11 Diversities and identities : caste and class

1. INTRODUCTION

We saw in the last module the range of diversities in the composition and identity of the Indian diaspora. This includes the diversities arising from the conventional divisions within Indian society itself, i.e., region, language, religion, caste and class. Further, the historical time and circumstances of emigration, the homeland’s approach towards its diasporas, the social and cultural fabric of the destination country and its policies towards immigrants are also relevant factors that contribute to the distinct profile and identity of a diaspora.

One of the most visible internal divisions in Indian society is caste. Even though the structure of the traditional caste system based on separation of castes, mutual interdependence and hierarchy does not exist anymore, castes do exist on the ground and in the minds of people. Moreover, caste is also an idiom, an ethos which is prevalent even if structurally, i.e. as a system, it is of little consequence. We shall discuss later what exactly has been the nature of transformation in caste structure and in its meanings and what this means in the contemporary Indian context. It is important to have this as a backdrop to understand and analyze caste in the diaspora.

When Indians migrated out of the country, they carried with them their many affiliations and identities, their beliefs and practices, their food and music. Caste was certainly among the fundamental features with both cognitive and practical significance. The questions to be asked in the context of the diaspora is what happened to caste as affiliation and as identity in the lives and thoughts of the migrants. Are caste structures to be found in the Indian diaspora? Is caste part of cultural ethos? Does it only function as an endogamous circle? Does the principle of hierarchy remain intact in the changed setting? What is the meaning that caste carries in the diasporic context? Under what set of conditions do caste dynamics come into play and under what circumstances does caste get diluted or even erased altogether? There are questions to be answered, but there is no single answer. It is simplistic to assume that just because diaspora members belong to specific castes that its structure is replicated or that it carries the same meaning and value that it did in India. Each diaspora needs to be looked at carefully.

One of the most universal bases for social stratification is class. Unlike caste, it is found in some form in almost every society in the world. Class is an objective category; it can be acquired and moreover by definition includes mobility. There is a complex debate on what constitutes class, but in the context of this module, we will not go into elaborate definitions. We consider class, broadly, as a function of income and occupation. Mobility from one class to another can be achieved during an individual’s life time.

Earlier, it used to be argued in the Indian context, especially by Marxian thinkers, that caste is only another form of class. But such a statement is problematic, not withstanding certain broad congruences especially in the lowest level of caste hierarchy. The caste system is incredibly complex and its middle rungs have a great deal of variability and mobility. Furthermore, even though the lowest ranked castes also tend to be in the poorest classes, low income alone does not capture the humiliation and range of civic disprivileges that the lowest ranked castes have had to endure. The caste-class nexus, while a useful reference point, cannot be accepted in toto and needs further nuancing. Several articles in Gupta’s (1991) edited collection of readings throw light on the class-caste debate.

2. CLASS ORIGINS OF AND CLASS MOBILITY IN THE DIASPORA

This topic needs to be considered in the context of the major categories of Indian diaspora , namely a) colonial diaspora b) Post independence emigration to the west c) Gulf Migration d) IT related emigration.

Leaving aside the pre-colonial migrants, since it is debatable whether they can be termed a diaspora, the earliest migrants date back to 1834 when the first group of indentured labourers were from India taken to Mauritius, following the abolition of slavery. You have already read in an earlier module about the colonial systems of labour recruitment, namely indenture, Kangani and Maistry systems. You can read more in detail from books by Carter (1994) Desai and Vahed (2010), Jain (1970), Jayaraman (1975), Lal et. al. (2006 ), Tinker (1974) and others . To give an overview, in this period, labour was recruited to serve in the sugar cane fields, rubber and tea estates and railway constructions in South Africa, Fiji, Malaysia, Ceylon, Caribbean region. The objective was to get docile, obedient and able bodied labour for the colonial projects in other countries and India, the jewel in the British imperial crown was the source. The preference was therefore for peasant and labouring castes, who had the experience and stamina for hard labour. Class wise, these groups could be termed as working class. But recruitment was not always easy, and in order to fulfil quotas and meet the requirement of plantation owners, these conditions were sometimes waived and those who were available were taken. Among those who were thus recruited, were those who had no stable employment, who were looking for better opportunities, widows and single women abandoned by families, who desired to get away and some upper castes in dire straits who wanted to earn a living. They came from a variety of caste and class backgrounds. So one could say that the bulk of indentured labour came from working class and peasant backgrounds, but it also included a proportion of migrants from mixed class backgrounds. Once they left the shores of India, the sea voyage was a perilious and hard one, and after they landed, they were subject to harsh and sometimes unfair conditions of labour and of living. In the eyes of the recruiters and employers, they were all working class labour from a subject country; the fine distinctions of caste and class background were eliminated.

