[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: Castes??? (Post - 1)
-
To: soc-religion-hindu@uunet.uu.net
-
Subject: Re: Castes??? (Post - 1)
-
From: Prasad Gokhale <f0g1@unb.ca>
-
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 15:10:57 -0400
-
In-Reply-To: <4it1ap$6rl@babbage.ece.uc.edu>
-
Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
-
Organization: University of New Brunswick
-
References: <4it1ap$6rl@babbage.ece.uc.edu>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mankind Quarterly,
vol 34, 1993
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding Caste
by Subhash Kak
When viewed broadly, social relations in society can be seen as
mimicking technology. Past few centuries have seen the focus of
technology to change from clocks to steam engines to computers.
Paralleling this was the change in science from Newtonian mechan-
ics to thermodynamics to the holistic views of quantum mechanics
and information theory. The contemporary age is the age of com-
puters and information. Science and technology have seen a shift
from the simple to the complex. Societies have changed from the
feudal to the democratic and we see new developments that have
been called post-modern. This path has led to increasing conso-
lidation, although one sees signs of a coming fragmentation. One
would expect that social organization would now be based on sym-
bols and information. The massive movements of people after the
Second World War has also ensured that ethnic diversity will com-
pel societies everywhere to confront issues of multiculturism.
Ancient Indian society had information and symbols as its focus.
This happened because the science of the mind was the most prized
science in ancient India. Cognitive science is considered a ma-
jor frontier of modern science. This science is being studied
only with respect to the individual but also social groups. In-
dividuals use language to express themselves; social organiza-
tions also represent a language that reflects the cognitive
categories of the society. Social structure codes societal
processes. No living structure can be based on closed
categories.
Caste has been often seen through the dichotomous categories of
Newtonian mechanics. We wish to show that its proper understand-
ing can emerge only if a holistic paradigm is used for its
analysis.
Actors and agents
Europe's successes in the past two centuries were undoubtedly due
to the technology, science, and organization that were created as
a response to the discovery of the new world. The colonial
successes of Europe were facilitated by a mastery of signs ob-
tained in the struggles joined in trade. As sailors and traders
the Europeans learnt to appreciate the power of signs. On the
other hand, the old civilizations were so inwardly focused that
there was a refusal to learn the language of the outsider.
Since then other unintended consequences of the mastery of signs
have come to light. The interpretation of signs into European
languages could not have been a one way process. The native in-
terlocutors were themselves interpreting the facts in order to
conform to the expectations of the interrogators. The analysis
that emerged was thus based on many false premises. Neverthe-
less, in the post-colonial era the native elites, now properly
literate only in the European languages, have embraced this
analysis. This is a fascinating illustration of how representa-
tions can altar reality. This prefigures the change in the
self-image in the West by the images fostered by television and
the media.
As example consider the Brahmin caste. Books by Indologists rou-
tinely translate this into priest. But in reality priests have
had very low status in India. To give the extreme example, the
Mahabrahmin priests, who supervise funeral services, have been
"treated much like untouchables". The reality of status is high-
ly paradoxical; the brahmin is respected if he renounces his ex-
pected function. The reality runs counter to the claims of gen-
erations of Indologists.
Theories of caste
There is no synonym for caste in any Indian language. The Indian
words that caste supposedly translates are jati, which means a
large kin-community or descent-group, and varna, which implies a
classification based on function. The word varna is from ancient
Sanskritic theory and it has no real relevance; the word jati
properly denotes what may be termed as a group bound by customs
and traditions. The dynamics between the jatis has been influ-
enced a great deal by historical and political factors. During
the periods of economic growth, the jatis have been relatively
open-ended; during periods of hardships the jatis have tended to
draw in for the sake of survival. The word `caste' comes from
the Portugese casta, a word that was meant to describe the jati
system, but slowly it has come to have a much broader connota-
tion.
Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India, noted the existence
of seven classes that were apparently jatis. The jatis were in-
tegrated into a cooperative system where each had a role and was
cared for. One could consider it as a kind of a decentralized
social security system where contracts were negotiated within the
yajamana ( jajmani ) framework. The dominant caste provided
basic necessities to the other jati groups in exchange for ser-
vices. The activities in the village could be viewed as a sym-
bolic ritual where the yajamana was the patron. The yajamana
system is thus based on the recognition by the dominant group
that it is a part of a larger community and therefore it has an
obligation to support the other communities.
Rigveda 10.90 speaks of the Brahmana, Rajanya (Kshatriya),
Vaishya, and Shudra as having sprung from the head, the arms, the
thighs, and the feet of Purusha, the primal man. This mention of
varnas has been taken to indicate that a caste system existed in
the Vedic times. But it is repeatedly mentioned elsewhere that
each human is in the image of the Purusha which would indicate
that each human internalizes aspects of all the varnas. Many
texts proclaim that one's nature alone, and not birth, determines
to which varna one belongs. It is generally agreed that in the
ancient Aryan society the varnas were functional groupings and
not closed endogamous birth-descent groups. Basham (1967, p.148)
suggests that the jati system in its modern form developed very
late. The Chinese scholar Hsuan Tsang in the seventh century was
not aware of it. As a response to historical events one might
then credit the emergence of the modern ja ti system to the next
fundamental change in the Indian polity that occurred with the
invasions of the Turks.
In its long history India has had diverse social and religious
currents. It is only in the exception that the reality has con-
formed to the theory of the Dharma Shastras . The Vaishnavas
emphatically define varna based on one's actions. Bhagavata
Purana 7.11 proclaims clearly: "One's nature alone determines to
which varna one belongs". The Tantrists claim that all those who
accept the Kula (Tantric) dharma become Kauls (Mahanirvana Tantra
14.180-9).
