Caste Today

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GASTE TODAY

The Institute o f Race Relations is an unofficial and non-political body, founded in 1958 to encourage and facilitate the study o f the relations between races. The Institute is precluded by the Memorandum and Articles o f its incorporation from expressing an opinion on any aspect o f the relations between races. Any opinions expressed in this work are not therefore those o f the Institute.

CASTE TODAY TAYA Z I NKI N

Issued under the auspices o f the Institute o f Race Relations, London OX FO RD LONDON

U N IV E R S IT Y N EW YORK

PRESS

BOMBAY

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C .4 G LA SG O W

NEW YORK

TORONTO

BOM BAY

CALCUTTA

M ADRAS

CA PE TOW N

S A L IS B U R Y

M ELBOURNE KARACHI

N A IR O B I

KUA LA LUM PUR

W E L L IN G T O N

LAH ORE

IB A D A N

DACCA

ACCRA

H O N O KONO

© Institute o f Race Relations J962

First published 1962 Reprinted 1963 {twice) and 1965

P R I N T E D IN G REA T BRITAIN

0NULP

To my friends in India

CONTENTS PAGE

F O R E W O R D by P h i l i p M

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P R E F A C E .................................................................................. x i I. W H A T IS C A S T E ? ...................................................................... 1 II. P O L L U T I O N .................................................................................. 11 I I I . T H E P R A C T I C E ...................................................................... 24 IV . T H E B E G IN N IN G S O F B R E A K D O W N — L O SS O F B E L I E F ...........................................................36 In the V illage . . . . . . . . T h e T rip to Tow n . . . . . . . T h e Settling in the T ow n . . . . . . T h e Westernised . . . . . . . V . T H E LAW , ID E A L S A N D P O L IT IC S

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C O N C L U S I O N ...................................................................... 69

39 47 51 54 59

FOREW O RD is an object of the Institute of R ace Relations ‘to prom ote discussion’. T o this end it was decided, soon after the Institute becam e a separate body, to publish a series of short books on subjects connected w ith those diversities of m ankind w hich are often loosely—and usually wrongly— ascribed to ‘race’— that is, to physical inheritance. These were not to be works of profound scholarship or original research; they were certainly not to be definitive. T hey were to aim ra th e r at putting a point of view, or sum m aris­ ing a num ber of points of view current a t the m om ent. T hey were to be short; they were to be produced swiftly. T hey were not to be for specialists b u t for the intelligent reader w ho w ould like to supplem ent, by something rath er m ore continuous, those glimpses of events in m otion which he obtains from the daily press. A dozen books have so far been published; they have dealt w ith South Africa, K enya, Algeria, the Congo, L atin A m erica, Soviet M uslim Asia, and they are more varied in their n atu re th an this list would imply. T hey have ranged from frank expression of opinion to im partial summaries b u t usually they have been concerned w ith a local situation. Caste Today is a contribution of a rath er different n atu re; it deals w ith an institution in a local context. T he word ‘caste’ is sometimes used to describe social divisions, in for example the Southern States of A m erica and South Africa, b u t this is surely only a m etaphor and one th at can be misleading. In South Africa, indignation is often expressed th a t India should dare to criticise South African racial policies while caste persists w ithin her own boundaries; it seemed therefore th a t it m ight be helpful to some people to start a discussion of ‘caste’ as it exists in India today, to look a t G overnm ent policy towards it and at w hat it it

FOREWORD

costs the community. This book is intended as an intro­ duction, the beginning of such a discussion. T he subject is immensely complicated and if one thing emerges more clearly from the book than anything else it is th at caste can no more be described in simple terms than class in England. Nor, obviously, can it be ended quickly or simply. Those who w ant to :know more of the background\and of accepted views would be well advised to turn for further study to J . H . H utton’s Caste in India (Oxford University Press, 3rd Edition, 1961), which has ju st been brought up to date. London 6 September 1961

P H IL IP MASON

PREFACE a caste nam e indicates the occupation of the individual I have used no capitals; the capitals refer to the caste nam e irrespective of the occupation of the indi­ vidual concerned, i.e. a moneylending Sweeper is a m an of the Sweeper caste actually engaged in lending m oney; whereas a M oneylender m ay not necessarily earn his living by lending money. T he spelling of certain In d ian names varies according to the spelling given by the authors quoted. I w ant to thank Sri H. M. Patel, Professor D. R. Gadgil and D octor A. C. M ayer for their kindness in reading the M S. I am specially grateful to M r. Philip M ason for his critical editing and helpful suggestions and to Miss M. U sborne for her patient work on the MS. I also w ant to thank Miss Vicky Sinclair for her typing and M rs. J . F. Sinclair for the interest she has taken in this booklet. And last b u t not least, I w ant to thank my husband for/ putting at m y disposal his Indian experience and his bureaucratic precision.

where

I. is m uch I t caste is.

WHAT IS CASTE ?

easier to say w hat caste is not th an w hat

It is not class. In every caste there are educated and uneducated, in most there are rich and poor, w ell-born and ordinarily born. M ost members of the upper classes are in fact from the upper castes, most members o f the lowest classes are in fact U ntouchables; b u t the correlation is not necessary, and is diminishing. I t is not colour, though the old pundits sometimes talk as if it were. A Brahmin is no less a Brahm in if he is born jet-b lack ; an U ntouchable is no w hit less untouchable if she happens to be fair. M ost upper-caste people are fairer th an most lower-caste people of their region, and fairness is a quality m uch valued in a bride; b u t one cannot tell caste from colour. People refuse to take w ater from U n ­ touchables, not from black m en. W hite m en, after all, are U ntouchables. I t is no t A ryan and non-A ryan, or conqueror and conquered. T he Aryans never seem to have penetrated to the East o r the South of In d ia ; the Brahmins of the South are the highest of high-caste men, b u t they are not on record as having ever conquered anybody. T ribal chieftains have become K shatryas— the second, or w arrior, caste— in quite recent times; and most of South India has no K shatryas a t all. Its ruling castes, M ahrattas, Reddis, Nairs, etc., are not even twice-born. It is not occupation. M any occupations, mostly of artisans, are overwhelmingly identified w ith particular castes, b u t the m ain occupation, agriculture, is open to all, and m any castes have priests who are n o t Brahmins. T here have always been soldiers who were not K shatryas, govern­ m ent servants have always been of various castes. O ne does n ot have to be a Bania to be a trader, though m any traders

2

CASTE TO D A Y

are in fact Banias. Sainthood is open even to U ntouchables. It is not even exclusively H indu or exclusively Indian. O utside India, one finds caste in a m ore or less rudim entary form in Ceylon, Bali and Pakistan, U ntouchables in Jap a n . W ithin India, Jews, Christians and Muslims are affected by it in varying degrees. Goans, Catholics for four hundred years, were still twenty years ago looking for brides and bridegrooms of their pre-conversion castes for their children. A R ajp u t M uslim will not m arry his daughter to a nonR ajp ut Muslim. Some South Indian churches have always m ade their ex-Untouchables sit a p art from their ex­ Brahmins. T here are R ajp u t Muslims in U tta r Pradesh who will not let an U ntouchable into their house. Even the microscopic Jew ish com m unity of Cochin is divided into black, brow n and white, and a black Jew is not allowed into the white synagogue. N or does the present caste structure bear m uch relation to the traditional four ‘V arnas’, the B rahm in (priest), the K shatrya (warrior), the Vaishya (trader), and the Sudra (cultivator or artisan), w ith the U ntouchable outside them all. T he Brahm in, it is true, is still there; but who is a K shatrya, who a Sudra and who a Vaishya is often more th an doubtful; the odd castes th a t were supposed to have arisen from various mixtures of the original four seem mostly not to exist; and even those most unquestioned of K shatryas, the R ajputs, m ay well have no connexion w ith the original Kshatryas, b u t be the descendants of Scythian invaders or tribal chieftains. Some U ntouchability, too, is probably the result not of the original structure of H indu society, b u t of the Buddhist horror o f taking life. T he average H indu who observes caste does so because he believes his religion wants him to. Yet caste was never revealed as the T en Com m andm ents were revealed. T he Rigveda, most ancient and sacred of H indu Hymns, does not talk of the caste system. As Professor R apson points out, even ‘the four castes are only definitely m entioned in one of the latest hym ns’ and it is only in the late Tajur-Veda

W H A T IS C A S T E ?

3

‘th a t the four great social divisions are hardening into castes and a num ber of m ixed castes are also m entioned’.1 T he Mahabharata, In d ia ’s equivalent of the Iliad, has clear cases w here heroes and heroines were able to change their caste because of their deeds or their looks. Q ueen Satyavati, the grandm other of the Pandava and K aurava Kings, was a fisher-girl whose U ntouchability vanished the m om ent K ing Santanu-—a K shatrya— fell in love w ith her beauty. K ing V ishvam itra, a K shatrya by birth, by sheer dint of penance becam e a Brahm in. M ahatm a G andhi was quite sincere w hen he said ‘I f I discovered th a t the Vedas clearly showed th a t they claim divine authority for U ntouchability, then nothing on this earth would hold me to H induism. I w ould throw it overboard like a rotten apple’ (Harijan, 26 Ja n u a ry 1934). T he M ahatm a can be supported from the Bhagavad Gita, about which so m any H indus feel m uch as we do about the Bible. T he Gita says quite clearly: ‘I f a m an does the work th at comes to him by birth, no blemish will a tta ch to it, w hatever kind of work it m ay b e.’2 Caste m ay perhaps at the beginning have been very like the eighteenth-century G erm an division of society into princes, nobles, burghers, peasants and serfs between whom no m arriage other than m organatic was possible. Even before th at, there m ay have been, in the M ohendjo-Daro civilisation, occupational guilds w ith separate rituals w hich m ay have hardened into caste; and the significance o f the A ryans m ay have been, not their conquest of N orth W est In dia, b u t their com bination of ritual w ith the best explanation of the universe the In d ian sub-continent h ad known. T he B rahm in held both the m agical and the intellectual keys to the mystery of life; naturally his position was unassailable, even in societies like those of South India, where he m ust have begun as a missionary; 1 E. G. R apson. Ancient India (Cam bridge U niversity Press, 1916), pp. 44, 48. 2 (As C. R . Said) C. R ajagopalachari, Hinduism (N ew D elhi, H industan Tim es Press, n .d .), p. 23.

4

CASTE TO D A Y

one m ay com pare perhaps the position of the Brahm in to th a t of the C hurch in m edieval Germ any. W hatever the past, in the present caste is a complete system covering every facet of life. ‘Caste’, says K . M . Panikkar, ‘is a comprehensive system of life, a religion ra th e r than a changing social order, and the rigidity w ith w hich its rules are enforced w ould p u t to sham e even the G reat Inquisition.’3 T he simplest definition of caste is W in t’s: ‘A caste is a group of families whose mem bers can m arry w ith each other an d can eat in each other’s com pany w ithout believing themselves polluted.’4 T o this one m ust ad d th a t each of these groups has its place in a hierarchy. It is above, or below, or equal to, every one of the others; and in theory everybody knows where each group comes. These groups bear no relation to the original four. T here are today hundreds of castes; a n d even these hundreds are not all. T he fundam ental u nit is indeed not the caste, b u t the sub-caste, w hich is the norm al unit, for instance, for m arriage, and which, as M ayer points out, ‘while clearly p a rt of a larger unit, has enough properties in common to be a caste-like u n it’ .5 A nd of sub-castes there are thousands. It is said th at there are over two thousand am ongst B ra h ­ mins alone (including some U ntouchable B rahm in sub­ castes like the seventh and eleventh day Brahm ins), and M r. Jagjivan R am , then the H arijan M inister for Railways in the C entral Governm ent, once told me th a t he had counted 563 U ntouchable sub-castes. I t is sub-caste w hich gives H indu society its character, its typical fragm entation into small groups w ithin w hich people live and outside w hich they, and especially the women, keep their contacts to a m inim um . 3 K. M . Panikkar, Caste and Democracy (London, H ogarth Press, D a y to D ay Pam phlets, 1933), p. 9. 4 G . W int, The British in Asia (London, Faber and Faber, 1947), p. 41. 5 A. M ayer, Caste and Kinship in Central India (London, R outledge and K egan Paul, 1960), p. 152.

WHAT

IS C A S T E ?

5

Because H indu society is thus split into groups, and be­ cause it is ru ral, living in villages each of which is very m uch a separate unit, it has been a very unchanging society, one m uch governed by custom and the religious form of custom ritual. M oreover, since the sub-caste is the basic unit, custom and ritual vary from sub-caste to sub-caste. Between sub-castes of the same caste in the same region the variation m ay be small. Between sub-castes of different castes or different regions the variation m ay be large. But there is always some variation. Thus M cK im M arriott reports th a t in the village of K ishan G arhi, where the Butchers claim R ajp u t descent and call themselves after famous R ajp u t clans, the Sweepers will not work for them because in one village 40 miles away the Butchers make w innow ing fans for other castes, and in K ishan G arhi w innow ing fans are m ade by the Sweepers. Yet the Sweep­ ers know th a t in other villages round about the Butchers are accepted by the Sweepers of those villages as ranking above them in m atters of w ater and food, and they would doubtless have so accepted them in K ishan G arhi if the sister of one of them h ad not m arried into the village where the Butchers make winnowing fans, so th at they h ad found out about it.6 D iet m ay differ, m arriage and funeral customs m ay differ, the particular Gods chosen for home worship or the time of worship for general gods m ay differ. T he whole feel and atm osphere of life in one caste is different from th a t of a n o th e r; the Brahm in abhors m eat and alcohol and violence; the R ajp u t glories in all three. Even be­ tween closely-related sub-castes, one gets this sense of difference. I rem em ber a D eshastha B rahm in girl graduate, who h a d m arried a C hitpavan Brahm in graduate, explain­ ing to me how revolutionary a step she had taken for love; how strange she had felt at first in her m other-in-law ’s house. She and her m other-in-law were both of M aharashtrian 6 M cK im M arriott, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions o f India and Pakistan (Poona, D eccan C ollege M onograph Series, 23, 1960).

6

CASTE T O D A Y

Brahm in sub-castes and from the same to w n ; yet, somehow, all their traditions of running a house were different; they even prepared the same vegetables in different ways. O ne m ay p u t the same point in more anthropological terms. As Professor D ube says, ‘H induism as practised in the village is a religion of prescribed rituals covering all the m ajor crises of life . . . and ritual differs in the practice of different castes.’7 Professor M ajum dar puts it rath er more widely: ‘Caste provides codes of conduct and deviations from these are not generally tolerated.’8 A nd one m ust always rem em ber th at in a society o f custom and ritual the terms ‘codes of conduct’ and ‘prescribed rituals’ cover everything, not just how one prays or w hether one blas­ phemes, but how one cooks, when one washes, to whom one talks, even how one dresses. T h e habits of castes differ from one another in something of the same way th at the conventions do; b u t on a much w ider scale. Caste not only governs how one lives one’s life. It also fixes the place in society in which one lives it. Every caste and sub-caste has its ranking. This ranking is fixed neither by w ealth nor education nor the ownership of land, b u t by the taking of water. O ne takes w ater from one’s equals and one’s superiors; one does not take w ater from one’s inferiors unless it is in a brass pot. W ater in a clay pot is the m ain test. But there are others. Food is divided into two categories, pakka khana and kachchha khana. Pakka khana includes such foods as dishes m ade w ith clarified b utter from flour and sugar, mostly sweetmeats, kachchha khana is cooked in w ater and or salt, mostly the staple diet. O ne takes pakka khana from a w ider range of inferiors than kachchha khana, roughly from the same people from whom one takes w ater in a clay pot. W here the upper ' S. C. D ube, Indian

Village (London, R ou tled ge and

K egan Paul

1955), pp. 95, 116. 8 D . N . M ajum dar, Caste and Communication in an Indian Village (Bom bay, Asia Publishing H ouse, 1958), p. 36.