After the indenture contract expired, some stayed on and settled down in their adopted countries. Of these, some flourished; their descendants took to education or trained in skill based professions and entered the middle class and some also into the elite professional class. Others continue to be in working class positions, and depending on the policy of the host countries, are either well-integrated or discriminated against and form an underclass with high association with crime.

The colonial migrations also included business and trade migrants and those from clerical and service occupations who were drawn from what can be called middle class backgrounds. There is a fall-out of this class position in the colonial diaspora. In some hostlands, as in Tanzania and more generally in East Africa, the majority of the Indian migrants belonged to this trader/businessmen class. They had over a long period, leveraging their skills and their usefulness to the colonial masters – first German and then British – achieved a ‘middleman’ status. It was a relatively homogenous class, even though comprising of different castes of Hindus and Muslims like Bhatias and Bohras. Yet, vis-a-vis native African and colonial policies and politics, this class got racialized and named as ‘Indian’ (Burton: 2013) .What we see here is a conflation of class with race.

On the whole, it can be said that the descendants of the colonial period emigrants have achieved a fair amount of class mobility both in terms of their homelands and hostlands, although achieving an equal social status with the native citizens of the hostlandshas been difficult historically and in contemporary times as well.

The post independence period saw emigrants look to the west for higher education and professional employment. (For an account of the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon stemming from this migration, see Krishna and Khadria 1997; Sen 1973).

These were drawn generally from upper middle class and elite families, who already had a good education in India. In the difficult economic situation, where appropriate jobs were scarce, they were migrating for better opportunities. They have generally done well for themselves, in terms of accumulation of wealth and social prestige, achieving some further mobility from their already advantageous class positions

The migrants to the Gulf from the 1970s onwards constitute a mixed bag, class wise. The bulk are unskilled and semi-skilled labour from the working or lower middle class in India and a small proportion are highly skilled and qualified professionals from middle and upper classes. While the former endure difficult conditions of living, they earn better money than they would in India, and many convert this newly acquired wealth into status symbols back home. Since Gulf migrants are usually temporary and return to India either for a while or permanently, their class position in India amidst their family and friends is usually enhanced. For the composition of Gulf migrants, see Jain (2006) and Lal (2006: 223-231) .

From the 1980s onwards, with the IT revolution, the composition of migrants to the US and in general, to the West has changed. Partly because India has been an important part of the IT revolution, their skills in this sector are recognized globally, there is a premium on Indian migrants of this category. Germany, for eg. created a special visa called the green card for Indian IT professionals wanting to emigrate to Germany. Indian education system has over the decades, with its affirmative action orientation within an overall agenda of social transformation, deliberately opened up to sectors of society which previously did not have a presence in higher education. And it is widely recognized that post LPG (Liberlization, Privatization and Globalization, the aspiration levels and confidence of youth from various sections of Indian society have increased enormously as has their desire to emigrate to the developed countries for better life chances. Simultaneously, courses and institutes for training in IT have been established on a large scale, which are highly sought after. IT has a wide range of professional requirements from simple programme writing to sophisticated and complex hardware engineering. At all levels, the graduates and trainees in IT come from a range of class backgrounds. Thus, the IT related emigration to the west includes young people from a variety of social backgrounds and includes apart from those with middle class background, those from rural areas, middle and low castes and working class backgrounds. Their high levels of success have helped them to accumulate wealth and transform their earlier class position and move into upper middle class and upper class positions. (For an account of the characteristics of contemporary Indian migration, see Kapur (2010: 54-67) and (68-83) for the particularly strong selectivity in the migration of Indian elites; for migration of IT professionals see Khadria 2004).

3. CASTE AND THE DIASPORA

The following section on caste has drawn considerably on my own earlier writing (Ganesh 2011) apart from other sources that have been cited. Even though there is a great deal of social science and popular writing on caste in India, there is not much written on caste in the Indian diaspora. Discussions can be found in Schwartz (1967), Bharti (1972), Jain (2004), Jayaram (2004) and Tinker (1977).

