Caste and the Caste System

Understanding Caste: The Past and the Present

You already know that caste is an ancient institution, thousands of years old. You also know that caste is very much alive in India today. But are these two things — the caste of the past and the caste of the present — the same? That is the central question this section explores.

Caste in the Past

Caste is an institution uniquely associated with the Indian subcontinent. While other societies have had social arrangements that produced similar effects, the exact form found in India has not existed anywhere else. Although it is characteristic of Hindu society, caste has spread to major non-Hindu communities in the subcontinent — especially among Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs.

The English word 'caste' comes from the Portuguese casta, meaning 'pure breed'. In Indian languages, beginning with ancient Sanskrit, the institution is referred to by two distinct terms: varna and jati.

Jati is a generic term meaning species or kind of anything, from inanimate objects to plants, animals, and human beings. It is the word most commonly used for caste in Indian languages, though increasingly, Indian language speakers are beginning to use the English word 'caste'.

The Relationship Between Varna and Jati

Scholars have debated the precise relationship between varna and jati. The most common interpretation is:

• Varna is a broad, all-India aggregative classification — just four categories.
• Jati is a regional or local sub-classification involving a much more complex system of hundreds or even thousands of castes and sub-castes.

This means that while the four varna divisions are common to all of India, the jati hierarchy has more local classifications that vary from region to region.

The Age and Evolution of the Caste System

Opinions differ on the exact age of the caste system. It is generally agreed that the four varna classification is roughly three thousand years old. However, the 'caste system' stood for different things in different time periods, so it is misleading to think of the same system continuing unchanged for three thousand years.

• Late Vedic period (roughly 900–500 BC): The caste system was really a varna system consisting of only four major divisions. These divisions were not very elaborate or rigid, and they were not determined by birth. Movement across categories seems to have been not only possible but quite common.
• Post-Vedic period: Caste became the rigid institution we are familiar with from well-known definitions.

Defining Features of Caste

The most commonly cited defining features of caste are:

1. Caste is determined by birth. A child is born into the caste of its parents. Caste is never a matter of choice. One can never change one's caste, leave it, or choose not to join it — although a person may be expelled from their caste.

2. Strict rules about marriage. Caste groups are endogamous — marriage is restricted to members of the group.

3. Rules about food and food-sharing. What kinds of food may or may not be eaten is prescribed, and who one may share food with is also specified.

4. A hierarchy of rank and status. Caste involves a system consisting of many castes arranged in a hierarchy. In theory, every person has a caste, and every caste has a specified place in the hierarchy. While the position of many castes, especially in the middle ranks, may vary from region to region, there is always a hierarchy.

5. Sub-divisions within castes. Castes almost always have sub-castes, and sometimes sub-castes may also have sub-castes. This is called segmental organisation.

6. Traditional link to occupations. A person born into a caste could only practice the occupation associated with that caste — occupations were hereditary, passed on from generation to generation. Conversely, a particular occupation could only be pursued by the caste associated with it; members of other castes could not enter that occupation.

Most of these prescriptions involved prohibitions or restrictions of various sorts. Historical evidence makes it clear that caste was a very unequal institution — some castes benefitted greatly, while others were condemned to endless labour and subordination. Most importantly, once caste became rigidly determined by birth, it was in principle impossible for a person to ever change their life circumstances. An upper caste person would always have high status, whether they deserved it or not, while a lower caste person would always be of low status.

The Theoretical Principles of the Caste System

The caste system can be understood as the combination of two sets of principles:

• Difference and separation: Each caste is supposed to be different from — and therefore strictly separated from — every other caste. Many scriptural rules (about marriage, food sharing, social interaction, and occupation) are designed to prevent the mixing of castes.
• Wholism and hierarchy: These different and separated castes do not have an individual existence — they can only exist in relation to a larger whole, the totality of society consisting of all castes. This societal whole is a hierarchical rather than egalitarian system. Each caste occupies not just a distinct place, but an ordered rank — a particular position in a ladder-like arrangement from highest to lowest.

Purity and Pollution

The hierarchical ordering of castes is based on the distinction between purity and pollution. This is a division between something believed to be closer to the sacred (ritual purity) and something believed to be distant from or opposed to the sacred (ritually polluting). Castes considered ritually pure have high status, while those considered less pure or impure have low status.