W H A T IS C A S T E ?

7

castes draw their lines helps to establish the precedence of the lower castes between themselves. T he structure is not quite as rigid as it looks. T h a t the B rahm in is at the top and the Sweeper near the bottom everybody is agreed. In between there can be arguments. A caste can try to go up in the world by changing its custom, trying to im itate the Joneses of caste, or by changing its nam e and hoping th at its origins will be forgotten, or it may claim to be K shatrya. M any such attem pts of course fail; but when a caste is im portant in a region, or when it increases its education and political power, they may well succeed. T he Kayasths of N orthern India have now established themselves am ong the top castes in Bengal, despite the occasional snigger about a P atna H igh Court decision establishing them as Sudras, bu t in the U .P. they are still Sudras. A nd if the M ahrattas wish to call themselves Kshatryas, few in M aharashtra will say them nay. This lim ited mobility is m ade easier by the fact that, although the ranking is fixed in any one village, it has never, for the m iddle castes especially, been nation-wide. R anking m ay even differ subtly as between villages in the same district. A nd between regions there m ay be great fluidity if only because so m any of the m iddle castes do not extend beyond their own language area. T he M ahrattas, the Reddis, the Nairs, the Gowdas are powers in their own lan d s; they exist elsewhere only by recent im m igration; a Punjab villager, say, cannot be expected to know quite where to p u t them . This was not im portant in the past of the self-sufficient village. It is becoming more and more im portant today. U ntouchability, though the phenom enon by which caste is best known outside India, differs in degree rather than in kind from other caste restrictions. T hroughout the caste structure, there are certain relations one does not have w ith one’s inferiors, like not taking w ater or certain foods from them ; there are some relations, like m arriage, which one does not have w ith anybody except a m em ber of one’s

8

CASTE TO D A Y

sub-caste, and even within one’s sub-caste, one m ay not be able to m arry w ithin a particular section— a m em ber of one’s own gotra (gotra includes all those descended from the same ancestor) w ith Brahmins, or of one’s own clan amongst R ajputs. For the U ntouchables these restrictions are extended. N ot only does one not take w ater from them, they m ay not even take w ater from the same well. N ot only does one not take food from them, they m ay not eat in the same restaurant. N ot only does one not m arry them , they m ay not even enter the tem ple or the house or stroll on the m ain village streets. Even their cattle m ay often not drink from the same pool as a B rahm in’s. M oreover the U ntouchables themselves are not all the same. O ne U ntouchable caste m ay well apply to the U ntouchable caste below it m uch the same restrictions th a t are applied to it by the Touchable castes above. I was m obbed by Cham ars when I persuaded a D om to draw w ater from their well—my first contact w ith U ntouchability w ithin U ntouchability: a M ang m ay not draw w ater from a M ah ar well and all over India Cham ars will have nothing to do with Sweepers. Caste is a way of life which divides society into small groups, each of which lives in a rath er different way from the rest. Because of these differences, because the groups are so tiny, and because the most im portant relations of life, above all m arriage, take place w ithin them , the groups have great power over their members, and thus great pow er of survival. To break caste is to cut oneself off from one’s group, which means from one’s family, from one’s friends, and from all those who live exactly as one does oneself, and one cuts oneself off w ithout any hope of being adopted by another group— one is ostracised by everybody in one’s own group and will not even be accepted by a lower group. Thus the ostracised B rahm in cannot become a w arrior or even an U ntouchable since one has to be born w ithin one’s caste; only if he finds others from his own caste who have also been ostracised can he once

W H A T IS C A S T E

?

9

m ore belong to a group because in a sect a new sub-caste has been created. T hro u gh this great complex of rules, holding it together an d giving it m eaning, runs the idea of pollution. O ne does not do th a t w hich pollutes. I t is the fear of pollution which provides both the sanction for m uch of w hat one does and does not do in one’s daily life. Still more it is this fear which limits one’s contacts outside one’s caste. A m an is as free w ith m en of other castes as the rules o f pollution perm it; w here pollution begins, contact stops. We will return to this point in more detail in the next chapter. Before going into the way in which caste, sub-caste and U ntouchability work, it is necessary to rem em ber th at the whole system is based upon a com bination of the irrevoc­ ability o f status fixed by birth, and rebirth. One is born into a p articu lar station from which there is no escape in this life, for it is the consequence o f one’s deeds in a past exist­ ence. I f one performs the duties of one’s station conscien­ tiously one m ay be reborn in a better station, o r—supreme bliss— not be reborn a t all. U nder such circumstances vertical m obility such as we find in the West, where the successful coalm iner’s son goes to Eton, marries a duke’s daughter an d ends in the House of Lords, is meaningless. T he H indu equivalent would be the good Sweeper who sweeps hum bly, does not m ind being, treated like a pariah an d is reborn a Brahm in. In caste society, there can be no wedding for Prince C harm ing and Cinderella, for m arriage m ust be w ithin caste. In In d ia C inderella’s parents w ould have been as horrified by their love as Prince C harm ing’s; U ntouchable parents have been known to kill their daughter for dis­ gracing them by running away w ith a R ajput prince. So long as everybody thus accepts his position in life as deserved, the system provides the same stability, security an d w arm th as there was in Europe when men still thought their station God-given. T he sub-caste provides a m an w ith a group to w hich he belongs utterly, and w ithin which

10

CASTE T O D A Y

all are kin or potential kin. These are the families into w hich he m ust m arry, these the connexions on whose support he can count in every crisis. W ithin the village, moreover, the sub-castes each have their own rank in a known hier­ archy. Since there is nothing people dislike as m uch as uncertainty, there is a great deal to be said for a system by w hich everybody knows exactly to w hom he should pay respect and exactly from w hom to expect it. If it h ad not afforded this satisfaction the caste system w ould have disintegrated long ago. In the long turm oil th at was Indian history, caste held together the fabric of society; the integrity of the village was built round the framework of caste; the survival of H induism under M uslim and C hristian onslaughts m ight well have been impossible w ithout the devotion of peasant and scholar alike to caste-customs and caste-ritual. Caste m ay not have revelation behind it; b u t it does have som ething even more powerful, a network of observances covering every action of daily life, from the direction in w hich one passes w ater to the length of the twig w ith w hich one cleans one’s teeth. A society so governed was a society w ith an infinity of resistance to outside attacks.

II.

POLLUTION

s t e reveals itself most obviously and most rigidly in everyday life, through the concept of pollution, a concept fundam ental to the H indu way of life and which needs explaining a t some length, for it has nothing to do w ith cleanliness or indeed w ith sin and is purely ritual. T h e pocket edition of the Oxford Dictionary defines ‘to pollute’ as ‘to destroy the purity or outrage the sanctity o f’. L et us take a concrete example. T he w ater of the Ganges, to the outsider, appears d irty ; not only are the half-charred bodies o f those who were crem ated along its sacred banks throw n into it, b u t so also are the entire corpses of those who have died o f infectious diseases like smallpox. Yet, because the Ganges is the holy river of the H indus, its w ater is considered crystal pu re; not only is it used like Jo rd an w ater for ritual b u t it is swallowed like Vichy w ater for m edical purposes as well. By contrast, boiled w ater from a tube-well, sealed in a sterilised bottle, carried by a spotlessly clean U ntouchable, is so im pure th at its contact, let alone its absorption, is polluting. Judaism and Islam both consider the pig an im pure anim al and forbid eating its flesh; H induism too has a long list o f dietary taboos bu t there is a basic difference. Pork is not polluting to the Jew or the M uslim ; it is forbidden. E ating pork is com m itting sin, breaking the divine will as revealed by G od himself. T here is no equivalent to sin1 in H induism , which has no revealed divine laws, only a tradition an d a philosophic discourse. W henever I try to explain how H induism is different from all other religions I quote the two cases which, to my m ind, illum inate the n atu re of H induism in relation to Judaism , which comes nearest to it as the only other original all-embracing

/ '" 'I a

1 ‘Sin’ is used in the Christian sense o f breaking a revealed C om m and­ m ent.

12

CASTE T O D A Y

ritualistic faith. The first Israeli A mbassador to Britain was very orthodox; when he had to dine at Buckingham Palace he ate only hard-boiled eggs, oranges and bananas w hich he peeled him self because he could not eat anything which m ight have come into contact either w ith porlc or w ith plates which m ight at some time have contained pork or other forbidden foods. By contrast, when a certain young high­ caste B rahm in went to study in England, his m other, a very devout w om an most of whose day is spent in devotional activities, told him to eat beef although the family did not even allow eggs into the house; she thought th at in cold, dam p England, m eat was necessary: ‘W hen you come back I will have you ritually depolluted’, she said, obviously not perturbed at the thought of her son eating cow’s m eat; yet she herself worships cows as divine. H induism is like th a t; everyone can do w hat he likes; nothing on earth will stop his being a H in d u ; nobody, no procedure exists by which one can cease to be a H indu. However one can be and is throw n out of one’s caste and sub-caste if one’s behaviour flaunts custom, for custom has assumed the strength of ritual, indeed has become ritual, and is enforced ruthlessly by means of boycott, excom m uni­ cation and outcasting. But whereas excom m unication, in W estern terms, merely means exclusion from all religious activities, in H indu terms it is far more terrible th an that, for it means a total boycott by one’s kin; nobody will talk to, eat or drink, or sit with, m arry, or help in the funeral rites of one who has been excom m unicated, for the penalty for breaking the boycott is excom m unication. Excom m uni­ cation even means being throw n out of one’s village, w ith physical violence if necessary. It is so terrifying a penalty in a close-knit society where everyone belongs to his own little group that few dare risk it, and therefore the ritual upon w hich daily activities are based acquires a sanction so compelling th at it, more than anything else, has (as we shall see later) given its particular quality to the whole institution of caste. -

POLLUTION

13

Pollution can be anything. A t one end of the scale to flay dead anim als is polluting because it is an unclean occupa­ tion ; b u t a t the other end of the scale a high-caste H indu is polluted (and m ust therefore undergo ritual purification) if his shadow is crossed by th a t of an U ntouchable. It is this taboo w hich produced U nseeability in the more orthodox South. B ut high-caste members can be polluted by the proxim ity of m en of castes lower than their own w hether their shadows mix or not, and there are elaborate p re­ scribed distances for each rung of the ladder. Thus in K erala, according to the rules, ‘the Thiyas [toddy-tappers] are U ntouchable to the N ayars [soldier caste]. T o a P attar B rahm in a T hiya is U napproachable by 20 paces, and to a N am boodiri B rahm in by 25. T he Pulayas, Cherum ars and Parayas [all of them U ntouchable castes] are U ntouchable to one another, each one claiming superiority over the other and indulging in a wash w hen touched and defiled. A m em ber o f any one of these communities is U napproachable to a T hiya by 10 paces, to a N ayar by 20, to a P attar B rahm in by 40 and to a N am boodiri Brahm in by 60.’2 So th a t everyone should know where to stand, when a N am boodiri B rahm in walked in the street he was preceded by a N ayar runner who shouted ‘H a-h a’ as a warning. M r. Thom as, who comes from K erala, recalls how when the U napproachables had to work in the village they set up w arning signals, m uch as public works employees do on the roads, sixty paces on either side of themselves. Intercourse is polluting w hen it brings into contact people o f different sub-castes but, as w ith defecation, prescribed ways are provided for ritual purification; there are even sub-castes for w hom intercourse w ithin m arriage w ith a p a rtn e r of the. same sub-caste is polluting. This explains why orthodox Brahm ins can for instance patronise U n ­ touchable prostitutes. In a certain firm there was a very pious gentlem an whose devotion had impressed head office 2 P. T hom as, Hindu Religion, Customs and Manners (Bombay, Taraporevala, no d ate), p. 21.

14

CASTE TO D A Y

so m uch that he h ad become a byword for righteous living. Visitors from Bombay to M adras always speculated on the length of this w orthy gentlem an’s stubble ; at times indeed he had a positive beard, and when one London director enquired why he did not shave he was given a lengthy explanation about the position of the stars and caste duties. Sometimes, however, R angavachari was clean­ shaven, and for this too he had a pious alibi. Investigations eventually revealed th at when R angavachari slept with the telephone operator or patronised the local brothels he did not shave; when he had mom ents of chastity he did. The reason was simple: after shaving or cutting one’s hair, one must purify oneself if, like him, one is a high-rank­ ing B rahm in; and he saw no reason why he should purify him self unnecessarily. And in K erala there is a special type of union between N am boodiri Brahmins and N air women. The Namboodiris are so p articu lar about ritual purity that not only do they keep longer distances than anybody else in India, they also wash the salt w hich they bring into their houses; yet they have unw edded N air wives, to whom they— unlike the wives— do not consider themselves m arried and whose contact is so polluting to them th at they cannot eat or drink a t their hands nor spend the day in N air houses; the children of these peculiar m arriages are Nairs and like their mothers are U ntouchable to their fathers. Since the Nairs practise m atriarchy the children inherit from their mothers and are not a charge to their fathers. All forms of excretion— barring th at 'o f the cow__are polluting, particularly defecation and m enstruation. People who are professionally connected w ith night soil are U n ­ touchables like the Sweepers or the M ahars who, because they keep hens in their houses, live surrounded w ith droppings. Even the most ritually pure are polluted and therefore become U ntouchable between defecation and ritual purification, as distinct from m erely cleaning th em ­ selves. Indeed, to w arn oncomers, the twice-born castes

