24 Recent debates on caste

Anurekha Chari Wagh

Introduction:

This module seeks to analyse caste as a structure of social hierarchy. In doing so, it first analyses caste from three perspectives, namely tradition (functional), power (conflict) and humiliation (phenomenological). The module situates the debate on caste within the larger issues on justice and equality linking with the institutionalization of justice in the form of affirmative action. In throwing light on the contemporary scenario of caste, the module attempts to bring out the complexities that exist and emanate when caste is studied in the context of class, politics, state and law, and gender.

1. A brief overview:

The Indian Caste System is historically one of the main dimensions where people in India are socially differentiated through class, religion, region, tribe, gender, and language. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology explains caste as ‘an institution of considerable internal complexity, which has been oversimplified by those seeking an ideal type of rigid hierarchical social stratification based on extreme closure criteria’1. In Max Weber’s writings, it was synonymous with ethnic status stratification and constituted one end of the continuum which contrasted status honour stratification with commercial classes and the market. Possibly, the clearest definition is that proffered by Andre Beteille, who describes a caste as ‘a small and named group of persons characterized by endogamy, hereditary membership and a specific style of life which sometimes includes the pursuit by tradition of a particular occupation and is usually associated with a more or less distinct ritual status in a hierarchical system, based on concepts of purity and pollution’2.

Caste is especially important in the lives of Indian Hindus, for whom its basis is the traditional idea of the five varna: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, and Untouchable. Within each varna, there are myriad jati, which are small endogamous groups, tied to a defining occupation, based in a village or a group of villages, which provide for the element of mobility within a system where otherwise birth determines social rank. The varna system provides the system of values, the jati its functional organization and practice. Jatis may seek promotion within the caste hierarchy by adopting the practices of higher varna, which can result in promotion within their varna but not between varna, a process known as sankritization. It is believed that mobility between varna can only be achieved through rebirth, where the successful practice of the caste code or dharma earns for the individual an increased karma and therefore higher status at rebirth. The major dividing line between and within the caste, centers around the rules of purity and pollution. These affect commensality (sharing and preparing of food), intermarriage, and any form of social intercourse. Since pollution of food is most likely, the higher varna tend towards vegetarianism, and are also teetotal. For this reason too, meat consumption is gradated with distinctions being made between mutton, pork and beef. Spatial segregation is a natural consequence of the jati system, and the segmentation inherent in the system and its attendant rules are overseen by a caste court. The caste system has been able to assimilate non-caste, non-Hindu outsiders very successfully.

Since independence in 1947, the Indian state has attempted to break down caste divisions and to improve the positions of Untouchables (now called Dalit). In practice, caste retains an important role in the social structure of India and Indian oversees communities. Some sociologists have attempted (controversially) to extend the term beyond the Indian situation, and to apply it to the analysis of South African system of apartheid, and even to the system of racial segregation in some parts of the United States during the 20th century. A good general account can be found in Chris Smaje, Natural Hierarchies: The Historical Sociology of Race and Caste3.

1 Scott, John, and Gordon Marshall, eds. A dictionary of sociology. Oxford University Press, 2009, 55.

2 Beteille, Andre. Caste, class, and power: Changing patterns of stratification in a Tanjore village. University of California Press, 1965.

Caste mobility within caste hierarchy occurs through a number of processes which have been explained by a number of Sociologists, namely, G.S. Ghurye, Louis Dumont, M.N. Srinivas, S.C. Dube, McKim Marriot, Yogendra Singh, Iravati Karve, N.K. Bose, Surajit Sinha, B.R. Ambedkar, Andre Beteille, Dipankar Gupta. A careful analysis of their theorization would make us categorize their propounding into three sects: Firstly, Caste as Tradition, Secondly, Caste as Power, Thirdly, Caste as Humiliation.

2. Caste as Tradition:

The history of modern day theorization of caste begins with Western and colonial encounters with the Indian civilization. The term ‘caste’ was the English translation of the Spanish word ‘casta’ first used in the Indian context by the Portuguese seafarers. Though other Europeans were also attracted by India for various other reasons, the British proved to be the most significant among them not only because of their success as colonizers, but also as they produced a considerable amount of literature on the social and cultural life of the Indian people4. The Western view of caste developed over time with the writings of orientalists, missionaries and colonial administrators contributing in different ways. The orientalists believed that the best way to make sense of Indian society was by reading the classical texts of Hinduism. The colonial view attempted to theorize caste as a specific system of social relations. Some Indian scholars also wrote in a similar vein, such as G.S. Ghurye who identifies six core features of the Indian caste system, namely, segmental division, hierarchy, pollution and purity, civil and religious disability and privileges of different sections, lack of choice of occupation, and restrictions on marriage.

