Caste, anthropology of

Anthropologists do not usually demand ... exacting standards and will settle to regard as adequate whatever can yield promising explanations at any given time. But if we can be more liberal in our judgments of adequacy, we should also be more conscientious in appraising our kit of conceptual tools. All too often concepts come burdened with the connotations and implications of the past contexts that gave rise to them. Hence a periodic review of our stock of ideas is neither an exercise in antiquarian nostalgia, nor a ritual occasion for rattling the bones of our ancestors. It should be, rather, a critical evaluation of the ways we pose and answer questions, and of the limitations we might bring to that task.

Routledge, 2023

The Indian caste system is the hierarchical division of people based on birth and fixed heredity – Brahmins (priests), Kshtriyas (kings/warriors), Vaishyas (traders/ merchants), and Shudras (servants/service class). Those who were assigned menial tasks (cleaning human excreta, skinning dead animals, etc.) fall outside this hier- archy and were known – and treated – as “Untouchables.” Now known as Dalits, they continue to face violence from upper castes in everyday life. Indeed, everyday life in India remains largely organized around casteist arrangements of duties and occupations that follow rigid notions of purity and pollution. Laws banning caste discrimination notwithstanding, these notions have not changed – with the caste system being approximately 5,000 years old and predating colonial history. The caste system is based on occupational hierarchies that exist within a culturally created dialectical rubric of “sacred/profane,” “pure/impure,” and, by reference, also work according to a symbolic system of meanings attached to notions of “honor” and “shame.” This everyday privilege, never questioned, is kept, and manifested via caste organizations called caste sabhas, which function to control such social functions as marriage and voting.

This article interrogates the articulations on the concept of caste(s) by digging its origin, pathways and the good fortune it enjoyed since its birth with a brief appraisal of Dumontian notion of caste. The paper also makes an attempt to show how the stereotype of anthropological ‘other’ as an integral part of colonial epistemological and ontological thinking provided the basis for analysing caste as ‘other’ which became the be-all and end-all category for explaining Indian social reality and, which again in its turn have orientalized Indian sociological imagination subsumed under Social Anthropology and Indology. The paper shows how caste and sub-caste have no direct correspondence with Varna or Jati. And, finally, Dumont’s views on caste and hierarchy in India are unsubstantiated as Dumont turns speculative into empirical and empirical into speculative in the distinguished company of Anthropological/Orientalist tradition of Hegel, Marx and Weber. The need of the hour is to critically look at the dependence on caste for explaining reality in India. The paper calls for a more appropriate and reflexive classifications based on theoretical-methodological rigor and in-depth study of Indian society without resorting to Eurocentric and Colonial biases.

Is there a secular trend of decline in the strength of caste in Indian society? My assessment is that there is, although one cannot be categorical because there are many counter-currents that act against the main current. Further, I believe that the trend of change towards the weakening of caste began during the British rule around the middle of the 19th century and has continued, with many ups and downs, till the present. This view is at odds with the current enthusiasm for identity politics in which signs of the growing importance of caste are seen as indications of a progressive movement towards the attainment of social justice. In the early years of independence, forward-looking Indians had their minds on development and modernisation, and when they thought of caste, they thought of it as an obstacle. Liberal and radical intellectuals alike believed that caste belonged to India's past, not its future. Marxists were particularly scornful of those who undertook to study and write about caste. They believed that it was a fit subject for bourgeois sociologists but not for those concerned with the real contradictions in society. They believed that caste consciousness was an obstacle to class formation. But we cannot for that or any other reason wish it out of existence. Caste continued to receive the attention of sociologists and social anthropologists in the 1950s and 1960s, and they were joined by small numbers of political scientists and others. It was M.N. Srinivas who more than any other scholar pointed to the continuing, and in some respects increasing, importance of caste. Without taking anything away from Srinivas's foresight, it must be pointed out that in making his case about the resurgence of caste in independent India; he took all his examples from the field of politics. If we focus our attention on the political process alone, we are likely to conclude that caste has grown stronger and not weaker since the time of the Emergency. Caste is now used more extensively and more openly for the mobilisation of political support than it was ever before. If our objective is to assess long-term trends of change in caste, it will be a mistake to concentrate solely on politics, and that too on electoral politics. A serious weakness in the scholarly writing on caste in the last 25 years and particularly since the time of the Mandal agitations has been the neglect of all aspects of caste other than the political. The association between caste and occupation has weakened, slowly but steadily, while restrictions on marriage

American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 2015

The presence of hierarchy and inequality within Indian tradition is a prominent aspect that manifests through the unequal positioning of caste and class groups within the societal framework. This intricate connection is observed in the way dharma (normative order), karma (personal moral commitment), and jāti (caste) - the foundational tenets of Indian culture - simultaneously shape the distinctiveness of Indian cultural heritage and lay the groundwork for social hierarchy. This research paper delves into an extensive and exploratory assessment of diverse scholarly perspectives aimed at illuminating the deeply entrenched traditional facets of caste within Indian society.