POLLUTION

15

twist their sacred thread round their ear so th at they may not inadvertently pollute others. In Tanjore, I have been told, there is one p articular Brahm in sub-caste which is so p articu lar about the polluting effect of defecation th at the wife has to pour w ater over her husband to clean him. H e does not have to touch himself, so he is spared the rigorous full purification and can m ake do w ith reciting a few m antras and sprinkling some w ater on his head. As in the O ld T estam ent and in all prim itive societies, pollution attaches to m enstruation. W omen in some castes become so im pure th a t they cannot enter the house, let alone the kitchen. T hey are p u t outside on the verandah, where food is left out for them , and high-caste women will not allow their children, past weaning, to come near them for fear of polluting them . T he w asherm an who washes m enstrual clothes is U ntouchable by association, so is the midwife, for birth is even more polluting than m enstruation. It takes forty days an d a couple of ceremonies for a woman to cleanse herself after labour. D eath is equally polluting, not only to the im m ediate family b u t to the extended family, who all have to be purified even if they have not been any­ where near the deceased. Some things th at are polluting for a particular caste or sub-caste are not polluting for another. Eating m eat is considered polluting, yet all K shatryas— and they come next to the Brahm ins—-eat m eat. T here are even Brahmins, the Pandits of K ashm ir, who not only eat m eat but eat it in the com pany of M uslims; they continue to be Brahmins and rem ain entitled to look upon all non-Brahmins as inferior. But Brahmins who observe vegetarianism look on K ashm iri Pandits w ith a disgust rem iniscent of w hat many Britons w ould feel if a frog was served on their plate. T he late Sir G irja Shankar Bajpai, Secretary General for Foreign Affairs, once told me th at it was only because he was truly westernised th a t he could bring himself to eat a t the same table as the Prim e M inister. ‘But you are both Brahm ins’, I ventured, ‘so w hat is the difficulty?’ ‘He is a

16

CASTE T O D A Y

K ashm iri Pandit. I am a K anya K hubja, I belong to the highest hierarchy o f Brahmins, the ones who are Chaturvedis (of the four Vedas), we are strict vegetarians by caste, at least a t hom e; b u t N ehru is a K ashm iri Pandit, his ancestors were reared on m eat and fish . . . I would not wish a girl o f my family to m arry into his although I have the highest regard for him as Prim e M inister.’ This m ay sound re­ actionary bu t nevertheless it m ust be realised th a t had one o f his daughters m arried a N ehru she would have had to make adjustm ents in the way the hom e was ru n in some ways deeper than those necessary for a D aughter o f the Revolution m arrying a Southern N egro; not only would she have to w atch her husband eat m eat, she w ould also have to overcome the inner repulsion created by the concept o f pollution which his eating m eat w ould inevitably induce in her. O ne of the most telling examples of the extent to which fear of pollution divides Indian society into fragm ents is th at o f the village of Ram kheri, whose W eavers belong to two sub-castes: the M alwi W eavers who are indigenous and the G ujerati W eavers who im m igrated centuries ago. These two are historically one, b u t they have become two, and there is neither interm arriage nor interdining between the two groups although their sub-caste behaviour has been exem plary ever since they came. In fact there is no evidence th a t the G ujerati Weavers were excom m unicated; they m ay have m igrated because of a drought, b u t the M alwi W eavers are not going to run any risks.3 In this way the num ber of sub-castes keeps going u p ; the P otter who uses a big wheel is afraid o f being polluted by the Potter who uses a small wheel, and the nearer the sub-caste the more rigid the insistence on separateness. T he Brahm in is so far removed from the U ntouchable th at he can almost afford to be generous about a few inches; b u t if he were to allow those inches to a R ajput, before the Brahm in knew where he was the R ajp u t w ould 3 Mayer, op. cit.

POLLUTION

17

claim th a t he too descended from the G od’s head. I used to stay in a very orthodox Brahm in family and for a very long time the mistress of the house never took her meals w ith m e; she h ad either eaten already or she was fasting, although she served my food and sat w ith me in the dining­ room while I ate alone a t the stately table long enough to seat a good dozen guests. As we became friends she did me the honour of eating w ith me, b u t not to be polluted by eating a t the same table she had a bridge table added a t one end, just an inch away from the m ain ta b le ; techni­ cally we were not eating together. She was not being rude, on the contrary she was going out of her way to eat w ith me w ithout having to undergo tedious purification; b u t had I been a R ajp u t or a Vaishyia instead of a foreign U ntouch­ able, she would not have risked establishing a precedent by eating in the same room, let alone a t a table w ithin spittle’s reach. A nother aspect of pollution is illustrated by a story told me by a T am il Brahm in. H e was quite m odern in his views, unlike his grandm other. O ne day he was walking home arm in arm w ith a N air boy. H e would not have indulged in such intim acy a t home because of his grandm other. So he left the N air boy before he got home and sat down on the string cot on w hich the w asherm an had ju st p u t the week’s laundry neatly ironed. But he was out of luck. His grandm other had seen him from the roof touching the N air boy. She sent all the laundry back to be washed and m ade him undergo purification himself. ‘W hat I do not understand is why I polluted the laundry which I did not touch, simply by sitting on the cot after holding G ovindan’s hand, yet the w asherm an who is U ntouchable does not pollute the laundry; this makes no sense.’ For this oldfashioned grandm other there is the m odern one in Orissa who told her grandson w hen land reforms came and only self-cultivated land could be kept: ‘Drive a tractor by all means, b u t the plough never!’ T he plough is somehow associated w ith the Sudras, although all castes can and do

18

CASTE T O D A Y

practise agriculture. Most Brahmins and R ajputs will not touch the plough, therefore; b u t the Anavil Brahmins o f G ujerat are ritually expected to plough the land them ­ selves, and the Hill Brahmins of K um aon will plough and pretend that they do not. In short, who pollutes, w hat pollutes, and when it pollutes are all highly variable; all that can be said is th a t the people immediately concerned know the rules through tradition and custom and they are too fam iliar w ith them to be bothered by their inconsistency. Pollution is at the root of the H indu social system. A nd pollution is not a private but a corporate m atter which affects the whole sub-caste and the village even, and explains why there is always an Argus to see to it that the rules are kept. Thus A drian M ayer recounts4 w hat happens when individual m isbehaviour threatens an entire village with pollution. A Potter in R am kheri chased a cow out of his backyard, beating her and causing her to die of internal injury. He would have polluted the entire village had he not im m ed­ iately m ade amends. In the old days he would have had to allow himself to be banished from the village into a no-m an’s land, where he would have had to live in a roughly-built h u t for several weeks, during which food w ould have been brought to him but nobody w ould have spoken to him. T hen he would have gone for a purificatory pilgrimage 150 miles away. O n return he w ould have been shaved by the Sweeper— the barber would not have sullied him self by handling the sinner—and then been p u t in a small thatched h u t where he would have had to perform various rites. H e w ould then have set fire to the h u t and crawled through it, given a feast to his own sub-caste and paid a fine to be spent on the m aintenance of the sub-caste temple. But, as the villagers said, ‘times have changed’. H e merely left the village for one night, villagers spoke to him before he had been purified, he gave a feast and paid a fine but was not shaved or p u t through the h u t ordeal. 4 M ayer, op. oil., p. 263.

POLLUTION

19

W hen there are such rigid rules, hypocrisy is bound to thrive. T hree men of high caste come to my m ind. After we h ad eaten an excellent steak in one of C alcutta’s better restaurants they rushed off to attend a m eeting to prom ote a ban on cow -slaughter; challenged by our host they laughed and said th a t the cow for them was not a sacred anim al b u t a political band-w aggon; they knew th at the audience w ould be profoundly shocked had they suspected w hat they h ad eaten for lunch b u t on the other hand they felt th a t there was nothing in the Vedas to forbid the eating of cow’s m eat; and quoted a num ber of cases where Vedic Brahm ins h ad eaten cow’s m eat to celebrate some auspicious occasion. T he R am kheri Potter was unfortunate; he was caught beating the cow. Those three gentlemen were lucky th at their followers did not patronise fashionable restaurants. Pollution is fundam ental b u t this does not m ean th at pollution explains everything. It is only one of the factors w hich govern the ritual life of the orthodox H indu, a life in which everything is governed by ritual, from the occasions on which one eats certain foods to the days on which one has intercourse w ith one’s husband or wife, from the occasions on which one has a bath to those when one cuts one’s hair or nails or makes decorative designs on the threshold of one’s house, buys new clothes, visits relations . . . the list is as long as life. Therefore caste which begins with pollution develops into a way of life. Perhaps the best illustration, in W estern terms, of the w ay it works would be to com pare the behaviour of orthodox Jews in a nonJew ish society to th at of a sub-caste in relation to the other sub-castes around it. If the orthodox Jews lived in an orthodox Jew ish State and society m any of the little fences they have to erect around themselves to protect their orthodoxy w ould vanish; they could, for instance, eat and drink anywhere, safe in the knowledge th a t only perm itted foods were available and th a t none of the dietary taboos would be broken. T here w ould be no problem about

20

CASTE T O D A Y

observing the Sabbath since everybody would be observing it too; there would be no jobs closed to them , and no danger o f interm arriage, so th at boys a n d girls could m ix more freely. But the m om ent these orthodox Jews find themselves in a m inority they cannot afford to relax their vigilance for an instant. They can no longer eat everywhere and even when they eat perm itted food they have to study the m enu carefully in order to make sure th a t some culinary rule has not been broken unwittingly, for instance by flavouring, shall we say, fillet of sole (which is perm itted) w ith shrimps (which are not). They should, in fact, to be quite safe, refuse to eat out. They cannot take the first jo b th a t comes along because it m ay involve breaking the S abbath; I have known of students who did not take exams which were held after sunset on w inter Fridays. A nd o f course unless they are prepared to m arry out they cannot be careful enough about choosing friends; the same applies in the case o f orthodox Hindus. Every sub-caste in India is a m inority in the w ider society in exactly the same way as are orthodox Jew s. H indus, as a whole, m ay be in a m ajority in In d ia b u t each individual sub-caste is in a small m inority, so each sub-caste has its own ritual rules, and m ust be endlessly on its guard to see they are not broken. How small a m inority such sub-castes can be is, for example, shown by the fact th at the Leva Pattidars of K aira district in N orth G ujerat m ay m arry their daughters only to Leva Pattidars of seven chosen villages, whereas they themselves m ay take wives from all the P attid ar families of the whole of G ujerat. A nd there is a m odern U .P. K ayastha I.C .S.— now I.A .S.—sub-caste in w hich girls are given in m arriage only to K ayasthas in All In d ia G overnm ent Service, in preference to U .P. K ayasthas in business. V ery few of these ritual rules have scriptural authority, and nobody knows how the rest originated. O ne can make some guesses. T he influence o f Buddhism, w ith its horror o f the taking of life, probably explains the social superiority

POLLUTION

21

bestowed on vegetarianism and the low position of such life-takers as fishermen. Yet even this simple rule is not followed out logically everywhere. T he R ajput, who provi­ ded In d ia w ith most of its princes, is a m eat-eater; the Bengali B rahm in eats fish. O n the other hand, the Pattidar of G ujerat— a Sudra who achieved Vaishiya status a century ago— is a vegetarian. Presumably his vegetarianism comes from the all-pervading influence of Jainism on G ujerat H induism ; the Jains are even more opposed to the taking of life th an are the Buddhists. Thus caste and sub-caste duties vary ad infinitum according to time, place, and mysteriously evolved dictates of w hat is rightful behaviour. As D r. D ube points o u t: ‘the concepts of sin, m erit, and pollution are fundam ental to the concept of dharm a. D harm a, which means ‘that which is rig h t’, covers all the phases of the hum an life cycle and fixes several details of intra- and inter-group life. A cceptance of the caste traditions and the general rules of piety can be said to constitute the dharm a of the people and it is through dharm a th at one can look forward to shaping one’s destiny. H induism as it is practised is a religion of prescribed rituals which differ in the practice of different castes.’5 A nd M orris Carstairs records th a t: ‘T alk of caste tended to lead to a recital of rules of behaviour . . . it is a m a n ’s m ode of life that shows his caste; a B rah­ m in ’s first duty is to avoid contam ination by touch or by sitting down to partake of food or tobacco in low caste com pany . . . As soon as a child grows up he comes to know about food; even a child of 6 or 7 knows this well. If someone of the depressed class asks him to take food he says “ I shall become touched.” ’6 Indeed, remove the ritual and the pollution and India m ight become a society like our own, based on class instead 8 D u b e, op. cit., pp. 92—3. ® G. M . Carstairs, The Twice Born (London, Hogarth Press, 1957), pp. 59, 115, 146.

22

GASTE T O D A Y

of caste, as amongst the westernised of the great cities. T he fact that there is no sanction in revelation for this elaborate ritual is irrelevant to its observance. It is easy to talk of removing ritual; or, like Swami V ivekananda, to say: ‘From Buddha down to R am M ohan Roy, everyone m ade the mistake of holding caste to be a religious institu­ tion . . . but in spite of all the ravings of the priests caste is simply a crystallised social institution.’7 But most people still share the B uddha’s error. For most Hindus, even today, caste is as m uch ordained by their religion as not eating bacon is for an orthodox Jew or praying five times a day for an orthodox Muslim. This one knows from personal experience. I shall never forget the day I visited the leader of the Communist Party of K erala in the house which had ju st been built for him. He had observed all the caste and sub-caste ritual reserved for such occasions, from hanging a scapegoat from the roof to lighting a ceremonial fire. His explanation was lam e: he did not w ant to shock his caste fellows whose political support he could not afford to lose. But somehow I had the feeling th at he him self felt that he m ight lose caste by being too m odern and was therefore playing safe. Indeed, the sociologists make quite clear that belief in caste is rooted in belief in God. For example D r. M ajum dar says: ‘T he caste system is believed to be G od-ordained and as such no m an has any power to destroy it. Even the lower castes would like economic conditions bettered, b u t the caste system m aintained.’8 R eading Dr. M ajum dar I was rem inded o f the little U ntouchable girl from A llahabad whom M r. N ehru tried to bring up in his house together w ith his own daughter. T he parents were eager th at their daughter be given a good education and sent her willingly to the N ehru m an ­ sion; b u t when they heard th a t she ate and sat w ith Brahmins, they were so horrified th a t they took her back. 7 Q uoted by Sardar Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance (London, A llen and U nw in , 4th Im p., 1950), p. 327. 8 M ajum dar, op. cit., p. 36.

POLLUTION

23

Life in an Indian village is thus regulated by the belief th at God has ordained everything, from the length of the twig w ith w hich one washes one’s teeth— nine inches for a Brahm in, six inches for a K shatrya and three inches for a V aishya in orthodox K erala— to the food one eats, the clothes one wears, the times one has intercourse (for orthodox Brahmins in Tanjore only on Fridays). People, as in all ritualistic societies, do not think; they observe the ritual instead because they believe the ritual to be of divine inspiration and because upon the observance of the ritual depends their status in their own society. The penalty for not following the rules must quite logically be ex­ com m unication, and indeed, used to be until very recently. G andhi, for instance, was excom m unicated because he crossed the w ater to go to Britain to study and crossing the w ater is forbidden to H indus (although there have been H indu navigators and sailors). T he penalties for not following the rules are far worse in India than for orthodox Jews, and therefore the rules are far more difficult to break. A Jew will not be held responsible for his cousin’s eating bacon and if he himself does not break the rules will still occupy a respected place amongst his fellow orthodox. But a H in du whose relative breaks a sub-caste rule may find it very difficult to make a satisfactory marriage, for instance, as his own status goes down w ith that of his relative. For as we shall see the individual does not count; only the group does. T he rules cover everything; and they differ from every little group to every little group. T h a t is how caste has narrow ed down to sub-caste until H indu society fits W int’s definition and is merely groups of ‘families whose members can m arry w ith each other and can eat in each other’s com pany w ithout believing themselves polluted’.

III.