It is in the writing of a French scholar, Celestin Bougle, that we see the beginning of a systematic theory of the caste system, which derives the substance of its arguments from the colonial and orientalist writings. According to Bougle, caste was indeed a system of inequality, and though in its purest form it developed among the Hindus, it was not peculiar to India. He identified three core elements that comprise caste, namely, hereditary specialization, hierarchy and repulsion5. Louis Dumont on the other hand was primarily concerned with the ideology of the caste system. His caste analysis lays emphasis on attributes of caste, which is why he is put in the category of those following the attributional approach to the caste system. For him, caste is a set of relationships of economic, political and kinship systems, sustained by certain ‘values’, which are mostly religious in nature. Dumont propounds that caste is not a form of stratification but a special form of stratification but a special form of inequality, whose essence has to be deciphered by the sociologists. Here, Dumont identifies ‘hierarchy’ as the essential value underlying the caste system, supported by Hinduism. He begins with Bougle’s definition of caste and says that it divides the whole Indian society into a larger number of hereditary groups, distinguished from one another and connected together by three characteristics6:

3 Chris Smaje, Natural Hierarchies: The Historical Sociology of Race and Caste (2000)

4 Jodhka, Surinder S. Caste. Oxford University Press, 2012, 2.

5 Bouglé, Celestin. “The essence and reality of the caste system.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 2, no. 1 (1968): 7-30.

6 Nagla, Bhupendra Kumar. Indian sociological thought. Rawat Publications, 2008

Firstly, Separation on the basis of rules of the caste in matters of marriage and contact, whether direct or indirect (food);

Secondly, Interdependence of work or division of labour, each group having, in theory or by tradition, a profession from which their members can depart only within certain limits; Thirdly, Graduation of status or hierarchy, which ranks the groups as relatively superior or inferior to one another.

Dumont views that this definition indicates the main apparent characteristics of the caste system. He describes three aspects7:

Firstly, India is composed of many small territories and castes;

Secondly, every caste is limited to a particular and definite geographic area; and Thirdly, Marrying outside one’s own caste is not possible in the caste system.

The Hindu mind was concerned with maintaining social difference and inequalities (as in Homo Hierarchichus).

As a counterpart to the book-view of Indian society, social scientists, particularly social anthropologists, as they began to work on the Indian society, social scientists, particularly social anthropologists, as they began to work on the Indian society during the middle of the twentieth century, recognized the need for constructing a field-based or field-view of the traditional Indian social order. William Wiser in ‘The Hindu Jajmani System’8 conceptualized the social relationships among caste groups in the Indian village in the framework of ‘reciprocity’9. As Wiser explained, ‘Each serves the other. Each in turn is master. Each in turn is servant’10. Mutual rank was uncertain and arguable. By implication, ‘mobility was possible in caste’11. Srinivas developed the concept of sanskritization to show that the system of caste hierarchies was after all not so rigid and closed as it appeared from the ‘book-view’12. Similarly, when Dube identified five factors that contributed towards status differentiation in the village community of Shamirpet, along with caste and religion, he also counted land-ownership, wealth, position in government service and village organization, age, and distinctive personality traits13.

Along with the earlier writings of James Mill, Charles Metcalfe’s notion of the Indian village community set the tone for much of the later writings on rural India. Metcalfe, in his celebrated remark stated that ‘the Indian village communities were little republics, having nearly everything they wanted within themselves, and almost independent of foreign relations. The nationalist leadership of the Indian freedom movement also accepted the colonial construct of the ‘Indian village’ as a given fact, and to a significant extent, it shaped their understanding of traditional Indian life14.

3. Caste as Power:

The recent as well as not so recent social scientific research on the subject and the popular social movements around caste have frequently questioned the validity of understanding caste from indological and structural-functionalist perspective. The most commonly invoked categories in relation to caste, or along with caste, in the popular and academic discourses, are those of ‘power’ and ‘politics’15.

7 Ibid.

8 Wiser, William Henricks “The Hindu jajmani system: a socio-economic system interrelating members of a Hindu village community in services/by William Henricks Wiser.” (1936).

