) Caste: Sanskritising and Anti-Brahmanical Trends

Bipan Chandra

• Was another major target of attack for the social reform movement.
• The Hindus were at this time divided into numerous castes (jatis).
• The caste into which a man was born determined large areas of his life:
⎯ It determined whom he would marry and with whom he would dine.
⎯ It largely determined his profession,
⎯ as also his social loyalties.
⎯ Moreover, the castes were carefully graded into a hierarchy of status.
⎯ At the bottom of the ladder came:
→ the untouchables, or Scheduled Castes as they came to be called later,
who formed about 20 per cent of the Hindu population.
→ The untouchables suffered from numerous severe disabilities and
restrictions, which of course varied from place to place.
→ Their touch was considered impure and was a source of pollution.
→ In some parts of the country, particularly in the south, their very shadow
was to be avoided, so that they had to move away if a brahmin was seen
or heard coming.
→ An untouchable's dress, food, place of residence, all were carefully
regulated.
→ He could not draw water from wells and tanks used by the higher castes;
he could do so only from wells and tanks specially reserved for
untouchables.
→ Where no such well or tank existed, he had to drink dirty water from
ponds and irrigation canals.
→ He could not enter the Hindu temples or study the shastras.
→ Often, his children could not attend a school in which the children of
caste Hindus studied.
→ Public services such as the police and the army were closed to him.
→ The untouchables were forced to take up menial and other such jobs
which were considered 'unclean,'
→ for example, scavenging, shoe- making, removing dead bodies, skinning
dead animals, tanning hides and skins.
→ Usually denied ownership of land, many of them worked even as
tenants-at-will and field labourers.
• Other problems of the caste system were:
 ⎯ It was an evil in another respect.
⎯ Not only was it humiliating and inhuman and based on the anti-democratic
principle of inequality by birth, it was also a cause of social disintegration.
⎯ It splintered people into numerous groups.
⎯ In modern times, it became a major obstacle in the growth of a united national
feeling and the spread of democracy.
⎯ It may also be noted that caste consciousness, particularly with regard to
marriage, prevailed also among Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, who practised
untouchability, though in a less virulent form.

• British rule released many forces which gradually undermined the caste system:
⎯ The introduction of modern industries, railways and buses, and growing
urbanisation made it difficult to prevent mass contact among persons of different
castes, especially in the cities.
⎯ Modern commerce and industry opened new fields of economic trade in skins or
shoes, nor would activity to all.
⎯ For example, a brahmin or upper-caste merchant could hardly miss the
opportunity to trade in skins or shoes, nor would he agree to deny himself the
opportunity of becoming a doctor or a soldier.
⎯ Free sale of land upset the caste balance in many villages.
⎯ The close connection between caste and vocation could hardly continue in a
modern industrial society in which the profit motive was increasingly becoming
dominant.
• In matters of administration:
⎯ the British introduced equality before law,
⎯ took away the judicial functions of caste panchayats
⎯ gradually opened the doors of administrative services to all castes.
⎯ Moreover, the new educational system was s wholly secular and therefore
basically opposed to caste distinctions and the caste outlook.
• Changes among Indian people:
⎯ As modern democratic and rationalist ideas spread among Indians, they began to raise
their voice against the caste system.
⎯ The Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the
Theosophists, the Social Conference and nearly all the great reformers of the nineteenth
century attacked it.
⎯ Even though many of them defended the system of the four varnas, they were critical of
the-caste (jati) system.
⎯ In particular, they condemned the inhuman practice of untouchability.
⎯ They also realised that national unity and national progress in political, social and
economic fields could not be achieved so long as millions were deprived of their right to
live with dignity and honour.
⎯ The growth of the national movement played a significant role in weakening the caste
system
⎯ The national movement was opposed to all those institutions which tended to divide the
Indian people.
⎯ Common participation in public demonstrations, giant public meetings and satyagraha
struggles weakened caste consciousness.
⎯ In any case, those who were fighting for freedom from foreign rule in the name of liberty
and equality could hardly support the caste system, which was totally opposed to these
principles.
⎯ Thus, from the beginning, the Indian National Congress and, in fact, the entire national
movement opposed caste privileges and fought for equal civic rights and equal freedom
for the development of the individual without distinctions of caste, sex or religion.
