HVK Archives: Logic behind perversion of caste; and a supporting letter
Logic behind perversion of caste; and a supporting letter - The Indian Express
Ram Swarup
()
13 September 1996
Title : Logic behind perversion of caste
Author : Ram Swarup
Publication : The Indian Express
Date : September 13, 1996
Today casteism is rampant. It is a new phenomenon. Old
India had castes but no casteism. In its present form,
casteism is a construct of colonial period, a product of
imperial policies and colonial scholarship. It was
strengthened by the breast-beating of our own
"reformers". Today, it has acquired its own momentum and
vested interests.
In the old days, the Hindu caste system was an
integrating principle. It provided economic security. One
had a vocation as soon as one was born - a dream for
those threatened with chronic unemployment. The system
combined security with freedom; it provided social as
well as closer identity; here the individual was not
atomised and did not become rootless. There was also no
dearth of social mobility; whole groups of people rose
and fell in the social scale. Rigidity about the old
Indian castes is a myth. Ziegenbbalg writing on the eve
of the British advent saw that at least one-third of the
people practised other than their traditional calling and
that "official and political functions, such as those of
teachers, councillors, governors, priests, poets and even
kings were not considered the prerogative of any
particular group, but are open to all".
Not did India ever have such a plethora of castes as
became the order of the day under the British rule.
Megasthenes gives us seven-fold division of the Hindu
society; Hsuan Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim (650 A.D.)
mentions four castes. Alberuni too mentions four main
castes and some groups which did not strictly belong to
the caste system.
Even the list of the greatly maligned Manu contained no
more than 40 mixed castes, all related by blood. Even the
Chandals were Brahmins on their father's side. But under
the British, Risley gave us 2,378 main castes, and 43
races! There is no count of sub-castes. Earlier, the 1891
census had already given us 1,156 sub-castes if chamars
alone. To Risley, every caste was also ideally a race and
had its own language.
Caste did not strike early European writers as something
specifically Indian. They knew in their own countries and
saw it that way. J.S. Mill in his Political Economy said
that occupational groups in Europe were "almost
equivalent to an hereditary distinction of caste".
To these observes, the word caste did not have the
connotation it had today. Gita Dharampal-Frick, an
orientalist and linguist tells us that the early European
writers on the subject used the other Greek word Meri
which means a portion, share, contribution. Sebastian
Franck (1534) used the German word Rott (rotte) meaning a
"social group", or"cluster". These words suggest that
socially and economically speaking they found castes
closer to each other than ordo or estates in Europe.
The early writers also saw no Brahmin domination though
they found must respect for them. Those like Jurgen
Andersen (1669) who described castes in Gujarat found
that Vaishyas and not the Brahmins were the most
important people there.
They also saw no sanskritisation. One caste was not
trying to be another; it was satisfied with being itself.
Castes were not trying to imitate Brahmins to improve
social status; they were proud of being what they were.
There is a Tamil poem by Kamban in praise of the plough
which says that "even being born a Brahmin does not by
far endow one with the same excellence as when one is
born into a Vellala family".
There was sanskritisation though but of a very different
kind. People tried to become not Brahmins but brahma-
vadin. Different castes produced great saints revered by
all. Ravi Das, a great saint, says that though of the
family of chamars who still go around Benares removing
dead cattle, yet even the most revered Brahmins now hold
their offspring, namely himself, in great esteem.
With the advent of Islam the Hindu society came under
great pressure; it faced the problem of survival. When
the political power failed, castes took over; they became
defence shields and provided resistance passive and
active. But in the process, the system also acquired
undesirable traits like untouchability. Alberuni who came
along with Mahmud Ghaznavi mentions the castes but no
untouchability. He reports that "much, however, as these
classes differ from each other, they live together in the
same towns and villages, mixed together in the same house
and lodgings".
Another acquired another trait; they became rigid and
lost their mobility. All mobility was now downward. H. A.