What is caste
If one limits oneself to an analysis of the term jati, one would
see that its implications have varied with history. Many scho-
lars believe that the system of jati that we have now emerged
only about a thousand years ago. If we accept that view then
this emergence was perhaps a response to the catastrophic disrup-
tion to legal and political institutions caused by the Turkish
invasions. With the destruction of the previous political order,
different occupational communities created their own systems of
justice and governance. In this situation, a local social struc-
ture developed which centered about the dominant community.
Although jatis may pay lip service to the Brahmin as an intermed-
iary to the gods when it comes to ritual, each caste considers
itself to be the highest. If the Brahmins were to be accepted as
the highest caste then other castes would have no hesitation in
giving their daughters to the Brahmins. But in reality they do
not. The Rajputs consider the Brahmins to be other-wordly or
plain beggars; the traders consider the Brahmins to be impracti-
cal; and so on. In classical Sanskrit plays the fool is always a
Brahmin. In other words, each different community has internal-
ized a different outlook on life but these outlooks cannot be
placed in any hierarchical ordering. The internalized images of
the other must, by its very nature, be a gross simplification and
it will never conform exactly to reality.
The question of pollution
It has been claimed that the castes are separate but interdepen-
dent hereditary groups of occupational specialists. Thus Dumont
postulates that the principle of purity-impurity keeps the seg-
ments separate from one another. In this system each jati closes
its boundaries to lower jatis, refusing them the privileges of
intermarriage and other contacts defined to be polluting. Facts
belie the Dumont theory: Indian Muslims and Christians also have
castes. The eighteenth century German society was divided into
princes, nobles, burghers, peasants and serfs between whom no
marriage other than morganatic was possible. Korea and Japan
also had the practice of untouchability.
Part of the mystification of the Indian social system has oc-
curred due to a flawed understanding of the notion of ritual.
Hindu ritual is meant to capture the connections between the hu-
man and the cosmic and highlight the paradoxes of separation and
unity. Ritual is a symbolic representation of basic analytical
knowledge where the context of the knowledge is not widely known.
A normative social structure is acknowledged to be arbitrary and
meant to be broken. The outsider has tended to assign an impor-
tance to ritual in Indian discourse unwarranted by reality. The
understanding of pollution, and its relation to ritual, has
varied across region and age.
Quigley in his recent book, The Interpretation of Caste, notes
that the notion of caste is a very complex one. Ideologies of
materialism, that considers caste as a rationalization of social
inequality, and idealism, in which caste is taken to represent
notions of relative purity, are incapable of providing adequate
explanations. In recent decades the idealist position, presented
by sociologists like Louis Dumont has become the dominant one.
According to Quigley:
[The] practitioners of [recent anthropology] cling on to the
flotsam of a theory which their own evidence devastatingly under-
mines. Unable to visualize a general structure of caste which
would displace Dumont's theory, they hang on to it unremittingly
even though their own evidence shows again and again that this
theory simply does not explain what is known about India... The
entrenched idea that "Brahmans are the highest caste" has done
most to hinder an alternative formulation of how caste systems
work.
Quigley bases his own analysis on the relationships between the
king and the priest, defined very early in the Vedic times, that
has recently been examined by the Dutch scholar J.C. Heesterman.
This analysis defines the role of castes in terms of relation-
ships with the dominant economic and political groups. But ulti-
mately such an approach is unsatisfactory because the Vedic texts
describe the relationship between the priest and the king in re-
lation to ritual. To use the theory of such relationship for the
secular world is not quite correct. Few Brahmins were ever pri-
ests; also there have always been non-Brahmin priests.
Coda
One might wonder why the caste system developed in India. It has
been argued that European and Western traditions, owing to their
exclusivist nature, set out to obtain uniform belief and prac-
tices. The inclusivist nature of the Indian religions, on the
other hand, places each group in a larger system. Some have sug-
gested that the Buddhist horror of taking life led to untoucha-
bility; as proof they point to parallels with Korea and Japan.
Some have argued that Indian society is highly transactional: the
giver is of superior rank to the receiver and the served is supe-
rior to the server. But this leads to contradictions: Is the
Brahmin beggar receiving or being served? If caste is an endo-
gamous descent-group, one would expect a new system of competi-
tive descent-groups replace the system that was characterized by
localized hierarchy owing to the isolation of the village. But
as before there will be several ideologies behind the impulse to
form communities.
Srinivas pointed out that the process of Sanskritization is
responsible for movement within the jati system. Sanskritization
implies emulating a dominant caste of any high varna. One should
add that there also exists the dynamic of fragmentation. Ancient
Indian political theory speaks of an opposition between settled
community ( grama ) and wilderness ( aranya ). Even during the
Mughal rule there was a similar divide between the revenue paying
region called ra'iyati and the rebellious known as mawas. There
has existed such a divide in terms of the belief system as well.
Various movements have sought to overturn the varna system. In re-
cent times, the institution of quotas has prompted many groups
to seek classification as "low" caste.
The social structure of India reflects no single ideology which
is why no single theory has proved to be rich enough to describe
the system. The system represents several symbiotic ideologies.
These ideologies are balanced by political and economic forces.
The ideologies of the brahmin, the aristocrat, the trader, and
the commoner were all proclaimed to be equivalent in their effec-
tiveness in obtaining knowledge: this was reflected in the paths
of jnana yoga, karma yoga, raja yoga, and bhakti yoga. Even fes-
tivals like Sarasvati puja, Dassera, Divali, and Holi celebrate
the different attitudes.
New technology, science, and political organization will change
the social institutions of India. In many ways the modern Indian
castes are no more than the ethnic communities in the West. The
societal organizations of the West and the East can thus be seen
to converge.
== For references see the published version of the article.