THE PRACTICE

w do these intricate rules work out in practice? H oFirst of all, let us take an ordinary villager in an ordinary village. For him, so long as he continues to live as his forefathers did, there is no problem . Everything has been laid down for generations; his actions, his thoughts are all cut out for him ; all he has to do is follow the rules to m aintain the ritual status of his group. T here is no overall ritual for a H indu, no universal rules of conduct or belief, no universal dogma or w orship; even beef-eating is not always taboo. But w hat an individual will do is rigidly defined, not by his religion b u t by his caste and sub-caste. T he great difference between H induism and Judaism or Islam is th at there is universality neither of practice nor even of deity. All the rules, the ritual, vary according to the particular sub-caste of the individual. W hen I w anted to refuse food that was unhygienic or too spicy, w ithout the risk of offending people, I used to say th at my sub-caste did not perm it me to eat th at p articu lar dish or, if I did not w ant to touch anything a t all, th at today was m y caste’s fasting day. T he same villagers who would have gone on arguing, until I gave in, that I could not leave th eir house w ithout taking something, w ould at once respect my taboo, for it fitted so well into their own th at nobody even enquired to which particular Angrezi sub-caste I belonged. I would have been hard p u t to answer if they had. Personal behaviour is conditioned a t every stage by ritual. W h at you eat is not a m atter of taste or economic status b u t of sub-caste. T here are sub-castes in M aharashtra which eat germ inated gram preparations three times a year while others eat it once every lunar m onth, an d others still perhaps once a week. No sin w ould be involved in eating germ inated gram more often b u t it simply is not the custom, and I have w atched the difficulty social workers in

THE

PRACTICE

25

C om m unity Projects have had in trying to introduce germ ­ inated g ram or vegetables into the diet out of their ritual turn. T he answer so often is: ‘But our particular sub-caste eats it on full m oon days, it is so-and-so who eat it once a week.’ W h at you eat, not only in the broad categories but in the m inutest details, is laid down by the ritual. There is for instance a special sweet m ade out of mashed bananas, coconut milk, spices and molasses which Ayengar Brahmins eat a t weddings, and they have to be quite westernised to serve it as a treat when they have guests. There are a whole lot of elaborate rules about the sort of food one prepares for worship, to offer to the deity, to eat oneself, to eat on certain festivals, to eat during certain times of the year, to eat during pregnancy or lactation, and these again vary from sub-caste to sub-caste, like the diets given to patients. Some castes or sub-castes can, and indeed must, drink ferm ented drinks; others, by contrast, must never let alcohol touch their lips. A nd of course who one may or may not take w ater from is laid down most specifically. Indeed w hat one m ay take w ater out of is also laid down, although in all cases it is perm itted to drink w ater from one’s cupped hands, which is why, when there is a drought and the G overnm ent distributes w ater, it is usually poured straight into people’s hands unless they have brought their own containers. W hen one washes is laid down. T he twiceborn m ust wash their feet before going to eat and their m ouths after eating. M ost castes insist upon a bath after each shave and there are of course the depolluting ablutions to be m ade after touching anything or anybody which pollutes. Even when to wash is laid down for some sub­ castes. T hus Brahmins must wash before sunrise— and in Jndia the sun rises always very early— so th at the cool goodness of the night should still be in the w ater; indeed the way they are to wash is also laid down, where to begin and where to e n d 'a n d w hat prayers to say while doing so.

26

CASTE TO D A Y

W hom you worship, how you worship and when you worship also depends upon who you are and, w ithin the sub-caste, upon the region to which you belong. Thus the Brahmins of M aharashtra, like all M aharasthrians, worship Ganesh, the Elephant-headed God, while the A ndhra Brahmins worship H anum an, the M onkey God. In Delhi there is a temple where H anum an is worshipped by Bengali Brahmins on M ondays, Mysore Brahmins on Tuesdays and G ujerati Pattidars on W ednesdays. Indeed, w hat is true of one Mysore Brahm in is not true of another, ju st as the sub-caste rules which govern a P attid ar of Sojitra in the K aira district are not quite the same as those which govern a P attidar of a similar village in Baroda, barely a few miles away. W orship, fasts, the colour of one’s clothes, the colour of the flowers one wears, the shape of one’s ornam ents, the p attern of one’s ritual decorations, the sweets one offers to the deity or to one’s ancestors for their memorial meal vary, and it is these differences which combine to keep each little group as a separate entity. M arriage customs vary ad infinitum w ith caste and sub­ caste. U ntouchables make late, arranged marriages w ith no dowries beyond the wedding feast. Brahmins make arranged child marriages w ith high dowries. In most castes of n o rthern India marriages have to be outside the village and also outside a large num ber of cognates. In the South, by contrast, marriages are often arranged w ithin the village, preferably between cross cousins. T he rem arriage of widows is forbidden to the higher castes, but not to Sudras or Untouchables. Hindus, generally speaking, have no divorce, yet the Nairs of M alabar have a divorce proced­ ure which would arouse envy in R e n o ; the woman, when she feels like divorcing her husband, puts a betel n u t under his pillow and is thus freed to m arry anew, sometimes with a m inor rem arriage rite. A nd in most of In d ia there is a form of caste divorce for the cultivating castes. Dowries too vary w ith caste and sub-caste. In some cases the groom

THE

PRACTICE

27

com m ands a dowry, in others he has to pay a bride-price; and in some castes no money passes at all, at least theoretic­ ally. In some cases dowries are in cash, in others they have to be in kind. Funerals are determ ined by caste rules. T raditionally U ntouchables bury, while most Hindus crem ate, b u t there is a R ajput sub-caste in Mysore which buries its dead in a cemetery under the aegis of a Snake Goddess. T he individual is thus cocooned in every direction. T here are m any jobs he cannot do because they would pollute him or bring him into contact w ith polluting people, so it is m uch simpler to follow in his father’s footsteps and take up the family’s traditional occupation. However, everybody in India can take up agriculture although not all agriculturalists can drive a plough, ju st as there are some cultivating castes who can drive a plough b u t may not dig canals. But here, as w ith everything else in the complex p attern of taboos, there are exceptions. For instance, as we have already seen, most Brahmins of Orissa will not plough, b u t the Anavil Brahmins of G ujerat do, and in m any parts of the Punjab Brahmins do everything th at the cultivating castes do; in the Punjab, Brahmins enjoy a relatively low status. Nevertheless, one thing holds true for all avocations: so long as the individual remains subject to his particular sub-caste taboos he will not undertake a profession which w ould lower his status. A Brahm in will not become a barber ju st as he will not cut his own hair, nails or even shave him self or clean his own ears; this is left to the barber, who is h a lf way to U ntouchability. A high-caste m an will not become a butcher, nor will he cross the sea. This latter taboo for a long time prevented H indus from taking advan­ tage of the opening in Bombay of a trading post by the East In d ia Com pany, since Bombay was, until the building of its causeway, an island. A nd the high-caste m an who be­ comes a doctor can do so only if he ceases to observe his caste taboos, because of the pollution of parturition.

28

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By and large people follow their own dharm a, even if it is in its modernised form. For instance Banias are quite naturally becoming industrialists, financiers an d stock­ brokers, while dais (village midwives) are becoming trained nurses and diplom aed midwives. T he individual’s relations w ith others are obviously governed by ritual, w hether it is w ithin the family in its stricter sense or its extended form or w ithin the clan. Thus a t a m arriage or a funeral ritual lays down the p a rt to be played by each individual, on the religious as well as on the secular plane, w hether it is his place in the procession or the kind of assistance he is to provide for the feast. A nd here village prestige comes into play. Thus A drian M ayer recounts how in R am kheri the villagers of a neighbouring village, challenged in their local pride, brought 250 bullock carts full of guests to a wedding and how the host’s kin rallied round to help feed the invasion. Respect for others goes strictly by sub-caste rules. R ajputs expect cultivators to rise from their string cots w hen they pass; educated Christians belonging to upper castes of K erala expect lower castes to get off the footpath an d make way for them ; Brahmins everywhere expect to be fed certain foods and it is a m atter of status to be able to feed Brahm ins; the status is defined by the kind of food, pakka or kachchha, th at can be accepted— cooked or uncooked— by them . Factions too are governed by caste and sub-caste. To begin w ith certain sub-castes are traditionally subservient to others and are therefore expected to follow the factions of their patrons; this is particularly true of the service castes. The dependence of some castes on others is reinforced by the jajm ani system which ties patron and client to each other. Factions on the other hand are often created because members of a particular sub-caste have broken a taboo and have been expelled, if not excom m unicated, by their original group. Finally village affairs are largely governed by caste an d sub-caste. V oting on the village council goes by caste, an d usually the interests of the caste or the sub-caste are

THE

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considerations which far outweigh economic considerations. For instance, in a village where a group of farmers was offered by the G overnm ent a weir to retain the river w ater there was great hostility to the scheme because the construc­ tion of this weir would have benefited not only the larger farmers b u t also the smaller ones who h ad to get their w ater from the m ore prosperous farmers and would therefore become em ancipated. So long as it is status th at matters, no economic considerations can offset ritual, and there is no possibility of change. T h e traditional villager in the traditional village lives according to the rules which govern his individual conduct as well as his relations w ith others in the smallest detail. Thus the villager lives in a house filled w ith his own kin, who all naturally belong to his own sub-caste; and his house is in a street where every other house belongs to someone either of the same sub-caste or of one sufficiently akin for pollution to be reduced to the m inim um . In the evening he smokes his hooka w ith members of perm itted sub-castes, sitting u nder a tree on the village square amongst his peers; there is no ground for friction since others know w here to sit and stand in relation to him ju st as he knows how to keep to his own place. I t is all rath er like an English public school and its unw ritten laws. No public schoolboy unbuttons his top button when it is supposed to be b u tto n e d ; no villager sits in the wrong place a t a feast. O ccasionally there are festivals or private ceremonies which require the combined efforts of the village as a whole an d are used to reassert everybody’s relative position. O n those occasions, as in the most protocolaire of royal banquets, the place and p a rt to be taken by each are known to all. I f it is a religious ceremony involving the whole village, custom has laid down from time im m em orial who plays music, who sweeps the ground in front of the temple, who sweeps it inside the temple, who bathes the deity, who takes the deity o u t for its processional walk, who prays at which distance from the deity, who gives offerings of w hat to the

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priest and w hether these offerings are of cooked or uncooked food. If it is a private religious ceremony, a funeral or a birth or a wedding, the same rigidity and certainty apply, but to a narrow er group; all the dependants of the head of the house have their own p articular rights and duties. T he p art to be played by the barber, the w asherm an, the smith, the carpenter, the landless labourer, the tenant are all well defined, ju st as are the gifts which they will receive in exchange. M any of In d ia ’s professions and services are conducted on a jajm ani basis. Particular barbers, w asherm en or smiths are attached to particular patrons. Paym ent is in kind, perhaps twice a year at harvest, w ith a few extra duties and gifts oh special occasions. Patrons do not look around for better smiths or barbers who know the latest hairstyle, nor do the barbers and smiths go round looking for patrons who pay more or grum ble less. T he relationship is both implicit and hereditary. This is often carried into city life. W hen I moved into a flat in Bombay I inherited my predecessor’s w asherm an. H e was clean, reliable and pleasant, and I had nothing but satisfaction from him until he suddenly went back to his village, w ithout warning, and a ‘cousin-brother’ of his came to take his place. The new w asherm an was stupid, inefficient, unreliable; he did not clean the wash, he lost clothes and replaced them with other people’s, he broke all the buttons. After m uch grum bling and com plaint I decided to change over to another w asherm an, for it looked as if this m an had come to Bombay for good. M y own servants, who had been very critical of the new w asherm an, were most unco-operative in finding another, my own efforts through friends failed; no w asherm an w orth his salt w anted to take away the custom of a colleague, for in their eyes I belonged to my servant. At the end of a year my old w asherm an came back, u n ­ disturbed ; he knew th at his cousin was no good but he also knew th at he would not lose custom. W hen after a couple of years he returned to his village, the cousin turned up once

THE

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more to destroy my clothes. But I h ad learnt my lesson; I did not attem pt to change him, I merely cut his pay to com pensate for dam age done and he did not protest. Besides private service the jajm ani system covers com­ m unal service, such as sweeping village streets, removing dead cattle, cleaning ponds. Such work is rem unerated quite often by special begging days, during which the village servants beg from their patrons enough to help them make both ends meet. It is partly because so m any payments are in kind in this way th at it is so difficult for either side to break away. C ertain families have hereditary jajm ani relationships w ith the guardians of temples or shrines hundreds o f miles distant to which they will make pilgrimage once in a generation. W hether or not to interdine w ith those of other castes does not bother the villager. His entertaining is largely confined to the im m ediate family circle and on special occasions to the larger family. However there are occasions, as always, dictated by tradition, when eating becomes a social or religious affair involving outsiders, for example a t a w edding. O n such occasions who gets asked, w hat he is given to eat and where he is made to eat, assume p a ra ­ m ount im portance, both for the individual and for the sub­ caste to w hich he belongs. O n those occasions the seating arrangem ents are so devised th at the guests eat simul­ taneously b u t not together—rather like my orthodox hostess who was technically not eating a t the same table. In the absence of tables distances are assured through the institu­ tion of feeding lines. Each sub-caste is seated on the ground in a line and there is enough ritual distance between two lines to prevent pollution from commensality. The highest line is naturally served first, the lowest line is n a tu r­ ally nearest to the refuse dum p where all the leaf-containers are dum ped for the delight of pie-dogs and pigs, and U n ­ touchables are given food afterwards. Everybody keeps a haw k’s eye on distances, ready to take offence if necessary, w hether or not there was deliberate malice.

