I Colonial Discourse; II Secularisation of Caste; III Emergence of a New Middle Class
Notes
[An earlier version of the paper was presented to the conference on Contemporary India in Transition, Lisbon, Portugal: 18-20 June 1998. The conference was sponsored by Fundacao Oriente as part of its larger programme of promoting north-south civilisational dialogues. The paper will appear in Peter deSousa (ed) Transitions: Contemporary India (forthcoming). I am indebted to Fundacao Oriente for their financial support and to Peter deSouza for his very useful editorial comments.]
1 The Portugese account of caste presented here and the following discussion on the colonial discourse draw heavily on: Bernard S Cohn ‘Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture’, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1987, pp 139-40.
2 Ibid, pp 141-62.
3 For a detailed discussion on changes in castes under British Rule in India and the impact the colonial policies had on the caste system, see G S Ghurye, ‘Caste during the British Rule’ in his Caste and Race in India Popular Prakashan, Bombay:1962, pp 270-305. Also see Marc Galanter, ‘Reform, Mobility, and Politics Under British Rule’ in his Competing Equalities: Law and Backward Classes in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1984, pp 18-40.
4 Collective self-awareness among the lower-caste as a people, oppressed socially and economically by the ritually high-ranking castes, developed and found organisational articulation through their participation in anti-Brahman movements which grew in the early decades of this century. See Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movements in Western India – 1873 to 1930, Scientific Socialist Education Trust, Bombay: 1976; see also Eugene F Irshick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movements and Tamil Separatism 1916-1929, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1969.
5 Galanter sees this development during the colonial rule as having brought about some important changes in the caste-system: “Caste Organisation brought with it two important and related changes in the nature of castes. The salient groups grew in size from endogamous jatis into region-wise alliances. Concomitantly, the traditional patterns of organisation and leadership in the village setting were displaced by voluntary associations with officials whose delimited authority derived from elections”. Galanter, (note 1 supra) p 23.
6 For a recent argument articulating a contrary position emphasising that the caste system has, even in the face of such changes, maintained systemic continuity, see A M Shah, ‘A Response to the Critique on Division and Hierarchy’ in A M Shah and I P Desai, Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat, Hindustan Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 1988, pp 92-133. Shah sees horizontal divisions as intrinsic to the caste-system itself, representing another principle of caste organisation which has always operated in juxtaposition with ‘hierarchy’. The horizontal divisions in caste, in his view, are thus produced and reproduced as part of the continuous process within the system, a kind of change that a system undergoes for its own survival and maintenance. Whereas for his interlocutor in the debate I P Desai, the horizontal divisions which are prior to caste but were integrated in the system of castes by the principle of ritual hierarchy, are now breaking away from that hierarchy and interact in horizontal social and political spaces. In this sense, for Desai, horizontal divisions represent a new principle for the emerging stratificatory system which has undermined the caste principle of ritual hierarchy, I P Desai, ‘A Critique of Division and Hierarchy’ in the above cited Division and Hierarchy, pp 40-49.
7 For an illuminating discussion on the changed relationship between ritual status and occupation and its implications for the emergence of a new type of stratificatory system in India, see I P Desai, ‘Should ‘Caste’ be the Basis for Recognising Backwardness?’ Economic and Political Weekly,Vol 19, No 28, July 1984, pp 1106-16.
8 Of late, such recognition of systemic changes in caste is reflected in the mainstream sociological writings. For example, M N Srinivas in one of his latest writings has characterised the changes that have occurred in the caste-system as systemic in nature: “As long as the mode of production at the village was caste-based, denunciation of inequality from saints and reformers, or from those professing other faiths proved ineffective. It was only when, along with ideological attacks on caste, education and employment were made accessible to all, and urbanisation and industrialisation spread that systemic changes occurred in caste” (italics mine). See ‘Introduction’ in Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar, M N Srinivas (ed), Viking, Penguin India, New Delhi, 1996, p XIV.
9 For an overview of comprehensive, systemic changes that have occurred in local hierarchies of castes in rural areas see G K Karanth, ‘Caste in Contemporary Rural India’ in M N Srinivas (ed) Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar (note 7) pp 87-109. Karanth, in his concluding remarks to the essay, observes: “In the first place, it may not be appropriate any more to refer to caste in rural India as a ‘system’. Castes exist as individual groups, but no longer integrated into a system, with the dovetailing of their interests” (106).
10 The writings and politics of Ram Manohar Lohia, a renowned socialist leader, however, constituted an exception to this approach of the Left parties to political mobilisation. In his view, horizontal mobilisation of lower castes on issues of social justice had greater political potential for organising the poor and deprived populations of India than the ideology of class-polarisation which, in his view, lacked an empirical, social-basis for mobilisational politics. See Ram Manohar Lohia, The Caste System (Ram Manohar Lohia Samata Vidyalaya Nyas, Hyderabad, 1964). Also see, D L Sheth, ‘Ram Manohar Lohia on Caste in Indian Politics’, Lokayan Bulletin (Vol 12, No 4, January-February 1996) pp 31-40; also D L Sheth, ‘Ram Manohar Lohia on Caste, Class and Gender in Indian Politics’, Lokayan Bulletin (Vol 13, No 2, September-October 1996) pp 1-15.
11 The concept ‘politicisation of castes’ was first used by Rajni Kothari in early 1970s, to describe changes that had occurred in the caste-system with its involvement in democratic politics. See ‘Chapter 1: Introduction’ in his Caste in Indian Politics, (22) pp 3-25.
12 Rajni Kothari in his pioneering work on the Congress Party saw this aspect of Congress politics, i e, expanding its social base through management of caste-based political factions regionally and seeking consensus on issues of development and modernisation nationally, as crucial to the Congress Party’s prolonged, political and electoral dominance. See Rajni Kothari, ‘The Congress System in India’, Asian Survey (Vol 4, No 12, December 1964) pp 1161-73; see also ‘The Congress System Revisited’, in his Politics and People: In Search of Humane India, Vol 1 (Ajanta Publishers, Delhi, 1989) pp 36-58.
13 See D L Sheth, ‘Reservations Policy Revisited’, Economic and Political Weekly, November 14, 1987, pp 1957-87.
14 M N Srinivas, ‘Varna and Caste’ in Caste in Modern India and Other Essays, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1962, pp 63-69. Also see, Andre Betelle, ‘Varna and Jati’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol 45, No 1, March 1996, pp 15-27. 15 I would like to emphasise that presented here are preliminary findings of the survey. The author and the research team at the CSDS are in the process of refining the index of middle class membership. In the final analysis percentage figures for the representation of social formations into the middle class and for the magnitude of the middle class may slightly change (by about ± 1 to 2 per cent difference. I have reported here ‘work in progress’ and not a completed analysis of the composition of the middle class, which will soon appear in a separate monograph. The idea is to give a broad, even if bit tentative, picture of the emerging new middle class.
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