The paucity of writing on this topic has to do with several factors. Firstly, caste itself is not very prevalent in the diaspora, except for marriage purposes, and that too is diminishing for the second and subsequent generations. Caste society in India acquires its form and substance through a combination of external socio-political and economic factors and subjective consciousness. As Vertovec observes (2000: 24), outside India the complex systems of interaction which comprise the living stuff of caste are absent; caste identities are usually all that remain.

In the initial phases of emigration, to a destination which has few Indians, caste distinctions are downplayed due to the absence of external enabling structures, due to being identified by the host as Indian, and due to the overriding compulsion to survive and succeed in a new country. Although caste is an important factor in endogamous marriages, this is perceived as part of the ‘natural’ order, since all castes believe in this norm, and practice it to the extent possible.

The subject of caste in India has been written about voluminously by Indologists, sociologists, social scientists in general and it has also featured extensively in public discourse and in politics. The underlying ideology of the caste system, its historical forms and their evolution, its transformation during the British rule, the effect of anti caste social and religious movements, anti-caste legislations, the post independence government policy on affirmative action for underprivileged castes have all been described and analyzed. That caste has changed in far reaching manner, that caste as a system no longer exists, that caste has found a new role in politics, that the so called lowest castes have found means and voice of assertion have been widely recognized. It is also recognized that certain kinds of caste based discriminations continue to be practiced in some measure. Yet there is no unanimity on what is the direction of the transformation and what is the future of caste (Some of the relevant issues and debates can be found in Dumont ( 1980 ), Srinivas (1996) , Jodhka (2015), Gupta (1991) and others.

One of the relevant positions from the point of view of the Indian diaspora is that caste has multiple dimensions, not necessarily nor always reinforcing each other. This has been argued by an influential stream within Indian sociology. Gupta’s (2004) work on the co-existence of at least two distinct principles– caste as hierarchy and caste as identity – is an example of this position.

The relevant issue in the diasporic context is whether and to what extent caste operates at the level of identity, culture and structure. Is it prominent enough to fracture the notion of an Indian diaspora? This is a large question and can be answered, as in the case of language and region, with case-specific examples. It will depend on factors such as time of migration, the caste composition of migrants in the hostland, current geo-political location of the diaspora and the nature of caste dynamics and discourse in India at the given point in time.

The general view that emerges in the literature is that in the colonial diaspora, though migrants came from a range of castes – low, middle and high (Angrosino 1983: 360) – caste was not prominent. It was a fluid ethnic marker (Singh 2003:4). The conditions of the long and perilious sea voyage to India and the housing, dining and living conditions during indentured labour made it difficult to observe rules of ritual purity and there were no caste-maintaining authorities and structures. The ‘jahaji-bhai’ phenomenon is well known, in which the bonds formed during the sea voyage, under shared conditions of peril, hunger and brutal treatment endured, even after landing in the destination. It became a life-long bond, circumventing caste and other markers of differentiation. Endogamy prevailed as an idea but was not maintained rigorously in practice. Female migrants were much smaller in number and were paid wages on fairly equal terms to the men and so exercised some choice in marriage, not always within the caste. According to Seenarine (2006), although caste was not important except for marriage, people identified by castes, albeit most claimed middle-caste status. There was fabrication of caste identities enabled by the fluid situation. Jain (2004: 182)    says caste among Indians in Malaysia and Trinidad has played out at the cultural level rather than as social stratification, since the ideological rather than structural-functional dimension takes precedence. Caste system has almost disappeared and even in communities “where the semblances of its elements are noticeable”, it is neither a “structural” principle nor is it “functionally relevant” (Jayaram 2004: 26). My own work among South African Tamils (Ganesh 2010: 31 ) brought out sharply how caste could remain, literally in name, but carry no effective meaning. As per the practice prevailing in Madras Presidency at the time of emigration, almost all names carry the caste name somewhat like a surname. Thus Gounder, Padayachi, Pillai, Nayakkan and other caste names are common as surnames among South African Tamils, but most people do not know that these are names of castes, nor does it figure as an element in their mutual interactions. In fact, the current ethnic dynamics where Tamils see themselves as different and separate from the ‘Hindi walas’ , has erased whatever traces of caste awareness might have been there.