⎯ Since the middle of the nineteenth century:
→ numerous individuals and organisations worked to spread education among the
untouchables (or depressed classes and Scheduled Castes, as they came to be
called later),
→ to open the doors of schools and temples to them,
→ to enable them to use public wells and tanks, and to remove other social
disabilities and distinctions from which they suffered.
⎯ As education and awakening spread, the lower castes themselves began to stir.
⎯ They became conscious of their basic human rights and began to rise in defence of these
rights.
⎯ They gradually built up a powerful movement against the traditional oppression by the
higher castes.
⎯ In Maharashtra:
→ in the second half of the nineteenth century, Jyotiba Phule, born in a lower-caste
family,
→ led a lifelong movement against Brahmanical religious authority as part of his
struggle against upper-caste domination.
→ He regarded modern education as the most important weapon for the liberation
of the lower castes.
 → He was the first to open several schools for girls of the lower castes.
⎯ Dr B.R. Ambedkar:
→ who belonged to one of the Scheduled Castes,
→ devoted his entire life to fighting against caste tyranny.
→ He organised the All India Scheduled Castes Federation for the purpose.
→ Several other Scheduled Caste leaders founded the All-India Depressed Classes
Association.
⎯ In Kerala:
→ Sri Narayan Guru organised a lifelong struggle against the caste system.
→ He coined the famous slogan: "One religion, one caste and one God for mankind.
⎯ In south India:
→ the non-brahmins organised during the 1920s the Self-Respect Movement to
fight the disabilities which brahmins had imposed upon them.
→ Numerous satyagraha movements were organised all over India jointly by the
upper and depressed castes against the ban on the latter's entry into temples
and other such restrictions.
• Gandhi and Caste:
⎯ All his life, Gandhiji kept the abolition of untouchability at the forefront of his
public activities.
⎯ In 1932, he founded the All India Harijan Sangh for this purpose
⎯ His campaign for the "root and branch removal of untouchability" was based on
the grounds of humanism and reason.
⎯ He argues that there was no sanction for untouchability in the Hindu shastras.
⎯ But, if any shastra approved of untouchability, it should be ignored for it would
then be going against human dignity
⎯ Truth, he said, could not be confined within the covers of a book.
• The struggle against untouchability could not, however, be fully successful under alien
rule
• The foreign government was afraid of arousing the hostility of the orthodox sections of
society.
• Only the government of a free India could undertake a radical reform of society
• Moreover, the problem of social uplift was closely related to the problem of political and
economic uplift.
• For example, economic progress was essential for raising the social status of the
depressed castes; so also, were the spread of education and political rights.
• This was fully recognised by the Indian leaders. Dr Ambedkar, for example, said:
Nobody can remove your grievance as well as you can and you cannot remove these unless you get political power into your hands. ... We must
have a government in which men in power will not be afraid to amend the social and economic code of life which the dictates of justice and
expediency so urgently call for. This role the British Government will never be able to play. It is only a government which is of the people, for the
people and by the people, in other words, it is only the Swaraj Government that, will make it possible.

• The Constitution of 1950 has provided the legal framework for the final abolition of
untouchability.
• It has declared that "untouchability' is abolished and its practice in any form is
forbidden.
• The endorsement of any disability arising out of 'untouchability' shall be an offence
punishable in accordance with law."
• The Constitution further forbids any restrictions on the use of wells, tanks and bathing
ghats, or on access to shops, restaurants, hotels and cinemas.
• Furthermore, one of the Directive Principles that it has laid down for the guidance of the
government says: "The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by
securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social,
economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life."
• The struggle against the evils of the caste system, however, still remains an urgent task
before the Indian people, especially in the rural areas.

Sumit Sarkar

• Recent sociological work on caste has increasingly emphasized that the meaningful units
here are not the somewhat abstract varnas (the theoretical all-India hierarchy as
described in Sanskrit texts) but the mass of diverse local jatis, united by a varying degree
of occupational identity, common rites and customs, and taboos on marriages or eating
outside the group.
• The old assumption of an absolutely rigid and unchanging hierarchy of castes has also
been rejected, and numerous instances are being discovered, in the recent and not-so-
recent past:
→ M.N. Srinivas
• called 'Sanskritizing' tendencies
• where jatis asserting a higher status for themselves
• that is through borrowing customs, manners and taboos from groups traditionally superior
to them.
