VI

Normalizing the Unique: Explaining the Persistence of Caste

Dipankar Gupta

Why does caste lead to so much excitement? What is so unique about it?

Apparently, it is the only form of social hierarchy where those at the bottom agree to be there; or, at worst, are humbly reconciled to their lot. In fact, if one were to go by traditional interpretation, there is no contestation at any point over social placement anywhere in the caste system. That is because caste is premised on the presumption of different physicality, which ranges from the most pure to the most impure.

Accordingly, Brahmins and Untouchables are at either ends of this continuum, while other castes find their place somewhere in between. Through all this, let us not forget that the special fact about caste is the supposed acceptance of the hierarchy by everybody, including the most oppressed.¹ The view that poorer ‘subaltern’ castes participated in their own subjugation is what makes the caste system unique.

Even though the presentation of caste is fetching and attractive, contemporary India puts it under considerable pressure. If castes ordain ranking and if this is accepted by all, then how can caste competition be explained? This is particularly relevant when observing the passion with which politics is conducted in India. This is a major contradiction, which a traditional understanding of caste just cannot reconcile.

Caste competition, regardless of how it is seen, cannot allow for acceptance without protest of how bodily substances² are placed hierarchically. Therefore, in a nutshell, caste politics, including caste alliances, violate the essence of the pure hierarchy, as it is known. When castes compete against one another, how can there be a single hierarchy?

Yet, it is not as if, for all these reasons, castes have disappeared. What has changed is that castes no longer form a ‘system’, but are active as ‘identities’. The phenomenon has morphed quite significantly, and has become one that we need to be sensitive to in order to understand how different castes manifest themselves today. When castes interacted as a ‘system’, people behaved in accordance with an ascribed rank, or what was ordained by birth. This hierarchy was manned and patrolled by the ruling caste of the region and even defined by them. This is why caste rankings differed from region to region; but, more importantly, the ‘system’ held.

This worked well for centuries with different Kshatriya castes heading the system, but came unstuck once the closed village economy collapsed. Almost all powerful castes, such as the Jats, Rajputs, Bhumihars, Thevars, Okkaligas, do not want to be Brahmins but covet the Kshatriya status. In India, there has been a gradual undermining of the rural way of life from the late nineteenth century onwards. What had remained unchanged in essence for centuries began shaking in the latter decades of colonial rule.

By the time Independence came and zamindari was abolished, the system began to wobble seriously. The rural economy was no longer closed, and as time went by, it was not overwhelmingly agrarian either. Today, over 60 per cent of India’s Rural Net Domestic Product is non-farm in character, and only 13 per cent of its GDP is agricultural. There are very few big landowners, and the old landlords have all but disappeared. This has wrecked caste as a ‘system’ for there is no oligarch, or ruling patron, who could keep the various castes in place.

In time, the systemic aspect collapsed, but caste as an identity remained, and it is this that fuels competition and politics in India today. In fact, the collapse of caste as a system encouraged the emergence of caste as an identity. Now that caste functions as identities, there are open declarations of contesting origin myths that are as fantastical as the Rig Vedic Purusha Shukta.³ The only difference is that many of these are borne by oral traditions and are not part of the great Hindu textual heritage. Here too, changes are occurring for many of these alternate origin myths are being written up at the pace with which its subscribers are getting literate.

The question then is whether the caste identities that are now sprouting up everywhere —were they brand new, or were they there earlier, but suppressed?

The more credible argument, which would fall in line with what has been said so far, is that the fear of punishment kept subaltern castes from asserting themselves. Now that times have changed and the old oligarch is no longer the source of power and patronage, it is much easier to come out in the open and shut the closet door behind.

It is hard to make the claim that in the past most people adhered to the ruling castes’ versions of hierarchy and, therefore, remained obedient and servile. The present has taught us to suspect the traditional treatises on caste. Pressured by contemporary circumstances, we begin to appreciate caste as ‘identity’ and once we do that its uniqueness disappears. This is because people across the world fashion origin tales for themselves and are often willing to die for them. It has often been observed that members of a particular caste attach a great deal of ‘patriotism’ to belonging to it. Indeed, Brahmins may consider certain castes to be ‘low’, but that is not how these castes view themselves. In fact, there are several occasions when a Brahmin is seen as inauspicious and borderline ‘impure’. This phenomenon was adequately captured by Celestin Bougle when he said that the principle of ‘mutual repulsion’ is active between castes.⁴

Having said all that, it can also be admitted that India is not the only country where birth defines a cultural identity. This is a human failing everywhere, an anthropological truth, as it were. The world is separated on the basis of language, religion and colour, and none of these markers are achievement-based, but determined by birth. Likewise, one is born into a caste and dies in it.⁵

People are not just divided into ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Each identity has a certain pride of belonging. No matter which category people fall into, everybody believes that their character and heritage are the best of all. This is true for everyone, from our ancestors in the Stone Age to Hindus and Europeans alike.