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar. The dominant caste and other essays Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.

12 Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar. The remembered village No.26 Univ of California Press, 1980.

13 Dube, Shyama Charan. Indian village Routledge, 2012

14 Jodhka, Surinder S “Caste and untouchability in rural Punjab” Economic and Political Weekly (2002): 1813-1823.

Theorizing caste as power: The classical orientalist writings, including the Dumontian version, provide a larger framework for understanding the Indian/Hindu society and its difference from the modern societies of the West. The supremacy of the religious principle, articulated in the form of oppositional unity of pure and impure (as in Dumont), also meant that in India, the secular domain of power was independent of the religious domain, and inferior to it. This is how Dumont establishes the supremacy of the Brahmin in Indian society. A range of scholars have questioned this formulation on various grounds, some of whom have also tried to construct alternative theories. Let us briefly discuss works of Nicholus Dirks and Gloria Goodwin Raheja.

Based on his extensive historical work on caste practices and ethnographic studies of Kallars in Tamil Nadu, Nicholus Dirks offers a critique of Dumont and an alternative conceptualization of caste in his book Castes of Mind. Dirks, convincingly shows how the colonial rulers, through a process of enumeration and ethnographic surveys, raised consciousness about caste16 . They also produced social and intellectual conditions where ‘caste became the single term capable of expressing, organizing, and above all “synthesizing” India’s diverse forms of social identity, community and organization’17. The ‘Original Caste’, as he argues in the book as well as in another essay on the subject, was a diverse reality and did not follow from any single principle, as suggested by Dumont. He questions Dumont’s central assumption about the separation of religious authority and political power in the Indian/Hindu society. While Dumont recognizes that the king is all-powerful in the secular domain, his power was inferior to the religious authority of the Brahmin, ‘articulated in terms of the opposition of purity and impurity’18 This, Dirks argues, was not the case in Tamil Nadu. There was ‘no fundamental ontological separation of a “religious” from a “political” domain’. Religious institutions and the domain of power (of the king) were completely meshed with each other. The king drew his power from religious worship. For status or religion to encompass power, they had to be separate realities. This, Dirk argues, was not the case in reality.

Richard Burghart also put forth a similar argument based on his study of the Hindu kingdom of Nepal19. Not only were there no doubts about the supremacy of the king in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal, but the Brahmin had also been incorporated into civic administration, which effectively made the Brahmin a servant of the kingdom. The king was also not a mere political head. He also ‘defied the kingship’20.

While Dirks and Burghart focused on macro structures of power and the kingship to show that ‘divinity’ and ‘power’ were not two separate spheres in the so-called traditional Indian society, G.G. Raheja studied a micro setting in north India and found the Brahmin-centric

15Ibid.

16Dirks, Nicholas B. “The original caste: Power, history and hierarchy in South Asia.” Contributions to Indian sociology 23, no. 1 (1989): 59-77.

17Dirks, Nicholas B “Castes of Mind Colonialism and the Making of British India” (2001)

18Ibid.

19Burghart, Richard. “The formation of the concept of nation-state in Nepal” The Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 01 (1984): 101-125.

20Burghart, Richard. “Hierarchical models of the Hindu social system.” Man (1978): 519-536

notion of caste as being completely misleading21. Though caste divisions existed in the region, she questioned the assumption that there was one single underlying value system or ideology that shaped caste relations everywhere. On the contrary: ‘… there are several contextually shifting ideologies of inter-caste relationships apparent in everyday village social life. Meanings and values are foregrounded differently from context to context, and they implicate varying configurations of castes…’22 Instead of looking at caste from the perspective of hierarchy, she tried to understand the relationship through the categories of ‘centrality’ and ‘mutuality’.

4. Caste as Humiliation:

Viewed from ‘below’, the most critical feature of caste is the experience of untouchability. The line of pollution, which demarcated the untouchables from the rest, has been a critical point of distinction. In some sense, the idea of untouchability is an obvious extension of the idea of pollution, or of the notion of purity and impurity. However, untouchability is also much more than what the notion of pollution suggests. Nowhere in the line of hierarchy is the rigidity of caste as sharp as it is around the line of pollution.

