it does not. And to your credit you agree that “the caste system in place now sucks” and that it is incompatible with democracy, equality and freedom. I fully agree with your point that it is an anachronism in the modern age and should be discarded.
Doesn’t that shows that Caste system can be good?
Caste System is good, discrimination on the basis of it isn’t. Gandhi once said “When Untouchabilty would be gone, the caste system would be purified”.
Caste System gives each group freedom to live as they wish, without interfering with other groups (inexact quote from Indian Unbound)
94 Prema,
Now that you have analysed and understood the so called ‘caste system’ (the problem in your mind) through your particular lens and found it to be an anachronism that needs to be discarded (your solution to the problem as you framed it), give us your method of implementation that is feasible.
Maybe you and your gang should spread this gospel to the entire world. Why should indians alone enjoy all this amazing freedom derived from the glorious Caste System 🙂
Let all nations have the freedom to be untouchables and sudras. Then all the misguided mlechhas will become as happy, productive and prosperous as hindus. Right Orwell?
jati writes: >>give us your method of implementation(to eradicate caste) that is feasible.
I will not hold my breath waiting for someone to illustrate how to eradicate something that Buddha, Mahavira, Ashoka, Ramanuja, Basavanna, Sikh Gurus, Gandhi and thousands of various other reformers could not.
M. Nam
Jakob and Jati, I agree with you. However, let me come to Prema’s rage. The basis of which is entirely a ‘subjective experience’ as felt in the ordinary buisness of life. Jakob, your dilemma is to seek ‘objectivity’ in different accounts, because they don’t reflect your ‘subjectivity’. Its particularly normal for a urban middle class person never to encounter caste subjectivity in his/her life and thus feel surprised by Prema’s rage, or media reports or evidence about the extent of caste based discrimination.
This dissonance between objective reality and subjective experience, has interesting manifestations. Foremost, it creates the notion of ‘other’ and a ‘visible enemy’ to rally around collectively. For example, the left and the right seek cause outside India, or dalit seek cause in Manusmriti or US want terrorism to be identified with a state or a group.
How can we resolve the dilemma.
Let me share my experience with you on this.
As a consequence of debate with a dalit friend on this issue, I set up a simple experiment. What I did basically was to hide my surname, substituting this with ‘Kumar’ (not a clear caste marker) as I enrolled in a 7 day residential training program. When explicitly asked, I told I was a dalit.
It was a revealing subjective experience for me. Anyone who is a bit concerned can try this experiment even in a very small setting. For those who consider themselves the seeker of truth, it is a must.
Best Xtraview
unfortunately freedom is more of a concept for individuals than groups. “yay your group is free” dosnt really help any one. the cast system destroys the freedoms of many individuals.