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Even in the village, drinking w ith others, or m ore correctly taking w ater from others, by contrast to interdining, is frequent, for India is a hot country with a parching climate. U sually w hat happens is th at somebody gets thirsty away from home and has to be given a drink by someone who happens to be drawing w ater from the well at the time. T he rule is quite clear: one can take w ater from someone higher than oneself, from someone equal to oneself, but never from someone lower than oneself. To take w ater in a clay p o t from someone lower means not only pollution but something even w orse: in effect it adm its ritual equality. From whom its members take w ater, and who takes w ater from them, is often used as a rough criterion for placing a caste. I have often myself asked a villager if he ‘took w ater’ from such and such castes and if so and so took w ater from him. W hen in doubt, the rule is clear: abstain. I was once travelling in a rem ote and backw ard p a rt of U tta r Pradesh w ith a B rahm in girl who was acting as my guide. We had walked for miles in the scorching sum ­ m er dust when we reached a village. I asked a village elder for w ater; he drew some from the well and poured it into a filthy glass which he handed me a t arm ’s length. I was past caring, so I drank. M y com panion asked for w ater too and was offered the same glass refilled. She refused, saying I am a B rahm in; the Gods will punish you for treating me and my friend like this’, and no cajoling m ade h er relent. She explained to me later that the filthy glass was kept for Untouchables, th a t caste villagers drank only out o f brass pots or their cupped hands. T he village elder, who was not a Brahmin, was horrified a t having insulted a B rahm in; had not Shakuntala been cursed for a m uch sm aller crim e? He kept running after my com panion begging her to drink out of his best brass pot. She told him to offer me w ater in it, but this he could not bring himself to do, nor really was it reasonable of her to ask him to. It is well known th at U ntouchables alone amongst Indians are debarred from draw ing w ater from village

THE PRACTICE

33

wells. H ow ever this is not always as cruel as it sounds. To begin w ith, the village well is usually far from the U n ­ touchable quarters, which are norm ally a t some distance from the rest of the village and often have a well of their own. Except on special occasions when their presence is required in the caste village, there is no reason for them to wish to draw w ater from the caste well. But if they are in the caste village and are thirsty, they have to w ait for someone to draw w ater for them . T he injustice comes w hen the U ntouchables have no well, or when it is dry. T he caste villagers will in practice always draw w ater for them , b u t on occasion they m ay have to w ait quite a long time. T h e outside w orld tends to take a somewhat unrealistic view about wells, like the A m erican diplom at who w arned the D irector of the Ford Foundation th at he would com­ plain to the U .S. Congress th a t Ford Foundation money was being used to bolster up caste. H e had ju st come back from a village where Foundation money was paying for an U ntouchable well instead of educating the villagers to share their well w ith U ntouchables. T he Director of the Ford Foundation, who has been m any years in India, re­ joiced th at, thanks to his Foundation, there w ould be two wells in a village in which previously there was only one. It is im portant th a t the U ntouchable’s right to draw w ater from any public well should be asserted; but w hat the U ntouchables really w ant is a well on their own door­ step. O ften, too, they have inhibitions about using caste wells because of their belief in dharm a. I have never forgotten the fantasy of the young R ajasthan Sweeper who told m e th at he had once draw n w ater from the caste well an d th a t G od h ad m ade his w rath known. First the well h ad dried down before his very eyes, then it had filled w ith verm in and stinking weeds. Never again would he draw w ater above his station. H is old m other supported the tale w ith vivid descriptions of worms as big as snakes. The village headm an laughed when I asked him . No U ntouchable

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in his village would be foolish enough to draw w ater from the caste well. Each sub-caste has its own tem ple in the village; indeed there are more temples in the average H indu village than there are churches in the city of Rom e. In the village of Ram kheri, w ith a population of 912, there are forty-four shrines or temples, thirteen of them dedicated to the same deity, whose nam e is Bheru1: th a t is, one shrine, which m ay consist of a mere stone sm eared w ith ochre, for each lineage worshipping that p articular godling. U nder these conditions, to say that temples m ust be open to all is meaningless, for each little group likes to worship in its own way, and as with eating, the U ntouchables are not the only ones to be singled out w ith taboos. Indeed, the Untouchables do not particularly w ant to worship at caste shrines in their own village, although they m ay wish to assert their legal right to worship anywhere, particularly a t the village temple, now that they have been politically stirred up as we shall see in the next chapter. But such instances are rare because the assertion does not have m uch religious m eaning; it is rather as if a Baptist were to insist on w orshipping in a Congregationalist Church. However, while no im portance is attached to entry into small shrines, m uch is attached to entry into m ajor temples which are the object of pilgrim age; such temples m ay be located in villages or in jungles or in the big cities and those temples exercise the same attraction for all H indus as C hrist’s tom b in Jerusalem does for all Christians. A nd here again the illogicality which swathes H induism comes out. U ntil a couple of generations ago, U ntouchables could not enter the big temples, b u t nothing prevented them from going on pilgrim age to the holy places, or bathing in the Ganges on the holy Ghats. A nd except for U ntouch­ ables, all H indus have always been adm itted to the big temples whatever their caste, so long as they observed the 1 M a v er, op. d t .. p. 102.

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sartorial requirem ents laid down by the guardians of the p articu lar deity. Eighty-five per cent of the people of India live in the villages; ninety per cent are H indus. For the great majority of this three-quarters of the population of India, caste and ritual rules of caste govern most of the waking d a y ; but it no longer covers everything, as in different places belief in ritual is beginning to break down in different ways, under­ m ining status.

IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BREAKDOWN—LOSS OF BELIEF t o n g before M r. M acm illan thought o f the phrase, the -L< In d ian villager h ad been talking o f ‘the winds of change’, for underneath their unchanging appearance the villages o f In d ia are being revolutionised day by day. T he winds of change blow fiercely, if patchily, upon the fabric of H indu society. Already this is beginning to produce changes in the attitudes of the castes and sub-castes to each other. The outsider notices m ainly the stresses this creates; peaceful transitions, like happy couples, have no history. Nevertheless m any of the transitions are in fact peaceful, h ardly noticed even by those who are undergoing them . We shall consider the causes of change in the next c h a p te r; in this chapter I will attem pt to sketch some o f the beginnings o f the breakdown of caste as it takes place, from the remote village to the most fashionable Delhi drawing-room . First, it is im portant to stress th a t change is possible only when there has been both a loss of belief in the rig h t­ ness of ritual, and external circumstances w hich perm it the individual to act on his loss of belief; particularly, he m ust have economic independence and there m ust be some reason other than caste position, education for example, w hy people should listen to him. Thus the B rahm in who becomes a doctor can do so only if he ceases to believe in those taboos of his caste which relate to pollution by contact w ith U n ­ touchable people and polluting parts of the hum an body; h ad he continued to believe in the whole ritual he could not have become a doctor. But once he has done so, he has the independence an d the influence to be able to break the rules himself, and to provide an example of change to others. T he loss of belief does not have to extend to the fundam entals of the H indu religion. I t need not go beyond a willingness to take liberties w ith the ritual rules. These liberties will

T H E BEGINNINGS OF B R E A K D O W N

■vary from place to place and from person to person in the most unpredictable ways. Perhaps the best examples of the erratic way in which. locs of belief affects the individual can be given from Judaism . T here are Jews who keep all the rules except the dietary ones; there are Jews who, like a cricket enthusiast I know, keep all the rules except those w hich w ould interfere w ith playing cricket on the Sabbath. T h ere are Jew s who observe all the dietary rules a t home and break them outside: there are Jews who draw the line betw een pork, w hich they do not eat, and bacon, w hich they do eat, perhaps because it has become such a feature of English life. So it is in India. I know vegetarians who eat m eat outside their homes, orthodox Brahmins who do not believe in w earing their sacred thread, good H indus who will not let themselves be polluted by contact bu t do not hesitate to defecate along a river bed— a crim e so heinous th at forty years ago it still used to be punished by ostracism or even death, people so orthodox th at like Sri Purshotam das T an d o n they do not play cricket because the ball is covered w ith leather, yet do not believe in caste, or who, like the President of India, first require astral sanction for any undertaking b u t mingle quite happily w ith U ntouchables A nd m ost of the high-caste H indus who have to come into contact w ith people belonging to other castes or w ith U ntouchables take the line of least resistance an d rule th at sitting, eating, drinking, touching on the verandah or in the garden is all right, whereas the same prom iscuity inside the house w ould be all wrong. T here are as m any compromises w ith the rule as loss of belief will perm it. A nd of course loss of belief a t the top of the caste-scale has rap id repercussions down the ladder, more rapid than loss of belief a t the b o tto m ; for once the top of society loses faith it no t only sets the example b u t it cannot stand up effectively to assertions from below. A nd the hierarchy begins to crum ble, for hierarchies, to survive, require consent.

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Even in the past, the rigidities of sub-caste did not m eet w ith absolute acceptance. T here was the tradition of uninhibited intellectual speculation amongst Brahmins and V edantic monists. T here was the cult o f Bhakti (indi­ vidual devotion to a particular god or goddess) in which, theoretically always and practically on particular occasions and for particular purposes, caste did not m atter. Finally, there was a series of protestant breakaways, Jainism , B udd­ hism, Lingayatism, Sikhism. All these proclaim ed their opposition to caste, however often their adherents m ight in practice continue to m arry w ithin the caste th at h ad been theirs as H indus. These provided a background which In d ian social reformers in the nineteenth century were able to exploit. The most im portant of these social reformers were R am a M ohan R oy of the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Swami D ayananda ■of the Arya Samaj in the Punjab, and the weaker movem ent of R anade a n d B handarkar of the P rarth an a Samaj in M aharashtra. T o these reformers, who were the w estern-educated of their day, belongs m uch of the credit for weakening belief in caste, although their influence rem ained both sectarian and localised. A nd so strong is caste th at the most anti-caste of all these movements ended, in practice, by creating another caste, the caste of anti-caste Brahmo Samajists. M ore recently, loss of belief has been the result of the spread of education to the rural areas. W ith education came an arousing of new expectations, which through m uch of the Indian peninsula produced a new nonBrahm inical leadership, a leadership w hich was not only non-Brahm in b u t positively anti-B rahm in. Thus in M aharashtra, over the last seventy years, men like Jo tib a Phule, Shahu C hhatrapati of K olhapur, B haurao Patil and D r. A m bedkar have brought about in the non-Brahm ins of M aharashtra a feeling th a t the tim e has come for power to pass into their own hands and for Brahmins to be hum ble.1 1 C om m unication from Professor D . R . Gadgil.

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This could not have happened in the traditional society where learning and education were the preserve of the Brahmins. In the Village O ne of the first effects of loss of belief is a weakening of the B rahm in’s religious position in the village. The story of the little priest in a Deccan village is typical. H e com­ plained th a t his parish still spent as m uch on weddings and funerals as in the good old days b u t spent so little on the priest th a t he h ad h ad to send his sons to earn their living in town, one as a m otor mechanic, the other as a teacher. ‘But it is m y fault too’, he added in all fairness. ‘M y father used to spend hours in prayers, and he always got up before sunrise to cleanse himself, and he was always available for counsel by the side of the river; all his time was spent in rem aining ritually pure, wise and w orthy. I am slack, I get up later and I make money on the side as a money lender. W hen I gave up poverty I gave up my claim to respect.’ Both the priest and the villagers had changed; once the B rahm in runs a m otor business or lends money his relationship w ith other castes is upset, even though he may for a tim e still cling successfully to his ritual distance. Between castes of equal rank distance is being increasingly reduced because of the loss of belief of each caste in its own superiority. Thus I have seen in M aharashtra a teli (oilpresser) a n d a M ah ratta (agriculturalist) eating a t a w edding in the same feeding line. Challenged, they both reto rted : ‘After all we are brothers.’ This new feeling th a t they are all one is growing between equal sub-castes; in parts of M aharashtra there are even beginnings— adm ittedly tim id— of inter-m arriage between members of equal sub-castes, while in the Punjab caste has always been weak. Fraternisation between a caste H indu and an U ntouch­ able is very ra re ; b u t it sometimes happens. I rem em ber visiting a village in East K handesh where a M ahar

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(U ntouchable) was giving a lift to a M ah ratta cultivator. I asked the M ah ratta w hat he was doing in the cart o f a m an from whom he could not take w ater; he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘Times have changed. W e even invited the M ahars of our village to our caste dinners on the condition th at they give up their work and let us flay our dead anim als ourselves and sell the skins; b u t they refused because they need the money they make from the hides.’ This case is, however, the only one I have myself come across. O ften it is the Governm ent and its servants th a t have lost belief in ritual while the villagers have not. T hen w h at happens varies a good deal. Thus in Bihar during the 1951 fam ine m any villagers refused to let themselves be vaccin­ ated because the vaccinator was of a low caste; they died of smallpox. D uring the drought in R ayalaseem a when the In dian A rm y insisted on giving drinking w ater to the U ntouchables first, the U ntouchables took it, b u t were greatly embarrassed. They, and no t the Army, w ould have to face the caste people; the breakdown in belief which h ad changed the attitude of the soldiers to them h a d not yet touched their fellow-villagers. Loss of belief works in two ways. T here is the loss of belief in one’s predestined superiority and there is the loss of belief in one’s predestined inferiority. T he greatest effect occurs when both happen together. W hen the u n d er­ dog begins to feel th a t he is as good as his neighbour, the result depends largely upon w hether the overdog has stopped believing in his own over-doggery. Thus in R ajasthan, where R ajputs used to expect J a t and U ntouchable tenants to get up from their string cots for them , Carstairs reports th a t in his village nobody bothers any longer; the tenant does not get u p ; the R ajp u t m ay be profoundly angered, b u t he swallows the insult. In U tta r Pradesh the R aja of D aya, who is descended from the M oon, once h ad a position far beyond th a t of a great landowner. H e could, and did, banish villagers w ithout

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so m uch as giving a reason for his decree; he was obeyed at once. Today, were the present R aja to wish to banish a villager whose nose he did not like, the chances th at his edict w ould be carried out are slim; and his successor will not even dream of w hat to him w ould seem tyranny. If he did, the victim w ould go straight to court. T he feeling of equality is beginning to percolate into the villages, even into the rem oter ones, although it takes different forms in different places. Dr. Bailey tells an interesting story.2 In Orissa the Boad Outcastes (who are actually engaged in agriculture and gave up unclean pro­ fessions some tim e ago) w anted to be adm itted to the caste tem ple of their village. They had been told th at temples h ad been opened to all by law and, believing themselves as good as the rest of the village, insisted on leaving their offerings inside instead of outside the temple. T he caste villagers stopped them , and threatened to kill any tres­ passer. T he Boad Outcastes com plained to the police, who investigated the m atter and left only after peace h ad been restored a n d the villagers had been told to open the temple to everybody— knowing full well this would not happen. T he Boad Outcastes built themselves a temple similar to the forbidden one, and the school-teacher, a Boad Outcaste, perform ed the service as if he were a Brahmin. This nobody m inded. But the villagers, who resented having had the police called in, decided to teach their rebels a lesson for ‘getting above themselves’. A m eeting was called and it was decided th a t the Boad Outcastes w ould no longer play the music required on ritual occasions an d th at they would be debarred from receiving alms. Anyone giving anything to a Boad O utcaste w ould have to pay a fine o f 25 rupees (a cow in th a t area costs less) or be ostracised. H onour had been preserved on both sides. Sometimes, however, the tale is not so happy. In the R am n ad D istrict of M adras in 1958 a caste w ar broke out 2 IJ. G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier (M anchester U niversity Prpss, 1957), p. 221.

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in which m any lost their lives, and thousands their homes. T he whole district was plunged into flames an d it took the Indian Army ,to restore order after chaos h ad reigned for over a week. T h e crisis came when the local U ntouchables decided to assert their right to think for themselves and voted for a candidate of their own choice instead of the candidate of their overlords the M aravas. This was the first time th at the U ntouchables did not do as they were told and the M aravas, an ex-criminal caste, did not take it well. In ­ censed, they set fire to whole U ntouchable villages. T he U ntouchables retaliated and found that the G overnm ent was on their side. A deathly blow was dealt to M arava prestige, particularly when their leader, M uthusw am i T hevar, was gaoled for incitem ent. T he U ntouchables had, as in the case reported by Dr. Bailey, been quick to take advantage of their legal rights. Some of these rights (see C hapter V) are new, b u t the fundam ental right, the right of equality before the law, goes back a century or more to the beginning o f British days. W hat is really new is the willingness of the lower castes to run risks and to suffer for their rights. It is like w hat is happening now w ith Southern Negroes in the U nited States. T he American Constitution has been there all the tim e; but the feeling am ong the Negroes th a t it is w orth making every sacrifice to enforce it is new. A t times a compromise is struck w hich satisfies everybody, as in the case of the V enkataranam a Tem ple o f Moolky. which was built by the G aud Saraswat Brahmins for their own specific use. T he M adras H igh C ourt ruled th a t since this temple had been built by a p articular sub-caste for its, own use it should be opened to the public on all occasions, except on certain specific days w hen it should be reserved for the p articular worship for which it had been constructed.3 W ith their new awareness of equality, castes an d sub­ castes are trying to push themselves up in a num ber o f ways. O ne of the ways is for the sub-caste to change its nam e and 3 Report o f the Commissioner fo r Scheduled Castes and Tribes, 1958, p. 13.