The idea of ‘the line of pollution’23 has also been an important category in the official discourse on caste as in most cases it was used as the boundary line for identifying the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and for institutionalizing policies of affirmative action for their ‘welfare’. Perhaps the most far-reaching implication of the growing use of the categories of ‘depressed classes’ and untouchables/untouchability during the early years of the twentieth century was its official recognition in the Government of India Act 1935. The invention of Scheduled Caste24 as an officially recognized category for listing deprived communities was also closely tied to the idea of untouchability.

Considering the contemporary situation of the Dalits, Gopal Guru cites the implication in the field of theoretical enterprise, and he feels that ‘moving away from the empirical to the theoretical mode has become a social necessity for Dalits, tribals and OBCs, for many reasons’25. The reasons he cites are: Firstly, they need theory to confront the reverse orientalism that treats Dalits, tribals and OBCs as the inferior empirical self and ‘the twice born’ (TTB) as the superior theoretical self. The descriptive mode is often deployed by the TTB in order to gift-wrap the insult and derision that is inflicted on the Dalits. Thus description of the body language of the Dalits and the OBCs becomes an erotic need for the cultural and political satisfaction of the TTB. It is due to this reason that the TTB did not find it necessary to offer theoretical treatment to the theatrical language of an OBC or Dalit chief minister from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh26. The theory of theatrical language offers a unique opportunity for Dalit/bahujan scholars to fight this derisive description of cultural symbols. The asymmetrical relationship that characterizes reverse orientalism seeks to caricature Dalits, tribals and OBCs as amusing objects. This kind of social science practice raises the issue of whether or not social science in India is reproducing the same tormenting forms of orientalism against which it had fought in the first instance? In view of the complete lack of theoretical intervention from Dalit/bahujan scholars, some non-Dalits messiahs have offered to represent Dalit/bahujans theoretically.

21Raheja, Gloria Goodwin. “Centrality, mutuality and hierarchy: Shifting aspects of inter-caste relationships in north India.” Contributions to Indian sociology 23, no. 1 (1989): 79-101.

22(Raheja 1989:81)

23Ibid

24Galanter, Marc. Competing equalities: law and the backward classes in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1984): 121-30.

25Guru Gopal “How egalitarian are the social sciences in India?” Economic and Political Weekly (2002): 5003-5009.

26Ibid

Secondly, it is argued by the TTB that they need to intervene in the Dalit situation at the theoretical level only to restore voice and visibility to Dalits and ultimately advance the Dalit epistemological cause. But this also ends up producing reverse orientalism in a subtle way. The claim to offer epistemological empowerment to Dalits involves a charity element which by definition is condescending. This epistemological charity has several implications for Dalits. Speaking for Dalits or anybody who constitutes a jajmani relationship invokes the patron and the client. The patron or the mookhnayak in an ironical sense tends to reproduce the brahminical mechanism of first controlling knowledge resources and then pouring them into the empty cupped palms of Dalits. This structured relationship produces legitimacy for the patron’s existence in both, the Dalit soul and the Dalit society. As a result, the patron does not find it necessary to exit from the epistemological fields that are specific to the Dalit and bahujan situation. This jajmani system also tends to undervalue or underplay the discursive capacity of such groups who, in more favourable hermeneutic conditions, could develop their own epistemic stamina. This postmodernist construction of Dalits remains blind to the hegemonic politics that suppresses the need to make connections between several local experiences that belong to the same logical class of collective suffering and exploitation.

Finally, the discovery of the Dalit epistemological standpoint fails to explain who has arrived- whether the object (Dalits) or the subject (‘mooknayaks’). This question becomes absolutely crucial because such claims have been sustained on the basis of throwing up completely new conceptual landscapes from the Dalit experience. This inability to either recover or throw up an alternative concept happens because these scholars choose to theorize Dalit experience standing outside the Dalit experience. Te representation thus remains epistemologically posterior- its staindpoint remains a mere assertion which feeds on the critique of the mainstream Marxist pr feminist framework. This externality hardly enables the Dalits to secure theoretical advance for their own revolutionary understanding and politics.