• In pre-British India, caste mobility had been facilitated by a fluid political system and a land-
surplus permitting easy migration, for instance:
→ The Sadgops:
⎯ of medieval Bengal
⎯ rose as farmers and traders from out
⎯ from the originally pastoral Gop community,
⎯ they migrated into virgin lands along the Bengal-Bihar border,
⎯ and sometimes also carved out local principalities.
• The colonial period:
→ closed or reduced some of these avenues – eg. reserved the forests for
themselves etc.
→ but opened up others: but mostly for there own commercial and other uses
→ Carving out new kingdoms was now impossible, and virgin land was increasingly
scarce.
• But improved communications made wider combinations possible:
→ English education increasingly provided a new ladder to social promotion for
small but growing minorities,
→ and colonial exploitation did involve (as we have seen) a process of
differentiation which benefited some Indian groups at the expense of others.
• From the 1901 Census onwards
→ the British also made a direct contribution by trying every ten years to classify
castes on the basis of 'social precedence (the condition of being considered
more important than someone or something else) as recognized by native public
opinion' an attempt which immediately encouraged a flood of claims and
counter-claims
→ as jati leaders jostled(push) for pre-eminence (the fact of surpassing all others),
organized caste associations, and invented mythological caste 'histories'.
• Caste solidarity one might add, was encouraged in at least two ways by the new
situation:
→ Successful leading members of a jati found it useful to mobilize support from
caste-brethren in their usually quite parochial and selfish struggle for social
recognition, jobs, and political favours-a process greatly encouraged by the
gradual introduction of electoral politics from the 1880s onwards.
→ As for the poorer members of a jati, links of patronage with more successful
fellow-members seemed often the only means of survival in a harsh and
increasingly alien world.
• The net result has often been the expression of socio-economic tensions through:
→ a kind of false-consciousness of caste solidarity,
→ caste rivalry, and
→ movements for Sanskritization.
• Bernard Cohn's study:
→ of a Jaunpur village (eastern U.P.)
→ reveals the way in which the Chamars (mostly small peasants or landless
labourers, subjected to the power of Rajput Thakur landowners)
→ have found solace (comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness) in the
doctrines of the Siva-Narayana sect and have tried to elevate their social status
by imitating Brahmanical forms (like the taboo on beef).
• Ezhavas
→ untouchable of Kerala
→ were inspired by Nanu Asan (Sri Narayana Guru, c. 1854-1928)
→ from the early twentieth century to attack Brahman domination,
→ demand entry into temples,
→ and also to 'Sanskritize some of their own customs.
• In south Tamilnadu:
→ Hardgrave's detailed study of the rise of the Nadars
→ reveals how the untouchable caste of toddy tappers and agricultural labourers,
→ originally called Shanans,
→ developed a mercantile upper stratum which claimed Kshatriya status in the
1901 census and began calling itself Nadar (a term previously confined to the
Shanan owners of land and palmyra trees).
→ Its assertion of temple-entry rights led to serious riots at Tirunelveli in 1899.
• The Pallis
→ of northern Tamilnadu
→ similarly claimed Kshatriya origin from 1871,
→ began to call themselves Vanniya Kula Kshatriya,
→ and started imitating Brahmanical mores like the taboo on widow-remarriage.
• The Mahars
→ of Maharashtra,
→ later the backbone of Ambedkar's movement,
→ were beginning to organize themselves under an ex-serviceman, Gopal Baba
Walangkar, by the end of the nineteenth century.
 → An 1894 petition drafted by Walangkar claimed Kshatriya origins and more jobs
in the army and services for this untouchable caste of inferior village servants
(watchmen, local arbitrators, messengers, sweepers, etc.),
→ some of whose traditional occupations had been threatened under British rule
but which had also for a time obtained new opportunities through military
service.
→ The new emphasis on north Indian 'martial races' in army recruitment provided
the immediate provocation for the beginning of Mahar organization.
• On the whole, however, the more effective caste movements in later period tended to
be connected with intermediate ranks, below the twice- born and above the
untouchables, and usually included considerable landed or rich peasant elements with
the capacity to produce urban educated groups.
• In Maharashtra and Madras
→ clear-cut Brahman domination over the services and general cultural life was
already leading to anti-Brahrnanical movements by the end of the century.