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43

to give u p the occupation which was lowering to its status. T h irty years ago those W est U .P. Cham ars who did not work leather began to call themselves Jatavs and separate off into a new caste. M ore recently the case has been re­ ported of the Cham ars of M adhopur in the East U.P. who now call themselves Raidasi Thakurs after a famous C ham ar Saint (Saints have always come from every caste), and have adopted the social habits of the upper-caste T hakurs,4 according to a process w hich has been described as ‘Sanskritisation’. This process depends for its success on every member o f the p articu lar sub-caste giving up the old ways and adopting the new ones, from becoming vegetarian to prohibiting the rem arriage of widows, from introducing dowries and child m arriage to giving up the traditional occupation of leatherw ork and taking to clean occupations. A nother m ethod, which has been tried in parts of M ah ar­ ashtra, is conversion out of Hinduism . There, under Dr. A m bedkar’s leadership, the M ahars have become Buddhist by the tens of thousands. This m ay or may not succeed. Few forget the low original caste of the M azhabi Sikh. Some m easure of equality can sometimes be achieved at the expense of considerable economic sacrifice, a sacrifice m ade possible by the loss of belief in one’s economic pre­ destination. M ore and more Sweepers go on strike in the villages, and where such strikes have lasted long enough for the caste villagers to have had to handle their own refuse and dead cattle, the belief in pollution has been w eakened, and w ith it some of the feeling about the Sweeper has gone. T he underm ining of the upper castes has been consider­ ably helped by land reform. Before 1947 the upper castes owned m uch more than their fair share of the land. All over n orthern India m ost Zem indars and Jagirdars (landlords and feudal landowners) were R ajputs; everywhere in 4 Bernard S. C ohen, The Changing Status o f a Depressed Caste in Village India, edited by M cK im M arriott (C hicago U niversity Press, 1955), pp. 33—76.

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In d ia a good deal of land was in Brahm in h a n d s; in the Ganges valley a fair am ount was held by K ayasths; in m any areas, m uch h ad passed to moneylenders. O ne cannot generalise too m uch; most of the rich rice district of Tanjore, for instance, was Brahm in-held, while in R am nad, not so very far away, there was very little Brahm in land. But one can perhaps say th a t over most o f the country the big m en and the absentees were mostly upper-caste. T he rest of the land was usually in the hands of the great middle agricultural castes, people like the M ahrattas and the Lingayats, the Pattidars and the Jats and the K annas, who form the great m ajority of the independent peasantry. T he land reforms of the last ten years have been very com plicated; over two hundred Acts have been passed in the different States. W hat has been done differs some­ w hat from State to State, and the effectiveness of enforce­ m ent varies a good deal. I f one m ay venture a generalis­ ation, one m ight say th at most absentees, big and small, had been got rid of. Nobody can count his land by the square mile any m o re; the clerk a nd the com fortable gentle­ m an in the town can often no longer collect even such rents as they m ay still be entitled to. But the bigger peasant, the m an w ith fifty or a hundred acres, still flourishes, and the owner who still lives in the village has often been able to make his tenants feel th a t it w ould be wrong to take his land aw ay from him. T he m an a t the bottom , who has a postage stam p of land or two on a lease a t will and who works the rest of the tim e as an agricultural labourer, has been the biggest loser. T he ow ner o f the land he was leasing has taken the land back w herever he could, legally or illegally, so as to avoid losing it, an d nobody will now give him a new lease; and his opportunities even as a labourer have been reduced, sometimes by m inim um wage laws, sometimes by the feeling owners now have th a t if they do not a t least look as if they are cultivating their land personally, they m ay lose it. In caste terms, this means th a t the R ajp u t, the Brahm in,

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the K ayasth and the Bania are m uch less im portant as landow ners, and therefore in village social life, th an they w ere; this is particularly true of the B rahm in in Peninsular In d ia a n d the Bania everywhere. T h e m an at the bottom was in most areas an U ntouchable, and further loss of economic position has m ade it even harder for him to assert his rights, though it m ay sometimes also make him desperate in doing so. T he castes which have gained are the great agricultural castes in the m iddle. They have taken a considerable am ount o f land from the castes above them ; they have let very little go to the castes below them ; on the contrary, they now do some of the labour the lower castes used to do. T h e village is now more firmly controlled than it has ever been by its m ain peasant castes, which in m any villages means by ju st the one chief peasant caste of the area, Nairs or G audas, or Reddis or Jats or M ahrattas or Kurmis, or w hatever it m ay be. T he only real exception is in areas, like parts o f U tta r Pradesh and Bihar, where an upper caste, T hakurs or Bhoom idar Brahmins, for instance, m ay itself in m any villages be the m ain peasant caste. M oreover, there is a subsidiary effect of land reforms. W ithin the m ain peasant caste itself there is now greater equality. O n the one hand, the biggest men have lost some, or even most, of their land. O n the other, m any tenants have become owners— the tenants from the m ain peasant castes have on the whole both h ad more rights under the law an d been in m ore o f a position to enforce them th an the low-caste tenants. Equally w ithin families, since there has been m uch splitting up of the land to avoid the rules about ceilings on holdings, the younger members and junior branches are in more of a position to stand up to the patriarch th an in the past. In the countryside, in addition to land reforms the appearance of m onetisation and inflation has somewhat shaken the hold of caste. M onetisation, which began thirty years ago and was m uch hastened by the war,

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directly undermines the jajm ani system of paym ent in kind. Somehow one feels less obliged to a m an who pays in coins than to a m an who pays in grain; above all the purchasing value of money varies, while the caloric content of grain does not. So there is endless scope for recrim ination once one gets paid in cash, and recrim ination encourages m obility; one gives up one’s ancestral client for a more generous one, indeed one gives up one’s profession altogether and goes to work in a mill in town where paym ent is also in cash. Inflation has thus been a great factor of inter-caste friction, for paym ent once it is in cash never keeps up w ith its loss in purchasing power. . T he G overnm ent has tried, systematically, relentlessly, to underm ine belief in ritual pollution. M r. N ehru even told me once th a t the reason for his insistence on trying to introduce joint-co-operative farm ing was th a t it would do aw ay w ith caste. O ne of the more effective ways Govern­ m ent has chosen is to decree th a t all elected village councils m ust have a t least one U ntouchable m em ber. This indeed goes back to the days of British R ule. T he status of th at U ntouchable will obviously vary from place to place according to the degree to which belief has been shaken, and the degree of economic independence o f the U ntouch­ ables in th a t village. A nd quite often in N orth India U ntouchable children are no longer segregated in a corner of the village school as they used to be a generation ago. W hat happens in any one village is anybody’s guess. O ne can sometimes be dogm atic about the traditional society which has certain common features everywhere, b u t we have seen how the compromises people have m ade w ith tradition vary from place to place, caste to caste and individual to individual. O nly one thing is c e rta in : change is more difficult in the village because everybody knows everybody else, anything done today is a precedent for tomorrow, and so m uch of life is in the hands of the women. Indian women are conservative. T hey have little contact w ith the outside world, they are mostly illiterate

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and society requires th a t they be old before it will listen to them . This makes change in the village very slow, for it so often has to go a t the pace acceptable to the older, less edu­ cated m em bers of society. It is only when the villager leaves his village th a t he can become flexible and leave behind him his ritual taboos. The Trip to Town To leave one’s village one can walk, ride on a bullock cart or a bicycle or take a bus or a train. One can decide w hom one gives a lift to ; b u t one has no control over who buys a ticket. Even before legislation m ade the practice of U ntouchability an offence, bus-owners took U ntouchables in their buses. Business comes before caste and anyway the bus conductor could not conduct an enquiry into his clients’ castes. In India there is moreover no segregation in public tran sp o rt; it is not like those parts of the South of the U nited States where Negroes have to travel in special seats a t the back, or stand. T he lowest, dirtiest of U ntouchables, if he can pay his fare in the bus or the train—-indeed even if he gets on w ithout a ticket, sits next to the most im m aculate of Brahmins and th a t is that. T he same is true a t the cinem a or the restaurant. T he law insists; and rare is the hotel which would risk losing its licence for refusing to serve somebody, ju st as few barbers will now risk a hundred-rupee fine for refusing to shave a client. Obviously if the U ntouchable can eat in the same place as a B rahm in, a caste H indu will eat w ith a H indu of another caste so long as it happens outside the village and outside the home and is, like French official hospitality, understood by all not to count. T he only restriction in public eating places is th a t some restaurants call themselves ‘Brahmin hotels’. This means th at the cooking and the serving are done by Brahmins so th at B rahm in clients need not fear being polluted by eating th e re ; it does not m ean th at only Brahmins are served. Pollution is confined to the kitchen; it no longer extends to the dining-room. D uring the 1960

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K erala elections I was travelling w ith an In d ian jo u rn a list; we h ad been on the road since daw n and were famished. We stopped a t a Brahmin hotel and tried to get a hot m eal; it was past the lunch hour and the owner refused to give us freshly cooked food; we would have to do w ith cold left­ overs, swarming w ith flies. M y com panion pleaded in vain. I simply went into the kitchen and stood, one foot poised over the threshold ‘Anything, I will do anything, I will feed you freshly cooked food and not charge’, shouted the owner, ‘b u t do not pollute my kitchen or I shall lose my business.’ U ntouchability has its uses. In a village everybody knows you. In a town nobody knows you, and nobody bothers to find out— it m ight be embarrassing. Thus the temples in the big cities or the places of worship are open to all Hindus. T he last bastion o f orthodoxy crum bled when V inoba Bhave took U n ­ touchables into the Deogarh temple. T he priests beat him up so badly th at he became deaf in one e a r; they then purified the temple in the prescribed ritual way. T he news of this event spread throughout In d ia like wildfire. V inoba Bhave is In d ia’s greatest living Saint, respected as a Saint in all circles, from the most orthodox and old-fashioned to the most m odern; and politician after politician began to bid for the honour of leading the first batch of U ntouchables into the great northern temples— the southern ones were already open. T he Deogarh High Priest was fined for assault and also had to officiate for a p arty of U ntouchables headed by the C hief M inister; and shortly afterwards the Vishvanath Tem ple in Benares itself was opened, though the priests took the deity to a new tem ple so constructed th at nobody, not even the priest, can come near the sanctum . It has on occasion seemed to me th at, since each sub-caste has its own deity and its own m ode of worship, too m uch fuss is m ade by social reformers about tem ple entry. A leading Indian politician explained to me why I was wrong. T he point, he said, was not so m uch to allow U ntouchables into caste temples as to force caste H indus to stand near

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U ntouchables in the course of worship. H e felt th at only through repeated contact a t close quarters could caste H indus shed some of the ritual revulsion created by the concept of pollution. H e is right; in his own home U n ­ touchable servants are not allowed beyond the verandah. T h e villagers are broad-m inded w hen they step outside their village. Indeed, if they chance to m eet a fellow villager, they each turn a blind eye to the other’s compromises w ith custom and behave m uch like two friends who meet unexpectedly in a brothel: they m ay pretend not to see each o th er; a t the very least they conspire to keep their m utual secret. As far as the village is concerned no prece­ d en t is created if a group of high-caste villagers eat and drink next to U ntouchables in a wayside restaurant. W hen the villager goes back to his village, therefore, he can re tu rn quite easily to the ritually laid-down ways. In ­ deed, he has little option. T here are the women of the family to see th a t he does not break the ritual; there is the caste council; and there is always the danger of ostracism if he were to upset his elders too m uch. M oreover, life is organised in such a way th at most of the compromises b rought upon him by necessity when he goes to town do not exist a t hom e in his village. Those who have not lived in village India cannot conceive how severe the penalties for breaking the ritual can be and how it can ruin people’s lives (indeed m any a sub-caste owes its origin to a break aw ay from ritual). I visited G andhi’s eldest sister, R alih at Behen, shortly before she died a t over ninety. W hen I tried to make her talk about her brother she exploded into toothless anger and tears: G andhi’s insistence on mixing w ith unclean people, on being his own sweeper, and his trips over the sea, had led to the excom m unication of his whole family. For R alih at Behen this had m eant a lifetime of ostracism and hum iliation by the people about w hom she m inded: the orthodox of her own sub-caste and neighbourhood. F a r from feeling proud o f her brother, she stood there, doubled up by rheum atism ,

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calling him a m an so selfish th a t he h a d not cared w hat h arm he h ad done to his family. I t is obviously too m uch to dem and of the villager th at he bring back to the village the social freedoms of the town. Nevertheless, w hatever he m ay or m ay not do, the town has often underm ined the hold of caste on his thoughts. For exam ple in the town he m ay m eet members of sim ilar castes or perhaps even the same sub-caste as his own and discover th at they a t times behave differently, or perhaps rank differently as against other sub-castes, from the way custom ary in his own village O r he m ay have discovered th a t in their villages they do different jobs, or th a t they take w ater from someone lower than he would, or give w ater to someone higher th an he can in his own village. This dis­ covery can be shattering, for it puts the whole universality of his w orld into question; it destroys the sense of fixed an d eternal rules upon w hich rests the edifice of caste. H indu society is organised w ithin regions, mostly lin­ guistic regions, b u t sometimes only over p a rt of a region; for instance there is a difference between the K onkan and the Desh w ithin M aharashtra itself. W ithin any p articu lar region everybody knows who is where, though even then there is the occasional doubt. D r. M ayer5 gives various examples w ithin a quite small area. But once one crosses the regional boundary, sub-caste names an d even caste names, very often change and there is immensely more room for argum ent. Everybody in M aharash tra knows exactly not only where the M ahrattas fit in, b u t the order of the M ah ratta clans. But a Bihari villager w ould not know where to rank M ahrattas a t all. Bihar does not have any. T he villager away from his village is a t sea, b u t if he mingles outside his village w ith people whose contact w ould pollute him at home, he is liable to begin to shed some of th a t ritual revulsion on the autom aticity of which the taboos in the end rest. He m ay still not change w hat he does a t home, still less will he try to change others; but 5 M ayer, op. cit.