The new diaspora is more difficult to categorize with respect to caste. Moreover, there have been different waves of emigration after 1960s to the same destination, and the caste dynamics of each and mutually among the ‘waves’ are different. For example it has been noted that in recent years, expressions of caste identity among Indians in North America have become more prominent. Those who migrated in the 1960s and 70s tended to downplay their caste backgrounds as also their religious and nationalistic inclinations. Their numbers were few, and it was a time of struggle to survive and make it. With the passage of time, and having achieved professional success and confidence, they have felt freer to express their primordial affiliations. At the same time, the newer immigrants come with relatively less pressure to prove themselves, and with less inhibitions about their cultural selves. The numbers having increased, there is a social canvas available for play of internal differentiations. (Ganesh 2011: 175-76). Another example would be the social distance between the ‘new’ diaspora and the ‘old’ diaspora when they find themselves in the same location. Be it the young Indian expats recently moved to Singapore and Malaysia and their interactions with the descendents of the colonial migrants, or the new Indian immigrants in US and their interaction with twice migrant Indians from Caribbean, the cautious, limited and sometimes absence of intermingling has something to do with the indentured labour background of the colonial migrants, in which both caste and class factors play a role.

There is also the fact that the host societies in recent decades have evolved their immigration policies. Multiculturalism, with all its limitations, gives recognition to cultural diversities, has official sanction. In this scenario, all manner of internal diversities have got scope for expression. But caste is a tricky issue to express and negotiate. In the public discourse in India, caste and casteism are highly criticized, despite its prevalence on the ground in new forms. In diaspora circles, it is not acceptable to express caste publicly. Nor do the host societies, unlike in India, have any institutional arrangements endorsing it. Yet there are observations that caste is present subtly in social interactions in the private sphere, though there is social intermingling between castes that are close to each other in traditional as well as secular status. In particular, in arranging marriages, caste remains a consideration. This is true for not just the higher castes but for all castes. Singh(2015:82) observes that advertisements aiming to arrange marriages will advertise caste as part of the package – age, height, caste, nationality, educational qualifications, profession, and hobbies. Some will state “caste no bar”; others, including those from dalit castes, will make statements such as “Prefers a Ravidasia (dalit Sikhs) girl, but will welcome other castes‟; “Khatri Family seeks……”; “Jat Sikh educated family seeks …‟and so on.

Increasingly in the second and third generation, arranged marriage is disappearing in favour of ‘own choice’, and here caste is not a prominent criterion, although marrying within religion and nationality is given some weightage. Secondly, where temple building and administration is concerned, it is usual for a particular caste or community to be at the helm, although devotees and visitors may belong to different castes.

3.1 Caste Associations

Diasporic Indians, as part of building an identity and presence in the hostland, and leveraging primordial affiliations, have formed associations of various kinds. Prominent among them are national, regional and linguistic associations, and in recent decades, especially from the 1990s onwards, caste associations as well. Caste associations may be based on local sub-caste or regional caste affiliation. They play a role in propagating caste-specific rituals and worship practices, and particularly in providing a forum for young people to meet with the purpose of finding suitable matrimonial alliances.

To illustrate, with the case of Brahmins: there are two distinct categories of caste associations. One category is based on a specific jati, with a regional, linguistic as well as sub-caste identity, for e.g., Bardai Brahmin Samaj in London, or UK Valam Brahmins Association. The second category is larger in scope, named in a general manner suggesting a pan Indian varna identity, but most such associations are actually, in practice, region based. For example, the Brahman Samaj of North America (BSNA) is overwhelmingly North Indian and Hindi speaking in its membership. On the other hand American Association of Telugu Brahmins is explicit about its regional focus. While BSNA’s formal objectives include advancement of Hinduism, racial harmony, integrating Brahmins in one platform, preserving culture, family interaction, strengthening of community and so on, the practical business is fairly straightforward. Taking as a sample, in the January 2006 issue of Brahma Bharati,

The quarterly magazine of BSNA, the contents focus on membership drive, structure and activities of the many chapters in the US, some general articles on Hindu festivals, ceremonies, temple building, announcement of family oriented activities and events, a bulletin for condolences, articles on personal finance management, announcement of World Association of Vedic Studies, etc.

These associations state that they disapprove of the caste system and take the official position that one can become a Brahmin both by birth and by deeds. This apparently is not seen as contradictory to the thrust for matrimony within the caste, which is actively propagated by them. (Ganesh 2011: 184-185). This is so for other castes as well. Singh observes that in North America, large meetings are held with the purpose of getting young people from the same caste to get to know each other. She notes that in Atlanta, the Patidar Samaj meeting drew 4,000 people and resulted in 100 marriages. (Singh 2015: 82).