5. Reservation Debate

The pertinent issue that emanates from the above discussion is the issue of reservation often termed as affirmative action (AA) and the interesting responses that emerge in the form of debates. Broadly speaking,

AA   consists of a set of anti-discrimination measures intended to provide access to preferred positions in a society for members of groups that would otherwise be excluded or under-represented27. Many of the contributions to the recent debate do take up political dimensions of the situation by highlighting instances of discrimination based upon caste prejudices28. This is a valuable contribution which demonstrates the reality of discrimination and marginalization with the aid of statistical data and recourse to establish criteria of backwardness and deprivation, such as, region, gender, caste, etc. in combination. But this analysis is usually aborted and re-directed towards policy by defining its goal as that of ‘demonstrating’ that something is the case. At this juncture, one may question about whom to demonstrate. Since the state has already declared that the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) reservations will be introduced in educational institutions, it would appear that only the opponents of reservation are in need of being so convinced. Thus, in a peculiar twist, policy recommendations seem to be addressed, not to the state, which seems to be already responding

27Deshpande, Ashwini Affirmative Action in India. Oxford University Press, 2013, 6

28S. Deshpande, A. Deshpande, J Ghosh and Thorat in the EPW special issue.

these realities, but to the phantom majority whom the self-styled ‘Youth for Equality’29 and others claim to represent. Or, to put it differently, even though there is ample evidence that the state’s character has undergone significant change since the foundation of the republic, it is still addressed in its early, essentially managerial form: the one that is meant when people speak of the ‘idea of India’. Invariably, we note that the evidence of discrimination is usually channeled into an argument about deprivation: social divisions with structural consequences are translated into the language of a common measure of access to public goods, thus in a way disorienting the political analysis. The shift from discrimination which points to social divisions with structural consequences to deprivation- a lack that may be compensated- is symptomatic of the policy approach, which does not examine social divisions or inquire into the consequences for an understanding of the Indian society/democracy. It attempts to find a solution to a crisis. The fundamental question is: how do the state and its advisers perceive the crisis generated by the struggle for reservations, and, by contrast, how might it be perceived from the point of view of a democracy to come?30

a. A foundational necessity:

Reservations for SC/STs were a foundational necessity for the republic to come into being. In civil society discourse, this was usually and still is, considered a full and final settlement of historical debt, after which caste would seize to be a political issue. Caste violence and other evidence of continuing caste discrimination and oppression thus came not to be seen as a social rather than a political problem. On the other hand, the state maintained a predominantly non-interventionist stance in relation to communal relations reminiscent of the colonial stance. It managed to sustain for sometime, the illusion of a modern polity moving steadily towards early decades and their intelligentsia that they were authorized by a social contract, was not shared by a majority of the population. The country witnessed the return of the unresolved political questions of separate electorates, or rather the unresolved political questions of which the separate electorates demand was a symptom, seemed to have found a new way of re- entering the political agenda. Caste groups began to mobilize with renewed energy though not exclusively within the framework of parliamentary democratic system. This politics named caste as a principal axis for the distribution of status, wealth and knowledge. Movements like the Dalit Panthers and the Dalit Sangharsh Samithi of the 1970s, and later many political parties called for a sharing of power which they regard as having been on a caste basis. The idea of a ‘bahujan samaj’ is new, and posits those who have been excluded or expropriated as the actual majority. The success of these newly emerging movements and political parties showed that the assumption of unified and homogenous policy was ill-founded. There was no singular political subject. The task of forging such a new community remains a task for the future.

b. Assessment:

Ashwini Deshpande enumerates the following points with regard to assessment of the affirmative action31.

Firstly, it reveals that in the presence of discrimination, labour markets do not function efficiently. Indeed, there are strong discriminatory losses in earnings among subaltern groups; 

29Tharu, Susie, M. Madhava Prasad, Rekha Pappu, and K. Satyanarayana “Reservations and the Return to Politics” Economic and Political Weekly (2007): 39-45.

30Ibid.

31Ibid

Secondly, while nowhere in the world has AA proven to be sufficient to close the gaps between the privileged and oppressed groups, there is enough evidence to suggest that the gaps would be larger in its absence32

For a programme which has been extremely contentious, and marked by extensive litigation and protests, there are surprisingly few rigorous empirical assessments of its impact. All the standard anti-AA arguments have been invoked in the Indian context as well, but with virtually no empirical backing. Before listing the arguments, we should note that arguments against OBC reservations are not the same as those against SC-ST reservations, though there is considerable overlap in the two sets of arguments. The difference between the approach to OBC quotas and SC-ST quotas arises primarily because of the assessment about the nature and extent of deprivation and marginalization of the two groups, in that the case for SC -ST reservation is stronger than that for OBCs. Thus, a support for the SC-ST quota might not naturally translate into support for the extension of reservation towards OBCs, where an argument for a more nuanced gap has been made.33

Glanter34 had undertaken a rough but comprehensive assessment of the AA programme. The main conclusions of his analysis may be summarized as follows:

Firstly, the programme has shown substantial redistributive effects in that, access to education and jobs is spread wider in the caste spectrum than earlier, although redistribution is not spread evenly throughout the beneficiary groups. There is evidence of clustering, but Galanter believes that these reflect structural factors, since the better situated enjoy a disproportionate share of the benefits in any government programme, not just in AA programmes35.