Therefore, castes share many of these characteristics that are present in other forms of social stratification elsewhere in the world. In addition, contrary to the traditional view, generated by Purusha Shukta partisans, the castes that were taken to be low, actually never believed in their positioning. This completely robs castes of their unique attribute. Like people everywhere in the world, those who are considered to be low or impure by some standards have a different opinion about themselves. There is no caste that does not see itself as superior to all others. How ordinary and commonplace is this?

There are hierarchies everywhere—in Britain, France, the US and in African nations as well. Yet, nowhere can it be said that those who are politically and economically dominated actually acquiesce in their humiliation. Racism, in whatever form, whether in Europe, America or South Africa, did not result in Blacks saying that they deserve to be punished by Whites.

The colonized also always found reasons to explain away their defeats at the hands of outsiders to factors that did not question their heritage. The French, true to form, believed that the Prussians gave them a sound hiding in the late nineteenth century simply because their children went to better schools. Nationalism, in many cases, arose out of defeats in the battle field. The vanquished often attribute their defeats, not to their physical or intellectual shortcomings, but to traitors, named and unnamed.

Once again, all these features come alive in the making of caste identities as well. So what is so unusual about them? For instance, even those who were once called Untouchables, refuse to bow down to orthodox pressures. They too have their own origin stories to relate, and they are all grand. These castes, like Blacks in apartheid-driven South Africa, may concede that others are richer, more educated, and so on. But when it comes to the crunch, they will never accept the fact that their lower social status is on account of the inherent substances that make them. If ‘Black is beautiful’ gave voice to this view in America, the ‘Dalit’ heritage has done it for those who were once considered impure in Hindu India. If Black counterculture, from the margins of New Orleans, Harlem and Chicago, can be the carrier of pride, so can Dalit poetry and worship be for the once considered Untouchables. In which case, the established view that is put forward in sociological texts of lower castes participating in their own subjugation is false and untenable.

Interestingly, in none of the studies that assert that lower castes participate in their own subjugation, are the views of the subordinated people taken into account. What is overlooked is that India too has its own version of the ‘Harlem culture’ and this is best expressed in the way those who were once deemed as low castes have carved proud niches for themselves.

For example, one of the legends of leather workers relates an episode that purportedly happened long ago when three Brahmin brothers went out to bathe in the Ganges. On the way to the river they saw a cow trapped in quicksand and struggling for life. As the other two were weak and scared, it was the youngest brother who went out to rescue the cow but failed to pull it out alive. When he returned his older brothers turned on him and claimed that because he had touched a carcass, he would henceforth be called a ‘leather worker’.⁶

Then there are ex-Untouchable legends that claim that they were once rulers and much loved by their subjects. In this happy world descended some evil forces, often with divine help, and cheated them of their land and power. Jyotiba Phule propounded a similar view, but went on to add that it is the culture of this community that is actually the origin, the adi, of Hindu civilization. In other words, true Hinduism rests with the culture of the adis, who were tricked by usurpers to the horror and anguish of their erstwhile subjects. Communities like the Meradh, Kammara and Jajjagara, who are blacksmiths by occupation, also believe they were among the adis.

Other lower-caste-origin myths need not even be about Brahmins, rulers or kings; they deal directly with gods. The washer-men of Bengal believe that they were born of Shiva’s divine intervention. Many, many years ago a washer-woman sent her son to collect Shiva’s soiled clothes. The boy waited patiently, but as Shiva was so completely immersed in meditation, Parvati asked him to play around and then go back. After his meditation, when Shiva came to Parvati, she scolded him and said that a little boy was waiting outside to take his garments for a wash. When Shiva stepped out, there was no boy in sight. This horrified him for he feared that some devil or ogre had gobbled the boy up. How would he face the little one’s mother now? So Shiva, by pure meditative skills, that only he was capable of, created another boy, a doppelganger of the one he thought had been picked up. However, he later came to know that the first boy got tired of waiting and went home. Now there was one boy too many and out of this creation of Shiva’s, arose the caste of Chasadhoba of Bengal.

The Mochis of Maharashtra claim that their ancestor saved Shiva from a tiger and turned the beast outside in and made socks (or mojas) from his skin. This was then presented to Shiva and that is how they came to be known as ‘Mochis’. The Valmikis trace their descent from the famous sage, while the members of one of its sub-castes claim that their ancestors were born of the Balaji creation myth.⁷ The Nhavi, or barbers of Maharashtra, contend that they are superior to Brahmins as they emanated from the serpent, Sheshathat, that encircled Shiva’s neck. Those who were once pejoratively known as Chandals believed that their ancestor was a Brahmin who was cheated into eating something impure by his enemies and thus got degraded. However, a time would come, and soon, when this treachery would be avenged.