Are Hinduism and Caste Consubstantial? /p. 236/ 'Hinduism' and 'caste' are both paradigmatic examples of one major paradox haunting social sciences concerned with the Indian field. However, crucial to our understanding of India's social and cultural realities, neither of these words-that we can fairly supposed to be among the most widely used through academic literature-can be translated accurately into an Indian language. What is at stake, then, is both defining precisely what we mean when using 'Hinduism' and 'caste', and how these two notions are connected one to the other. Is the caste system Hindu? Is Hinduism necessary for the caste system to exist? Is Hinduism chiefly dependent upon this one-and-only organization (Srivivas, 1956, p. 495)? And would Hinduism inevitably disappear 'if and when caste disappears' as Srinivas also argued (Srivivas, 1956)? Is there such thing as a casteless Hinduism? In other words: to what extent are Hinduism and caste consubstantial? Behind the misleading conceptions of Hinduism as a homogeneous category, a 'religion' shared by some 80 per cent of the Indian population, one must keep in mind the variety of Hindu practices and representations. Together with other criteria such as sectarian or regional traditions, caste affiliations are crucial to the structural diversity within Hinduism. The need to bring together such heterogeneity under a unique term and category has only grown relatively recently, boosted by colonization, and independence/ nationalist fights (Sontheimer and Kulke, 1989; Lorenzen, 1999), without radically undermining neither the diversity between castes, nor the utmost importance of the caste system in Indian social structures, daily life, and religious practices. Caste, Hinduism, and Society Most studies of Hindu castes rightfully start with the distinction between varnas and jatis. On the one hand, castes as varnas divide society into four orders: the Brahmins (religious specialists), the Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), the Vaishyas (farmers and merchants), and the Shudras (servants). Such a conception of caste as varna is inherited from Brahminical ideology. On the other hand, castes as jatis divide society into thousands of inherited, endogamous social groups-a conception close to the naturalist notion of species. Castes as varnas illustrate the intrinsically socio-religious dimension of Hinduism. Not only does the ability to perform certain rituals and to be initiated depend on one's varna, but such religious hierarchy matches a social role embedded in a truly organicist vision of society. The founding myth of varnas has them originate from the dismembering of the primordial being (Purusha)-Rig Veda hymn X/ 90: Brahmins are the mouth, Kshatriyas the arms, Vaishyas the thighs, and Shudras the feet.

Edited by Frances W. Pritchett. Editing has consisted only of numbering the paragraphs and fixing a few typographical errors. The attempt here is to see positively what this young researcher says, and how he thinks, how he arrives at what he does. This is not an explication, or even a reading/ interpretation. This is a commentary, occasionally critical, to remember that it was a hundred and one years ago that this text was presented (read out) by this young scholar, studying for his M.A. degree. I am using this version of the text because it was the most easily accessible on the web. If there are any copyight issues, please use some other version. The commentary, will remain more or less the same. The commentary is in a different and smaller italic font, and has a few clickable links (in blue and underlined) to pages on the web. Some of the paragraph breaks are mine, for clarity about the lines on which I comment. This commentary is under a Creative Commons Attribution­NonCommercial­ ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Aniket Jaaware, 08.05.2017. [email protected] Caution: The commentary assumes that you have read this essay earlier, independent of intepretation and evaluations. If you have not, I strongly suggest that you read the essay separately before you read this version with commentary. I include the text herewith. Those who have read the essay earlier, or know it better than just a reading, can proceed to page 14 directly.

Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 7: 51-86. , 2013

Caste as a system of social stratification was an encompassing system in the past. There was reciprocal system of exchange goods and services. With time, occupation and mode of generation of livelihood of various caste groups changed, and the traditional form of jajmani system fizzled out. This paper provides an account of changing perspectives of caste relations in social science writing and political discourse. The discourse of caste has been shifted from ritual hierarchy and social discrimination to an instrument to mobilize people for economic and political gain.