⎯ The anti-Brahman tocsin was first sounded in Maharashtra
⎯ in the 1870s
⎯ by Jyotiba Phule with his book, Ghulam-giri (1872)
⎯ and his organization, the Satyashodhak Samaj (1873),
⎯ which proclaimed the need to save the 'lower castes from the
hypocritical Brahmans and their opportunistic scriptures'.
⎯ Started by an urban-educated member of the lowly mali (gardening)
caste,
⎯ this movement later struck some roots among the predominantly
peasant Maratha caste-cluster.
→ Gail Omvedt's
⎯ valuable recent study (Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-
Brahman Movement in Western India, 1873-1930)
⎯ has emphasized a dualism within the Satyashodhak movement,
⎯ which contained 'both an elite-based conservative trend and a more
genuine mass-based radicalism'.
• Maratha:
→ The first developed along moderate of INC - 'Sanskritizing lines, occasionally
claimed a Kshatriya origin for the Marathas,
→ and from the 1890s received the patronage of the Maharaja of Kolhapur.
 → It was openly loyalist and politically divisive, for the British were egging on
Kolhapur against Tilak, and Bhaskarrao Jadav's non-Brahman party after 1919
was strongly anti- Congress.
→ But there was also a second trend, working in villages rather than towns (unlike
most other 19th century social reform movements)
→ and using the Marathi vernacular rather than English,
→ which attacked the caste system rather than merely claiming a higher status
within it, and claimed to speak for the bahujan samaj against the shetji-bhatji
(moneylenders and Brahmans).
→ It would inspire peasant risings in Satara in 1919-21, and later help to revitalize
the Gandhian Congress in rural Maharashtra.
• Madras:
→ A somewhat similar pattern can be seen a little later
→ as the undoubted Brahman predominance in education and services
→ (Brahmans accounted for 3.2% of the Presidency population, but about 70% of
Madras University graduates between 1870 and 1918)
→ came to be challenged by educated Tamil Vellalas, Telegu Reddis and Kammas,
and Malayali Nairs.
→ The sub-elite character of this challenge was clearly indicated by the frequent
references in the non-Brahman Manifesto of December 1916
→ to the non-Brahmans as forming 'the bulk of the tax payers, including a large
majority of the zamindars, landholders, and agriculturists...'
→ British encouragement of what eventually became a kind of 'Dravidian' or Tamil
separatism.
→ This was to be quite obvious with the Justice Party of the 1920s and '30s, but as
early as 1886, a convocation address by the Governor of Madras makes
interesting reading: 'You are a pure Dravidian race. I should like to see the pre-
Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more.... You have less to do
with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been
known to speak of natives of India as "Niggers", but they did not, like the proud
speakers or writers of Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as legions of
monkeys.'
→ As with many other types of internal tensions (whether caste, religious,
regional, or class), imperialists here made skilful use of real grievances to foster
sectional consciousness.
 → At the same time certain socially radical possibilities were not entirely absent in
Tamilnadu, as seen by the emergence of the militant, and often atheistic, Self-
Respect movement in the 1920s.
→ The 'Sanskritization' label is thus not really appropriate for all 'caste
movements', some of which have at times challenged the very basis of caste.
• Brahman domination was less clear-cut in northern and eastern India:
→ with other high-caste groups serving as buffers, (like Rajputs and Kayasthas in
U.P. and Bihar, and Kayasthas and Vaidyas in Bengal).
→ Mobilization along caste lines came somewhat later here, though it is important
enough today.
→ However, the Kayasthas by virtue of their inter-provincial professional
connections were already starting an all-India association and newspaper (the
Allahabad-based Kayastha Samachar) by 1900.
→ In Bengal, lower-caste associations started getting important from the first
decade of the twentieth century.
→ Better-off Kaivartas of Midnapur, led by some local zamindars and a few
Calcutta-based lawyers and traders, began calling themselves Mahishyas and
started a Jati Nirdharani Sabha in 1897 and a Central Mahishya Samiti during the
1901 Census. Midnapur Mahishyas later played a prominent part in the national
movement.
→ British divide-and-rule tactics were much more successful, however, among the
Namasudras of Faridpur, who started developing associations after 1901 at the
initiative of a tiny elite of educated men and some missionary encouragement.
→ The contrast may perhaps be partly explained by the fact that the Mahishyas of
Midnapur were a locally dominant caste which included petty landlords and
substantial peasants as well as the poor, while the Namasudras were
untouchable poor peasants who felt upper-caste gentry exploitation to be a
nearer enemy than the distant British overlord.