Secondly, the vast majority of Dalits are not directly affected by AA, but reserved jobs bring a manifold increase in the number of families liberated from the subservient roles. Thirdly, in the short run, beneficiaries might get singled out and experience social rejection in offices, college hostels, and other set-ups where they are introduced through AA. However, in the long run, education and jobs weaken the stigmatizing association of Dalits with ignorance and incompetence. Moreover, ‘resentment of preferences may magnify hostility to these groups, but rejection of them exists independently of affirmative action programmes.’36

Fourthly, reserved seats do provide representation to SC-STs in legislative bodies, but that may not get reflected in enhanced, targeted policies towards these groups for several reasons. First, these candidates are elected by a common electorate and hence, SC-ST candidates have to appeal to a wider, multi-group electoral constituency, and tailor programmes accordingly. Second, these candidates typically belong to political parties which have a larger agenda than that of Dalit empowerment, which their elected representatives, including Dalits, have to reflect upon.

Fifthly, AA has kept the beneficiary groups and their problems visible to the educated public, but it has not motivated widespread concern for their inclusion beyond what is mandated by government policy.

32Ibid.

33Deshpande, Satish, and Yogendra Yadav. “Redesigning affirmative action: Castes and benefits in higher education.” Economic and Political Weekly(2006): 2419-2424.

34Ibid.

35Ibid.

36Ibid.

6. Interlinkages between concepts

Caste may be understood in terms of their intersections between concepts, namely, class, politics, law and state, and gender.

a. Caste and Class

The relationship of caste to class is one of the oldest questions in Indian social science, and the defining question of Nehruvian India in particular. Major Indian scholars are concerned with this question. However, its very pre-eminence and the manner in which it was usually posed, have made it an oddly disabling question37. It is hardly surprising that in the era of decolonization, enormous hope was invested in economic development as the solution to all manner of social and historical problems. Despite their formidable challenge, poverty and underdevelopment seemed explainable and, therefore, transformable in ways that caste or religious divisions were not. As a result, caste came to be considered the legitimate axis of stratification in the social sciences, and questions about the economic dimensions of caste were reduced to the teleological expectation that it would be transformed into class. This framework tended to narrow the focus of attention to only those features of caste that were considered relevant to it, thus crowding out alternative descriptions of what was actually happening in the present. The most deliberating aspect of this mode of posing the question has been the implicit expectation that caste would somehow become inert or lose its effectivity when alloyed with class.

b. Caste and Politics:

Class is expected to extinguish caste, electoral politics is seen as igniting it; and there is a constant incitement to think-in politics- the very synergy that is rendered unthinkable in the economy. But on closer examination these contrasts are revealed to be misleading because electoral politics in India was itself placed within a larger frame of incongruity. The standpoint for this larger frame was that of a normative western modernity, from whose perspective democratic elections in a ‘traditional’ society like India seemed ‘out of place’. From this vantage point, caste provided a reassuring explanation that relieved the tension of incongruity- this was not modern democracy after all, but a peculiar oriental variety. This was not simply Western prejudice, because the strong undercurrent of ethical censure palpable in early discussions of ‘casteism’ in politics was produced by internalized norms about an ascriptively unmarked modern liberal individual, who votes purely on rational ‘merits’. But formal elections were not the only arena of relevance for the caste-politics interface; in the context of social movements of various kinds, caste and political rationality did not seem so self-evidently mutually exclusive.

c. Caste vis-à-vis Law and the State:

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by the Indian state has been that of translating into practice its formal commitment to the abolition of caste and caste discrimination, especially untouchability. A disproportionate share of the efforts towards this end has been absorbed by the apparatus of reservations. Within the field of reservations, by far the most troublesome issue, especially, in the legal context has been that of the OBCs. Marc Galanter has explained the legal and constitutional stakes involved in the definition of the OBCs38. Since the late 1950s an unending stream of litigation, particularly in the southern states but also elsewhere has ensured that the courts have played significant part in determining the practical impact of reservations. Another noted scholar, K. Balagopal critiques the Supreme court’s verdict upholding the indivisibility of the SC quota, and lays bare the logic (or the lack thereof) in the arguments made and the ironic replication of the very same strategies earlier employed by upper castes to oppose quotas per se39.