Let us now move on to the Vaisya category. The Purusha Shukta legend places them at the third spot, just above the lowest-ranking Shudra. As observed earlier with the so-called Untouchable assertion of dignity, the Vaisyas have their own origin tales resplendent with honour and glory. There are other origin tales of north Indian merchants, or Baniyas, that also assert that they were once rulers and that too of significant kingdoms of ancient India such as Ayodhya, Kaushambi and Mathura. The Agarwal community traces its origin to King Agrasen. This claim became hugely respectable after Bharatendu Harishchandra, the renowned nineteenth century poet endorsed it. That Jaisalmer had a Baniya king in the early nineteenth century made merchant claims to kingship credible. Similar stories can be found in south India as well, especially among the Kaikkoolars, who are also known as Segunthar Mudaliyar. They trace their origin to Parvati and her original forebears, who even helped Shiva overcome his deadly enemy, Suurubatman.

All of this should explain two enduring truths. First: nobody wants to be trampled upon or accept the ideology of domination thrust upon them by a superior community or communities. Second: caste positions are seriously contested across the spectrum. It wasn’t visible earlier because the ‘system’ was strongly held in place by the closed village economy that was ruled over by the rural oligarch. As that is no longer the case, the hidden aspects of ‘identity’ that remained submerged for fear among the non-privileged castes have since sprung to life.

This also suggests that whenever there was a social flux, caste hierarchies too underwent transformations. Once we are aware of this possibility, their occurrence in history can be spotted clearly. Kshatriyas like Marathas, Rajputs and Jats were associated with humble professions; they were pastoralists like the Jats. The founder of the great Mauryan Empire might well have been a non-Vedic person from the Morya tribe. There is a difference, however, between then and now. In the past, caste positions changed on account of bloody wars and that happened after decades, if not centuries, of tranquillity. Today, these disputes happen every day and signify a transition from medieval times.

Caste identities also express themselves in politics. There are many known caste alliances—such as between Kshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, whose acronym ‘Kham’ gained near conceptual status in the 1980s. Then there was the other grand alliance between the Ahirs, Jats, Gujars and Rajputs, known by the acronym ‘Ajgar’. Both of these came and went because these alliances were not the result of like-minded views but were vehicles of convenience. These castes saw a certain advantage in banding together for a particular election, but once that was over, individual identities began to press for a breakaway.

The backward class movement that gained traction post the Mandal Commission recommendations faced a similar fate. While peasant castes (e.g. Jats, Gujars, Kurmis and Koeris) might appear homogeneous, they compete with each other due to identical interests of being rural communities with agricultural professions trying to break into the urban world. The common interest makes political sense for them to unite.

A discussion of caste alliances tends to impute a natural affinity between different communities, which is actually non-existent. What exists are transient interests that bring different identities to temporarily merge before parting ways. The tie that binds identities together in a political alliance is notoriously fickle; the moment the context changes so do friendships. For example in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections, the Jats, Yadavs and other peasant castes, who were once together, went their separate ways.

This process can also be found among the Scheduled Castes. The Bahujan Samaj Party, which was successful in Uttar Pradesh for several elections, has lost its charm and its loyal followers. One need only examine its performances in the 2002 and the 2007 elections and contrast them to the 2017 one to understand this process. Constituencies that went with the Bahujan Samaj Party in one election ditched it in the next, and so forth. In fact, this is true of all elections. In politics, caste alliances are temporary, what holds over a longer term is the internal sense of identity and belonging.

Castes, then, are not as unique as they are often made out to be in mainstream literature. They contest over positions of superiority, just as other status groups do. They have identity tales that elevate their backgrounds and breeding, just like other status groups. The only feature that separates them from others is the large number of different status groups in the caste order. Finally, caste Hindus are just like other individuals in the rest of the world. When it serves their interests, they abandon caste identities altogether and opt for more secular ones.

There is a clear empirical reason for this. Hindus may belong to different castes, may be attached to them too, but they have identities and interests that are not determined by their caste position. For instance, Jats did not vote for Jats in the 2017 UP elections and neither did the Paswans vote for the Paswans in Bihar in 2015. It is also fairly certain that a large number of Jatavs, traditionally Bahujan Samaj supporters, voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party during the UP elections in 2017. Such examples abound.

Finally, no one caste numerically dominates any constituency. The Yadavs are but 9 per cent of UP’s population. Only 8 per cent of the population of west UP are Jats;⁸ but it is mistakenly considered to be a Jat bastion. In such a situation—where in a constituency about five castes of equal numbers are present, what must a voter do? As nobody wants to waste a vote and there are usually only two major contenders, most people are forced to vote outside their castes.

It is disappointing for exotic hunters to know that Indians are actually ordinary, normal people, but with a difference—as with all other communities. The great advantage of discarding the exotic veil around castes is that it promotes analytical thinking in social science. Once that happens, universal theory comes alive and understanding across cultures grows.