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he m ay be m ade more tolerant of changes th at others— especially the G overnm ent and the politicians— may try to introduce. The Settling in the Town Life in the city is very different from life in the village. V ery often the villager who comes to town comes on his own in search of a jo b and leaves his family behind. I t is practically impossible to observe all one’s caste and sub­ caste taboos if one works in a factory or an office, or if one is studying at college. O ne has, for instance, no control over who sits next to one at work; it m ight be a woman who is m enstruating and is therefore so polluting—whatever her caste— th at it is necessary to undergo a rigorous purific­ ation merely for having been in her vicinity. It is obviously sim pler to ignore the possibility that she m ay be m enstruat­ ing an d so save oneself the trouble of the purification. But such an attitude, however reasonable, can only be adopted once belief has been severely underm ined. Fortunately there are certain standard ways in which the orthodox handle difficult situations arising out of the need to earn a living in a world filled w ith pollution. O ne way is th a t adopted by the clerk who told the sociologist K athleen G ough: ‘W hen I go to the office I p u t on my shirt and I take off m y caste; when I come home I take off my shirt and I p u t on my caste.’ This means th a t one lives on two planes at the same tim e ; w hat one does on the work plane does not m atter. Even then defecation is likely to provide conservatism and caste w ith a last bastion against the m odern world. T hus in the Reserve Bank Buildings in Bombay a relay of Sweepers has to be in attendance to flush the staff’s W .C. T he staff themselves refuse to handle the chain because it is touched every morning by the Sweeper who cleans the premises. But it is significant that in the lavatories reserved for the Officers prejudice has been conquered; no Sweepers have to be on duty. T he villager who comes to town does not observe caste

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in public places— except th e W .C. A t home, however, he tends to congregate only w ith caste fellows. As the towns grow, therefore, more and more little colonies are formed which in some degree recreate the restrictions of the village. Thus in Bombay there are so m any Palghat Brahmins th at the taboos of Palghat have moved to Bombay. M y hus­ ban d ’s secretary once complained th a t if he did anything he should not do, everybody in Palghat— some 700 miles away—would hear, and his m isbehaviour could prevent his sisters from m aking a good m atch. But enclaves have their merits to o ; when this same secretary got m arried to a Palghat girl she found a ready-m ade society to make her feel a t home. A strict caste enclave for anybody not from the im m ediate neighbourhood is possible only in the biggest towns. Else­ w here people m ay congregate by their hom e State— M alayalees together, or people from U tta r Pradesh. W hen people congregate by region instead o f by caste, this produces quite a co-operation of castes who become one to raise funds for a festival, famine relief a t hom e or a cultural show or even to provide the funeral rites of a destitute. Caste, to continue unchanged, has to be unchallenged. Life in town is a subtle challenge even when there is no social revolution. For instance the Palghat Brahm in is on top of society in Palghat in a quite unquestioned w ay; nobody ranks above him castewise. But in the big city he is up against a plethora of Brahmins all claiming to top the caste hierarchy; there are N agar and Anavil Brahmins from G ujerat, K hanyakhubja Brahmins from the U .P., K ashm iri Pandits, M aithili Brahmins from Bihar, all m aking sim ilar claims and refusing to recognise anyone as th eir superior. However the Brahmin all over India occupies a sufficiently unquestioned position for these com petitive claims to be galling, w ithout being shattering. B ut it is not so for the other castes. Thus the R ajp u t from n o rth e rn In d ia who thought th a t except for the Brahmins everybody was his inferior will have to learn as he comes into

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contact w ith them th a t the M ahrattas consider themselves as good as he and th a t at least in their own areas he m ay be unable to impose his superiority on Ahirs, K hatris or Kayasths. T hus the hierarchy gets m uddled all along the line, and this in tu rn weakens caste, for caste rests upon a rigorously defined and accepted hierarchy. O nce doubt creeps in anything can happen. As an old accountant told me with anguish: ‘Things have come to such a pass th at one day lyers will m arry Iengars’ (both are T am il Brahmins b u t of differing religious beliefs)— his way of saying th at the world was falling to pieces. H e was right; once the belief in superiority is underm ined and segregation into little sub­ caste groups goes, as is happening more and more, particu­ larly in the towns and particularly w ith groups as close as lyers an d Iengars, love will have its way and as m ore girls become educated more will m arry outside their im m ediate sub-caste. M arriage between a Brahm in and an U ntouchable is still as probable as between a D aughter of the Revolution and a first generation Sicilian im m igrant, although Dr. A m bedkar’s wife was a B rahm in; b u t the gap between lyers and Iengars is nowadays regularly bridged a t the altar. O ne cannot stress sufficiently the extent to w hich living in towns brings people together, people from different castes and, in the industrial towns, from different regions. This is true even for workers. I t is still more true for the educated who have in English a common m edium of com m unication, and it is specially true for students. Colleges and universities are very effective solvents o f prejudice. A t colleges one makes friends w ith fellow students of other castes. I t is rare for a vegetarian to bring a non-vegetarian into his hom e, or vice versa, b u t if both friends have similar dietary habits there is no reason why the friendship should cease when college ends. Even am ong the quite conservative, college friendships frequently cut across caste, though usually not the whole way from Brahm in to U ntouchable. If, to survive, caste organisation requires the village

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and its intim acy, as sp m any sociologists have said, it obviously follows th at urbanisation destroys caste in a m ultitude of ways. This is especially tru e o f the great industrial cities like Bombay and C alcutta. Industry is an im portation from the W est; it m ay bring w ith it som ething of the western class system, but it is not organised to take account of caste. So, a t every turn, as industry spreads, caste is underm ined. The Westernised T h e westernised younger generation behaves very m uch like its counterpart in the W est. I t finds no more difficulty in fitting into life in England or A m erica than do those from the W est who come to India in fitting into their m odern In d ian homes. T he everyday life of the westernised is a continuous hacking away a t caste. T h e hom e is open to all, including U ntouchables, foreign or Indian. T h e servants m ay be U ntouchables. T he concept of pollution is dead, even though religious belief m ay still be strong. In such a western hom e everything is eaten except probably beef, and beef itself m ay largely be avoided out o f consideration for the servants or from a feeling th a t Indian beef is diseased or tough. Even vegetarianism, which is quite frequent am ong the m odern young, is a m atter o f dietary choice, not of ritual rule. Nobody observes m enstrual pollution; everybody interdines w ith everybody an d at a pinch will share a be^ with someone whose approach in a ritual world w ould be defiling. T he westernised young break the ritual w ith all the blissful enthusiasm"of ignorance. They m ay know the m ajor rules, they certainly do not know enough about their own society to be even aw are of the vast num ber o f little rules they break every m inute, in their homes, at work, and at play. T o every intent and purpose the westernised young are western. Nevertheless sometimes, underneath, an odd niggling doubt can be found, a doubt w hich m ay take the most unpredictable forms. I know a Bengali Brahmin

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m arried to a Briton. Except for the fact th a t she wears a sari and is brow n, she is as British as her husband; she eats beef, loves T . S. Eliot, has m ainly foreign friends an d dreams in English. Y et she is w ith one p a rt of her m ind profoundly conscious th a t her m arriage to an U ntouchable foreigner has m ade h er U ntouchable too. She once explained to me how, in her next life, she will be born a t the bottom of the hum an chain because she has broken caste. A nd there is the brilliant O xford scholar who cannot bring himself to be fond o f his son because he feels th a t the child is U ntouchable, since he an d his wife are not of the same caste. Such private doubts, however, do not really affect the structure of society. They are private atavisms. They m ay cloud individual horizons on particular p oints; they do not change behaviour. T he Bengali wife does not cleanse herself by leaving her husband or going on a pilgrim age; the scholar continues to lead a cosmopolitan life, a life in which U ntouchability has no place. Indeed some o f his best friends really are U ntouchables, and he is so far removed from the ritual o f his caste th at he thinks like the Oxford graduate he essentially is, rath er th a n like the A ndhra B rahm in he was b o rn ; yet, deep down, he feels th at his child is born polluted because of his love for a lower-caste wife. Such private doubts do not make their victims supporters of caste. O n the contrary, they deepen their determ ination to do aw ay w ith caste and thus get rid o f the source o f their doubts. This determ ination is deep, even w ithout doubts, for the m odern young have every reason to attack caste. First, they have to justify the way they live. Like all rebels against ritual, they become missionaries o f anti-ritual in self-defence. Secondly, they have, as Professor Shils points o u t1, a need to identify themselves w ith the people and find th a t caste stands in their w ay because it blunts their sensitivity to the feelings of others whom caste causes to live in another world. 1 Edw ard A . Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (T h e H ague, M outon et C ie., 1961), p. 70.

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Thirdly, they are sure th at it is caste which stands in the w ay of In d ia ’s progress, w hether it is in the village where, they think, caste creates stagnation and factions or in the towns where, they allege, it expresses itself in nepotism, favouritism for caste fellows. Fourthly, they have an economic interest. I f caste could be got rid of, more jobs would be open to all; the reservation o f so m any of In d ia ’s new posts in business for members of the trading castes w ould cease. ^ Fifthly, and more indefinable, they feel caste is not m odern’, th at it does not fit into their picture o f themselves as leaders of a country to which the Com m onw ealth and the uncom m itted w orld alike listen w ith so m uch respect. T he hostility of the westernised young to caste is im plac­ able. For m any of them the chief attraction o f Com m unism is the possibility th a t it would get rid of caste. M oreover, though the westernised are num erically few, their hostility m atters; they hold in their hands the levers of power. They are the soldiers, the adm inistrators, the m anager, the p ro ­ fessors. T hey are the people other people look up to, the people others im itate. A nd they have authority behind them . The law, the politicians, the senior civil servants, the theories they learn a t school are all on their side. T he C onstitution forbids U ntouchability; the law recognises none of the hierarchies of caste; those in pow er are the westernised young of the last generation; none of the political parties has a plank for caste as such. T he specifically H indu parties, even the J a n Sangh, are engaged m ainly in asserting a H in d u position against non-H indus; for th a t they need the whole H indu m ajority and cannot afford to split it up into a series of caste minorities. M oreover, the force o f G overnm ent is quite often used directly against caste. C anteens are planned for the best utilisation of space, not to perm it a proper separation of feeding lines. T he Navy, the A ir Force and the A rm y have compulsory interdining. A vegetarian m ay eat separately from a non-vegetarian, b u t not a Brahm in from an U ntouchable.

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T h e westernised young are beginning to win. But still, every now and then, caste comes back to stand in their way, to rem ind them th a t they are engaged in a fight they m ay be w inning, b u t have not yet won. A friend of m ine m arried a m an from an equal, b u t different, sub-caste. H er grand­ m other, devoted to her prayers and completely blind, had not been told about the m arriage as it w ould have upset her. However, the news got back to the village where she was peacefully finishing her life; she was stoned, ostracised and h a d to be taken aw ay to another village. No wonder th a t m y friend makes it her self-appointed mission to under­ m ine caste. I t will take her a very long time. Caste will not lose its hold over In d ia quickly, b u t the time will come simply because the young westernised are going, no m atter w h at happens in India, to continue to be the leaders. Even if there is a Com m unist revolution the leadership will come from them , and there can be no orthodox revolution because the orthodox are not organised to ru n a western State. T h e one condition is th a t the young m ust not hurry too m uch. T hey have to learn th a t one is more effective if one learns to compromise. Some do learn, like the woman doctor I m et in Mysore, who was teaching villagers family planning. She was very successful b u t on condition th at she only indulged her craving for eggs secredy, when she h ad a visitor outside who could bring her eggs and take aw ay the incrim inating shells. She was an Iengar, highest o f Brahm ins. H er villagers w ould accept family planning from a doctor, b u t not from an Iengar who ate eggs. If one wishes to destroy caste, one m ust do it from w ithin the old society. T h a t is why M r. N ehru’s opposition to caste has been relatively ineffective while th a t o f m en like Professor G adgil of Poona is deadly. H e belongs to one of In d ia ’s highest sub-castes, the C hitpavan B rahm ins; he runs the G okhale Institute in Poona, one of In d ia ’s leading post-graduate schools, w hich is a lim b of the Servants of In d ia Society, m ost distinguished of In d ia ’s social service societies. T o all appearances Professor G adgil is a m em ber

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of the old society. H e dresses in the w ay in w hich C hitpavan Brahmins dress, from dhoti to skull cap. A t hom e he is a strict vegetarian and he lives in the austere w ay associated w ith genuine Brahm inical learning. H e is a scholar who refuses riches and he is as proficient in In d ian traditional culture and history as he is in the latest theories o f Econom ­ ics. H e observes both the religious and the social festivals o f his region; as luck w ould have it, his children have m arried, for love, too, in their own caste. Professor Gadgil behaves like a good H indu, indeed he is a good H indu. T h e most orthodox have nothing b u t respect for him. Therefore his opposition to caste is profoundly effective, for not only is he a t the top of society b u t he operates w ithin the tradition laid down by his priestly forefathers. H e does not believe in privilege of any sort, not even the privilege o f having inherited a better way of life. In fact, he labours under w hat one of In d ia ’s leading anthropologists has aptly described as the H indu equivalent of the white m a n ’s burden in his attitude to caste.2 Therefore he spends his life prom oting land reform, co-operative farm ing, ceilings on holdings and incomes and labour co-operatives because he believes them to be economically right, b u t even more because he believes they will help to m ake the lower castes the equals o f the upper. W ith all effective leadership com bined in this way against caste it can only be a m atter of tim e before caste weakens; bu t the tim e will be long. Caste has for so long been a way of life w hich suited so m any and ritu al is always m ore difficult to give up than belief.

p 1™ . 1 K f Ir ve’ Ch™ f nS India: ^ P e c ts o f Caste Society (Bom bay, A sia Publishing H ouse, 1961), p. 144.

V. THE LAW, IDEALS AND POLITICS the British common lawyer everybody is equal in the T odock. To the H indu traditionalist the dock is a place for the most delicate discriminations. M urder, to the common lawyer, is m urder; to the traditional H indu, Brahmin m urder and Sudra m urder are totally different. T he two attitudes can be simply contrasted by two quotations. T he first is Professor G hurye’s description of th e old H indu law : ‘If a Sudra recites the Veda his tongue is to be cut off. I f he assumes a position of equality w ith twice-born men, either in sitting, conversing, or going along the road, he shall receive corporal punishm ent. A Sudra com m itting adultery w ith women of the first three castes shall suffer capital punish­ m ent, or shall be bu rn t alive tied up w ith straw . . . if a Sudra intentionally reviles a Brahm in or criminally assaults him , the lim b w ith which he offends shall be cut off.’1 T he second is Articles 15,16,17 of the Indian Constitution. ‘T h e State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them . No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to— ‘(a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainm ent or; ‘(b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort m aintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public. ‘T here shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in m atters relating to em ploym ent or appointm ent to any office under the State. N othing in this article shall prevent 1 Panikkar, op. cit., pp. 21—2.