Western Foundations of the Caste System, 2017

Over the last century or two, the dominant accounts of the caste system have looked for its roots in the ancient history of India. The story told about the rise of this social system begins in the era when an alien people called the Aryans is supposed to have invaded the Subcontinent. The standard version of this history tells us that a people called 'the Aryans' invaded India around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous Dravidians and imposed their culture, language and religion on the latter. They are said to have brought the Vedic religion, which later developed into Hinduism and to have instituted the religiously founded caste system. In this account the idea of the caste system as an intrinsic part of Hinduism was not only reinforced, the idea of an institutionalized form of discrimination along racial lines was also added to it. The account about the Aryan invasion originated in the nineteenth century European descriptions of India and has generally been accepted as a fact about India for the last 200 years. Even though this standard account has met with severe criticisms (as we will see further), most contemporary textbooks on Indian history still begin with a section on the Aryans and their invasion (or immigration) into India. Likewise, standard descriptions of the caste system still include the idea of a segregation between the Aryans and the Dravidians. Given the centrality of the Aryans in the descriptions of the caste system, one would expect there to be a vast amount of literature on how they invaded India, how they conquered the indigenous population, how they established their authority, how the acculturation process took place, how they managed to keep the caste system in place and how they managed to convert the existing population to their religion. Answers to these questions would not only be of interest to historians. They would give us insight into the core aspects of the Indian culture and, more generally, into aspects of the interaction between different peoples which result in acculturation or in inducing changes in a culture or even change of one culture into another. If it would turn out that no answers are to be found to these questions, however, a different question arises. In that case we need to understand what makes the account about the Aryan invasion appear plausible enough to be reproduced for more than 200 years. In order to get an idea about whether or not these questions have been answered in the course of the last 200 years, we will take a look at some recent introductions to Indian culture by authorities in the domain of Indology. The Aryan impact on India In the most recent edition of his book India, Stanley Wolpert tells us that "between about 1500 and 1000 B.C., Aryan tribes conquered the remaining pre-Aryan dasas throughout the Indus Valley and Punjab". The latter, he says, were "enslaved" by the Aryans (Wolpert 2009, 28). Wolpert does not tell us much about how this happened, except for mentioning some of the weapons and other military equipment (the horse and chariot) used in this warfare. The relevance of the piece on the Aryan conquest of the pre-Aryan dasas becomes clear later in the book when Wolpert speaks of the caste system. This system, or the 'fourvarna hierarchy', he tells us, consists of four groups of which the shudras form the lowest rung. The latter he describes as the "original serfs of the three-class Aryan tribal conquerors of North India" who "may well have been dasas, pre-Aryan slaves". "Subsequent expansion of Aryan civilization", he continues, "brought more 'primitive' peoples into the fold, who were so 'barbaric' or 'polluted' as to be added much beneath the varna hierarchy as 'fifths' (panchamas), later known as Untouchables and now generally called Dalits, meaning oppressed people" (ibid., 112). While Wolpert maintains that all of this happened, he does not speak about how the Aryan conquest occurred, what allowed for the conquest or even how it was sustained. Let us, therefore, see what follows from the course of events sketched by Wolpert. If what he says is true, we can conclude that: (1) Ancient India knew of at least three groups of people: conquering Aryan tribes, pre-Aryan dasas and even 'more primitive' peoples. (2) The dasas were enslaved by the Aryans. (3) The contemporary shudras are the descendants of the dasaserfs of the Aryan conquerors. (4) At the time of the conquest the latter were organized in a three-class system, which was the bearer of a civilization. (5) The ancestors of the shudras did not belong to this Aryan civilization. The fact that the dasas were conquered and enslaved shows that they were in one way or another not strong enough to resist the Aryansin number, or with regard to military organization, kind of weapons, or otherwise. As Wolpert mentions, the Aryans brought the horse to India and their horse-drawn chariots and their archery (and axes) helped them to defeat all who confronted them. Thus, we can conclude that the weakness of the dasas to resist conquest is to be located partially in the absence of such military equipment. But he also mentions another kind of weakness, one that allowed the Aryans to sustain their position without military intervention for millennia: the low level of their civilization. The soon-to-be outcasts, he says, thanked their place outside the system to their "primitive" and "barbaric" status because of which they were placed beneath the four varna hierarchy as the "fifths" (panchamas) and thus "polluted". The shudras, who are just above them on the social ladder, are also primitive, barbaric and polluted but only less so than the outcasts. As such Wolpert