3.2 Dalit Diaspora

At some levels, among the upper and middle castes, caste functions more as cultural differentiation than as social hierarchy; it regulates marriage but does not involve discrimination. Yet, when it comes to the question of Dalits, there is some evidence that caste discrimination towards Dalits exists in varying degrees in the diaspora. Vivek Kumar (2004: 114) gives several examples from different parts of the diaspora of ghettoisation, an underlying notion of unclean occupations, and discriminatory actions like refusing to take water from the same tap, refusing to be served by dalit volunteers, refusal to handle money touched by dalits, and so on.

Discrimination towards and exclusion of dalits involves not only Hindu communities of India but also Sikh, Christian and Muslim communities from the sub continent (Singh 2015:82) and examples can be given of Hindu temples and gurudwaras (Sikh places of worship) practicing exclusion covertly or overtly.

The phenomenon of Dalit assertion in India over the last few decades, and the growth of Ambedkarite ideological movement and politics has had an impact in the diaspora. Mobilization of dalits through groups, associations, conferences and campaigns is noticeable, as detailed by Vivek Kumar (2004: 115).

Dalit movements have campaigned in the host societies to recognize and prohibit caste discrimination. They have been particularly effective in the UK. Over the last few decades there has been a gradual increase in population of those who have arrived in United Kingdom from the Indian sub-continent. The caste prejudices have been taken note of by British society As evidenced by a radio programme commissioned by the BBC on Radio 4,The Caste Divide which was broadcast in April, 2003.Subsequent to this programme, it was strongly felt that there was a need to confront the problem of caste and this has lead to the formation of an organisation called ‘CasteWatch’ which documents cases of caste discrimination, mostly towards Dalit castes, and campaigns for elimination of caste discrimination (Singh 2015: 81)

UK wakesup to caste bias, Report in Indian Express: March 26, 2013 (accessed on May 17, 2015)

Even though caste discrimination is not expressly prohibited under UK equality legislation, the pressure brought in by Dalit groups along with other progressive sections of society like the Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance has resulted in amendment of section 9 of the Equality Act 2010, which now requires the Government to introduce secondary legislation to make caste an aspect of race, thereby making caste discrimination a form of race discrimination. The Government has provisionally indicated that this legislation will be introduced to Parliament during summer 2015 (Pyper: 2014).

3.3 Caste and Language

When questions of ethno-nationalism and identity surface in the diasporic context, language and religion are often implicated in the discussions. Caste was not a salient aspect of such discussions until recently. Dalit mobilization and activism have brought the issue of caste into prominence. We see this clearly for example in the case of Mauritius. Patrick Eisenlohr (2007) analyzes the process whereby in this Indian origin -majority island , the official categories distinguishing the Indian population are linguistic – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Urdu speakers, referring to ancestral languages which may not necessarily be the language of everyday communication. In the British colonial period, the divisions were into Indo Mauritians, Sino Mauritians and General Population. But from the 1940s onwards, religious identities came to the forefront, with Hindus and Muslims becoming distinct categories, and the overarching nationalist category of Indo-Mauritians waning in prominence. Hindu and Hindi became conflated under the influence of the Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj, but gradually it was recognized that the ‘Hindi’ identity would not take care of the Tamil, Telugu and Marathi Hindus and so these languages also got ancestral language status serving the purpose of mobilizing distinct ethno-national identities. The category of Muslim remained undifferentiated into linguistic groups, indicating that while ancestral language was seen as a powerful category of differentiation among Hindus, for Muslims, religion was seen as the overarching category. In the dynamics between ‘Indian’, ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’, language and linguistic identity became the mediator. What is noticeable in this case is that caste does not come into the forefront of the identity negotiations.

3.4 Merging of caste and class consciousness

Amit Sarwal tries to collate his own experiences in Australia with fiction writing from the Indian Diaspora there and suggests that migration to Australia has brought new social and class distinctions amongst the South Asian migrants as each family, in setting its strategy for life in the new homeland, faced a central question: whether to give priority to social security or economic advancement? He argues that despite the modern nature of South Asian diaspora in Australia , which is an egalitarian society, some inherited approaches to social hierarchy cannot be entirely shaken off. Caste as an institution is not practiced publicly, neither has caste consciousness survived as such. But caste consciousness has very subtly merged into class consciousness and been converted to a demonstration of social status in relation to others. (Sarwal 2013:14 )

Conclusion

Summing up, both class and caste in the diaspora today are receving more attention than before, and they indicate that while old divisions are not reproduced in toto in the diaspora, there continue to be subtle manifestations with new meanings and significance,and with some adaptations and changes as well.