37Deshpande, Satish The problem of Caste. Orient Black Swan, 2014, 14

d. Caste and Gender:

The caste-gender interface has a very different location and history when compared with the above discussed interfaces. The critical difference lies in the fact that gender has been internal to the social organization of caste itself. As Satish Deshpande asserts, the reproduction of caste is entirely dependent on the rules of endogamy, that is, on prescriptive and proscriptive restrictions on marriage40. When considered in terms of relations between castes close to each other in hierarchical ranking, it is once again rules of marriage (hypogamy and hypergamy) that are decisive. Finally, even in the case of informal and unspoken types of arrangements enabling or preventing sexual access to women for men, it is caste status that is regulative. Despite such a deep dependence on control over gender relations, caste has generally been theorized in implicitly male -centric terms, the only exceptions being instances of matriliny. A further historical text is provided to this story in the modern era by the prominence of gender issues (even if in peripheral ways) in caste-related reform movements ranging from Satyashodhak in Maharashtra, Self Respect in Tamil Nadu, and the later efforts of Ambedkar, not to speak of various campaigns in Bengal. This public recognition of gender appears somehow to be largely forgotten in the post-Independence period, until it is rediscovered after Mandal. Indeed, one of the interesting anomalies about the Mandal watershed is that it has provoked research on subjects bearing no relationship to the immediate events and issues of the controversy. Gender was (in retrospect) almost absent from this critical event, and yet, after Mandal, the intersection of caste and gender has become one of the more exciting research sites in caste studies.

Let us briefly throw light upon one of the most thought-provoking arguments of intersectionality theory, propounded by Uma Chakravarti. Chakravarti, through her theorization of ‘Brahmanical Patriarchy’41 explains how caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy constitute the organising principles of the brahmanical social order and are closely interconnected. As she explores the relationship between caste and gender, she focuses on what is possibly the central factor for the subordination of the upper caste woman: the need for effective sexual control over such women to maintain not only patrilineal succession but also caste purity, the institution unique to Hindu society.

Thus, breach of gender equality, sometimes even oppression, operates at a number of levels and in a matrix of class, caste, gender, race, and other arenas. Thus, all these mark the vertex of class, nationality, religion, and caste with gender.

38Galanter, Marc. “Who are the other backward classes?: An introduction to a constitutional puzzle.” Economic and Political Weekly (1978): 1812-1828.

39Balagopal, Kandalla. “Justice for Dalits among Dalits: All the Ghosts Resurface.” Economic and Political Weekly (2005): 3128-3133.

40Ibid.

41Chakravarti, Uma. “Conceptualising Brahmanical patriarchy in early India: Gender, caste, class and state.” Economic and Political Weekly (1993): 579-585.

7. Summary

As it would appear from the available literature on caste in modern India and the above discussion, by the time India gained independence from the colonial rule, organizationally and ideologically, the order of caste had been dented. Abolition of the practice of untouchability and expansion of the quota system by the Indian Constitution further reinforced the point that modern India did not uphold the normative order of caste. The state policy of affirmative action, the reservations, was designed to create a level playing field, where each caste group could compete on equal footing.

The change, however, had its limitations. The anti caste movements had mostly been urban-centric, with focus on the concerns of the upwardly mobile Backwards and Dalits. A large majority of the untouchables however lived in rural areas and were employed either in the traditional callings of their castes or as agricultural laborers. While the welfare and developmental programmes provided them new sets of opportunities, only a minuscule proportion of them could avail such benefits. Though the Indian Constitution provided reservations for the SCs and also abolished the practice of untouchability, the mainstream process of development planning was largely ‘caste-blind’. The development machinery worked with categories like rich and poor, or peasants, farmers, and laborers. During the initial decades, caste was rarely treated as a relevant variable in the visualization, designing, or administration of various developmental schemes and programmes. However, the process of developmental did have implications for the prevailing structure of caste relations.

Web links

• Hindu Caste System – The Facts http://nataliepeart.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/hindu-caste-system-the-facts/

REFERENCES:

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