Rose, Superintendent of Ethnography, Punjab (1901-06),
author of a Glossary of Punjab Tribes and Castes says
that during the Muslim period, many Rajputs were degraded
and they became scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
Many of them still retain the Rajput gotra of parihara
and parimara. Similarly, G. W. Briggs in his The Chamars
tells us that many chamars still carry the names and
gotra of Rajput clans like Banaudhiya, Ujjaini,
Chandhariya, Sarwariya, Kanuijiya, Chauhan, Chadel,
Saksena, Sakarwar, Bhardarauiya, and Bundela etc. Dr K.
S. Lal cites many similar instances in his recent "Growth
of Scheduled Tribes and Castes in Medieval India".
The same is true of bhangis. William Crooke of Bengal
Civil Service tells us that the "rise of the present
Bhangi caste seems, from the names applied to the castes
and its subdivisions, to date from the early period of
Mohammedan rule". Old Hindu literature mentions no
bhangis of present function. In traditional Hindu rural
society, he was a corn-measurer, a village policeman, a
custodian of village boundaries. But scavenging came
along with the Muslim and British rule. Their numbers
also multiplied. According to 1901 Census, the bhangis
were most numerous in the Punjab and the United Provinces
which were the heartland of Muslim domination.
Then came the British who treated all Hindus equally -
all as an inferior race - and fuelled their internal
differences. They attacked Hinduism but cultivated the
caste principle, two sides of the same coin. Hinduism had
to be attacked. It gave India the principles of unity and
continuity; it was also India's definition at its
deepest. It held together castes as well as the country.
Take away Hinduism and the country was easily subdued.
Caste in old India was a cooperative and cultural
principle; but it is now being turned into a principle of
social conflict. In the old dispensation, castes followed
dharma and its restraints; they knew how far they could
go. But now a caste is a law unto itself; it knows no
self restraint except the restraint put on it by another
class engaged in similar self-aggrandisement. The new
self-styled social justice intellectuals and parties do
not want an India without castes, they want castes
without dharma. This may be profitable to some in the
short run but it is suicidal for all in the long run.
In the old days, castes had leaders who represented the
culture of the land, who were natural leaders of their
people and were organic to them. But now a different
leadership is coming to the force: rootless, demagogic
and ambitious, which uses caste slogans for self-
aggrandisement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
VINOD PAWAR
131, Kaivalyadham,
Dr M B Raut Road,
Mumbai 400 028.
September 13, 1996
Sir,
Shri Ram Swarup ("Logic behind perversion of caste", Sept 13)
should be complimented for handling the issue of perversion of
the caste system in such a cogent manner. Many people in the
past have made favourable mention of the caste system, and our
ancient literature clearly shows that caste was not birth-
determined, but ability-determined. Abbe Dubois, whose objective
was to convert Hindus into Christianity, said, "I have heard some
persons, sensible in other respects, but imbued with all the
prejudices that they have brought with them from Europe, pro-
nounce what appears to me an altogether erroneous judgement in
the matter of caste divisions among the Hindus. In their opin-
ion, caste is not only useless to the body politic, it is also
ridiculous, and even calculated to bring trouble and disorder on
the people. For my part, having lived many years on friendly
terms with the Hindus, I have been able to study their national
life and character closely, and I have arrived at a quite oppo-
site decision on this subject of caste. I believe caste division
to be in many respects the chef-d'oeuver, the happiest effort of
Hindu legislation. I am persuaded that it is simply and solely
due to the distribution of the people into castes that India did
not lapse into a state of barbarism, and that she preserved and
perfected the arts and sciences of civilisation whilst most other
nations of the earth remained in a state of barbarism. I do not
consider caste to be free from many great drawbacks; but I be-
lieve that the resulting advantages, in the case of a nation con-
stituted like the Hindus, more than outweigh the resulting
evils." (Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Abbe Dubois,
Rupa & Co., pp 30-31.)
Yours Sincerely,
(Vinod Pawar)
The Editor, The Indian Express,
Express Tower, Nariman Point,
Mumbai 400 021.
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