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the State from m aking any provision for the reservation of appointm ents or posts in favour of any backw ard class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in theservicesunder the State. “ U ntouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. T he enforcement ofany disability arising out of “ U ntouchability” shall be an offence punishable in accordance w ith the law .’ T he change is absolute. In Professor G hurye’s w orld everything depended on caste, from who got off the p ath for whom, to w hether or not one was executed for m urder. Each person had his place in the State. Nobody was simply and fully a citizen. This was true even of the top castes. T he Brahm in did not fight, the K shatrya did not clerk. T he Indian Constitution, by contrast, makes every­ body a citizen, no more, no less, w ith rights an d duties which are equal for all in so far as the State can make them so. W hat does this m ean in practice ? T he answer, as always, is uncertain and varying. In the city of Bombay, any barber or hotel owner or temple priest who refused admission to a H arijan (G andhi’s nam e for the Untouchables) w ould soon find himself in the dock. In a Tanjore village the H arijan himself w ould probably not try to get himself shaved by a caste barber or enter a caste shrine; an d if he did, the caste villagers would probably soon bring him to heel, law or no law. This is because the law does not operate by itself, but in a social environment. Somebody has to set it in motion. If the aggrieved person is afraid to do so, norm ally nothing happens. Any such move must have behind it some m easure of consensus in the com munity. Otherwise the aggrieved person can be prevented from exercising his rights by intim idation or boycott or false witness; the lower castes are very vulnerable to the loss of their jobs or to physical violence or to a com bination of their superiors in court to deny th at anything ever happened a t all. M oreover, the aggrieved m ust feel th at they have a grievance. M any at the bottom of the caste system are still passionate believers

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in it. T hey w ould not try to enter a Brahm in verandah, they w ould be horrified if a Brahm in took w ater from them ; there have been cases where they have outcast the person from w hom the Brahm in took w ater on the grounds that he h ad shown a w anton lack of respect. Obviously where the lower castes feel like this, the law rem ains a dead letter. All these limitations of the law can be easily paralleled from the history of the Negro in the Southern States of A m erica. Nevertheless, in India even more than in America, it is very im portant th at the law is against enforcement of caste for it means that, once people w ant to rebel, rebellion is easy. A caste council can no longer enforce its will on those who do not accept it. If it banishes them from the village, they can go willingly— or can go to the court and get the councillors convicted. If it outcasts them, they can still get a civil m arriage. If it declares a boycott on them, they can prosecute. Caste councils are still quite often 'effective, especially in settling disputes; bu t the effective­ ness now requires everybody’s agreem ent. As soon as that is denied, the caste council is helpless. Even nowadays in the villages it very often is not denied. Belief is still general, the courts are expensive, the police are thin on the ground and often bribeable by the more influential, who are usually the upper-caste people of the village. But every now and then someone does go to court, perhaps stirred by an outside politician, perhaps because he has worked in a town, perhaps because he is unusually tiresome or unusually courageous; and each time that happens the authority of caste receives a most serious blow. The blow is serious even when the com plaint fails. Caste rests upon custom, habit, not being challenged. Even an unsuccessful challenge shakes it. T he law has acted largely negatively. It has stopped the worst discrim inations against those who actively dislike being discrim inated against. T he effect of politics is more positive. It is beginning to induce the upper castes to stop

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discrim inating of their own accord, though a t the same time, and in some ways, it is increasing caste feeling. ’ As w ith everything else to do w ith caste, the process is a complicated one. O ne begins w ith the fact th at over the last hundred years those interested in politics in In d ia have im bibed the nineteenth-century liberal tradition on the whole in its radical ‘New Statesm an’ form. C entral to this tradition is the political equality of m an, the equal right of every adult to be heard in the governm ent o f his country Therefore the Indian Constitution provides for adult franchise. O f more recent years, there has also been added to this tradition the belief that political equality must be accom panied by a t least some social and economic equality; it is recognised th at this cannot be complete, b u t there is a deep determ ination to reduce the inequalities of the past Hence the Fundam ental Rights already quoted and land reform, and high progressive taxation, and the Directive Principles of the Constitution which lay down as desirable, for instance, equal pay for women, an d universal tree prim ary education. All of these weaken caste as a system of separate functional groups, hierarchically grouped. T he upper castes, inasm uch as they are on the whole the successful and the landowners themselves taxed and losing their land. T he bottom castes, especially the Untouchables and the tribes, get special scholarships, reservations in governm ent service, easier admission to college, protection through m inim um wage egislation and tenancy reform, and reservation in electoral representation. In d ia ’s approach to the W elfare State is slow; but each step reduces caste gaps. This is especially true of education. By 1970 or so, virtually all childfen of six to eleven will be a t school. Education is today the key to w ealth and power. T he upper castes owe m uch of their present dom inant position to their m uch higher level ° education; it must be rem em bered th at the Brahm in valued education for himself bu t traditionally denied it to most of the rest of the population, so th at their belief th at

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it was no t for them was for long a m ajor obstacle to the spread of literacy. W hen the lower castes, which at present often have literacy rates of 5 per cent or even less, reach the stage where most of their twenty-five and thirty-yearolds can read and write by, say, 1980, both their will and their capacity to assert themselves will increase very sharply. Slowly, in India as elsewhere, the political climate is m aking for equality. In the long run, therefore, it cuts at the roots of caste. In the short run, however, politics is m ore am bivalent. I t always weakens sub-caste, it always strengthens caste. This is because of the way dem ocratic politics works. G overnm ents have to have majorities. Since no two people ever agree exactly, this means th at there has to be a long series of compromises. These compromises cannot be made betw een individuals, or even between such small units as villages or football clubs; there w ould have to be too m any of them . T he small units must first be reduced to a m anageable num ber of larger ones, the M iners’ Federation, o r the N ational Farm ers’ U nion, or the M ethodist Church. N or can all the ideology and log-rolling and back-room discussion w hich precede compromise take place in the public view, in Parliam ent. T here has to be some organis­ ation w hich reduces the m any varying points of view of the public and their sectional interests to one, acceptable to enough people to have a chance of com m anding a majority. T h a t is the jo b of the political parties, in India as in Eng­ land or the U nited States. They also have another job. They have to see th at the m ajority does not ride rough-shod over the minority. T he experienced p arty recognises th at some one or other of the interests or points of view on its own side m ay at any time find the opposition’s compromise more acceptable than its ow n; and th a t its own compromise m ay equally at any tim e appeal to some group or attitude from the other side. T h e properly run party is therefore always conciliatory.

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It offends as little as possible, it mollifies wherever it can. It always tries to have its cake and eat it— to abolish U ntouchability w ithout annoying the orthodox too m uch. T he politician’s need is thus to get together enough groups to form a majority, and yet not so to offend the groups who make up the m inority that they at least try not to let him govern. The consent of his electorate to his measures must, in some degree, include his opponents as well as his supporters. No politician faced w ith such a task can ignore caste, for their caste is, for most Hindus, one of the first of the groups to which they owe allegiance. They m ay also be Socialists or Conservatives, trade unionists or employers, doctors or lawyers; they very rarely cease to be M ahrattas or Reddis or Rajputs. Since the caste system so largely splits H indu Society into semi-self-contained groups, the Indian politician must find some way of reconciling the inteiests and desires of these groups. This is true to some extent even on the national scale when no one caste is more than a very small percentage of the electorate. It is still truer on the State scale, where p articu lar castes may com m and a quarter or a third of the votes. It is truest of all in the village, where the electorate for the panchavat (village council) m ay be predom inantly of one caste. However, the basic group, the sub-caste, is too small a unit to be used for this purpose. No party can reconcile thousands upon thousands of different points of view. A prelim inary piocess of reducing them to m anageable num beis must first be gone through. T he American politician deals w ith the A.F. of L. and the C .I.O ., not w ith each little craft union. T he Indian politician deals w ith the caste, not w ith each little sub-caste. T he M ah ratta point of view can be accom m odated, but not that of each separate group w ithin the M ahrattas; and the voter himself has to recognise that he may be able to get a M ah ratta in, but th at if he insists on someone of his own caste or clan, and everybody else does the same, then the successful candidate m ay not be a M ah ratta at all.

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Therefore, in addition to the positive reservation of seat which the C onstitution provides for a period for U ntouch­ ables a n d Aboriginals, there is an extensive informal reserv­ ation for other castes. In a constituency where Jats are strong, every party, including the Communists, is likely to p u t up a J a t. This cannot be absolute. In m any con­ stituencies these castes are fragm ented. T hen the parties will try to p u t up a fair selection of candidates from the different castes over a region or a State as a whole. This is not essentially a different process from the one by w hich British m ining constituencies, tend to be represented by miners, and good middle-class candidates are required for the suburbs. But it has rather different results. First of all, because the sub-caste is too small a unit for political negotiation it is beginning to lose its im portance; people are beginning to become more conscious of their w ider caste m em bership, and this is leading slowly to a relaxation o f restrictions between one sub-caste and another, even occasionally in m arriage. M oreover since, when one takes a region an d not ju st a single constituency, no individual caste constitutes a m ajority anywhere, castes have to look aro u n d for allies; and norm ally they look to those they regard as roughly equal; the M ah ratta, for instance, will look to the artisans, the Goldsmith, Blacksmith, Oil-presser castes. Since the biggest caste is usually the m ain local agricultur­ alist caste, and since this caste will norm ally recognise other agriculturalist castes and most of the artisan castes as more or less equal, this means that dom inance in the rural con­ stituencies is passing to these m iddle castes everywhere outside the lower Ganges Valley. In the Ganges Valley the upper castes are still im portant, both because they are a larger percentage of the population th an elsewhere, often one-third or more of the total, and because so m any of the better-off peasants and small landholders are themselves upper-caste. Once upon a time, Indian political leadership came from

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the Brahmins and the great landow ners. This is no longer so; the old great families count for little outside the rem oter areas, like R ajasthan or the highlands o f Orissa. T he Brahmins have retired to the C entre. T he C entral G overn­ m ent has a proportion of B rahm in M inisters, including the Prim e M inister, the H om e M inister, the Finance M inister . . . But this is not true of the States. In the States o f Penin­ sular India, the land of T ilak and Gokhale, a n d Srinivasa Shastri, and Prakasam and R ajagopalachari, the norm al ratio is one Brahm in to a C abinet. T here are some like Professor Gadgil, th a t W hig B rahm in, who consider th at the process of caste sedim entation has already taken place in regions like M aharashtra, where caste has fallen into three great blocks: the Brahmins, the m iddle castes, and the U ntouchables, w ith pow er in the hands of the middle castes, b u t shared fitfully w ith the B rah­ mins because of their high percentage of ability a n d w ith U ntouchables because of their reserved seats— every C abinet having a t least one U ntouchable M inister. Pro­ fessor Gadgil2 visualises eventually a series o f regional societies, mostly following linguistic boundaries, where caste differences will slowly cease to m atter an d where families of similar education and income will begin to disregard caste more and more in m arriage as they are already beginning to do over contact and eating. Professor Gadgil m ay be right. M eanw hile the m iddle castes often quarrel am ong themselves; Reddis an d K am m as in A ndhra, Bhoom idar Brahm ins an d R ajputs (both twice-born castes of large peasants) in Bihar, Lingayats a n d Okkahgas in Mysore, Ja ts a n d R ajputs in parts of R ajasthan. T heir intrigues against each other explain m uch o f the kaleidoscope of p arty faction in these areas; the stability of M aharashtrian politics, by contrast, m ay owe a good deal to the lack of any m ajor rival to the M ah ratta. Sometimes castes have quirks. T he K am m as are am ongst th e richer of In d ia ’s peasant proprietors; b u t they have 2 In a personal com m unication.

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provided the A ndhra Communist P arty w ith m uch of its leadership and support. T he more notable left-wingers like P andit N ehru or, further left, P andit M alaviya’ am ongst the Congressmen, and a large percentage of the C om m unist leaders, are Brahmins. This is sometimes because of the reaction of m any young Brahmins against their own inherited privileges, sometimes perhaps because Socialism fits the h ab it of m ind of a caste w ith a long trad itio n of State service and no tradition of business. T he way caste works politically can be seen w ith particular clarity in the Com munist— anti-C om m unist struggle in K erala. O ne q uarter of K erala’s population is Ezava— T od d y -tapper—by caste. Nearly a century ago the Ezavas produced a Saint, Sri N arayana G uru, who created schools an d colleges for them and helped them to become educated a n d economically independent. T oday the Ezavas are no longer U ntouchables, they even have H igh C ourt Judges an d university professors amongst them ; b u t they are still bitter against the social order and vote Communist. T he Com m unist leadership in K erala is N air and Brahmin a n d does not believe in caste. Once elected, the Communists discovered th a t if they were to rem ain in office they would have to use their new pow er to benefit their m ain supporters, a n d they therefore introduced—very reluctantly—a series o f measures which benefited Ezavas. Policies geared to please one-quarter of the population cannot be popular w ith the rem aining three-quarters. There was a people’s revolt; the Communists were driven out of office and defeated a t the polls by a united opposition. But even in K erala, caste is only p a rt of the explanation for the rows and m uch depends on the individuals. G ovindan N air the Com m unist, Pattom T an u Pillai the Praja Socialist, an d G ovinda M enon the Congressman are all Nairs. In W est Bengal the three top castes, the Brahmins, the K ayasthas a n d the Vaishyas, provide the leadership of all the parties. B ut caste is a factor no politician can ever forget and, oddly enough, it is a factor whose effect is to destroy

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caste as H indu society used to know it. W hat could be more revolutionary than a political strength of caste which can only work by obliterating the distinctions o f sub-caste and taking power in most areas from the top twice-born castes, to give it to the m iddle ones, very often to Sudras? How long, for instance, will the virtual respect for Brahmins survive their loss of power ? A lready in orthodox M adras the G overnm ent discriminates against them in G overnm ent service and college entry alike. So long as the caste system survives, the Brahm in m ust be a t the top o f the ritual hierarchy, b u t in m aterial terms he could one day find th a t a very expensive place to be.

C O N C L U SIO N To w rite about caste w ith only a passing m ention of G andhi is to w rite about Exodus w ithout m entioning Moses. No single individual has done more to destroy caste than the M ahatm a. He staked the whole of his political life on his support of the H arijans— or children of God— as he called them . Everything he did, from hand-spinning to saltmaking, from cleaning latrines to asking the British to quit India, underm ined caste, the m ore effectively th at he h ad the gift of m aking people participate instead of looking on. G andhi picked N ehru as his political heir because he knew that he w ould see in caste the curse of India. G andhi was ruthlessly practical; he had no time for windmills. He concentrated his efforts on the rem oval of U ntouchability because he knew this w ould arouse far less resistance than attacking caste head on, and yet, if achieved, w ould destroy caste ju st the same. As N ehru pu t i t : ‘He sought the weakest point in the arm oury of the caste structure— th at is, U n ­ touchability— and by underm ining a n d dynam iting it, he shook the whole fabric w ithout people realising the earth ­ quake he h ad unleashed.’1 How far has the earthquake in fact brought down the fabric of caste? W ere G andhi alive to answer himself it is probable th a t he w ould say th at caste has been underm ined far m ore than he hoped bu t th at it will still take m uch time before the structure finally collapses. But w ith every succeeding Five Y ear Plan and its wake of industrialisation, urbanisation and education, caste is being brought nearer its end.

1 R . K . K aranjia, The M in d o f M r. Nehru (London, A llen and U nw in , 1960).

Set by R . J . Acford Ltd. Chichester and reprinted lithographically by Headley Brothers Ltd. London and Ashford Kent