As in all societies, material power (economic or military power) is closely associated with social status — those in power tend to be of high status, and vice versa. Historians believe that those who were defeated in wars were often assigned low caste status.

Complementarity and Non-Competition

Castes are not only unequal to each other in ritual terms; they are also supposed to be complementary and non-competing groups. Each caste has its own place in the system which cannot be taken by any other caste. Since caste is linked with occupation, the system functions as the social division of labour — except that, in principle, it allows no mobility.

Colonialism and Caste

We know a lot more about caste in recent history than in the ancient past. If modern history begins with the nineteenth century, then Indian Independence in 1947 offers a natural dividing line between the colonial period (roughly 150 years from around 1800 to 1947) and the post-Independence or post-colonial period (the seven decades from 1947 to the present day). The present form of caste has been shaped very strongly by both the colonial period and the rapid changes in independent India.

Scholars agree that all major social institutions, and especially caste, underwent major changes during the colonial period. Some scholars even argue that what we know today as caste is more a product of colonialism than of ancient Indian tradition. Not all the changes were intended or deliberate.

How the British Studied Caste

Initially, British administrators tried to understand the complexities of caste in order to govern the country efficiently. Some of these efforts took the shape of methodical surveys and reports on the 'customs and manners' of various tribes and castes. Many British officials were amateur ethnologists who took great interest in such studies.

But the most important official effort to collect information on caste was through the census. First begun in the 1860s, the census became a regular ten-yearly exercise from 1881 onwards. The 1901 Census under the direction of Herbert Risley was particularly important — it sought to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste, i.e., the social order of precedence in particular regions and the position of each caste in the rank order.

This effort had a huge impact on social perceptions of caste. Hundreds of petitions were addressed to the Census Commissioner by representatives of different castes claiming a higher position in the social scale and offering historical and scriptural evidence for their claims.

The Legal Recognition of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

The administration also took an interest in the welfare of downtrodden castes, referred to at that time as the 'depressed classes'. As part of these efforts, the Government of India Act of 1935 was passed, which gave legal recognition to lists or 'schedules' of castes and tribes marked out for special treatment by the state. This is how the terms 'Scheduled Tribes' and 'Scheduled Castes' came into being. Castes at the bottom of the hierarchy that suffered severe discrimination, including all the so-called 'untouchable' castes, were included among the Scheduled Castes.

Thus colonialism brought about major changes in the institution of caste — or, more accurately, the institution of caste underwent fundamental changes during the colonial period. Not just India, but the whole world was undergoing rapid change during this period due to the spread of capitalism and modernity.

Caste in the Present

Indian independence in 1947 marked a big, but ultimately partial, break with the colonial past.

The Nationalist Movement and Caste

Caste considerations had inevitably played a role in the mass mobilisations of the nationalist movement. Efforts to organise the 'depressed classes', and particularly the untouchable castes, predated the nationalist movement, having begun in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was an initiative taken from both ends of the caste spectrum — by upper caste progressive reformers as well as by members of the lower castes such as Mahatma Jotiba Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar in western India, and Ayyankali, Sri Narayana Guru, Iyotheedass, and Periyar (E.V. Ramaswamy Naickar) in the South.

Both Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar began organising protests against untouchability from the 1920s onwards. Anti-untouchability programmes became a significant part of the Congress agenda. By the time Independence was on the horizon, there was broad agreement across the nationalist movement to abolish caste distinctions.

The dominant view in the nationalist movement was to treat caste as a social evil and as a colonial ploy to divide Indians. But nationalist leaders, above all Mahatma Gandhi, were able to simultaneously work for the upliftment of lower castes, advocate the abolition of untouchability and other caste restrictions, and reassure the landowning upper castes that their interests would also be looked after.

The Post-Independence State and Caste

The post-Independence Indian state inherited and reflected these contradictions:

• On one hand, the state was committed to the abolition of caste and explicitly wrote this into the Constitution.
• On the other hand, the state was both unable and unwilling to push through radical reforms that would have undermined the economic basis for caste inequality.
• At yet another level, the state assumed that if it operated in a caste-blind manner, this would automatically lead to the undermining of caste-based privileges and the eventual abolition of the institution. For example, appointments to government jobs took no account of caste, thus leaving the well-educated upper castes and the ill-educated (or often illiterate) lower castes to compete on 'equal' terms.

The only exception to this was in the form of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Economic Change and Caste

The development activity of the state and the growth of private industry affected caste indirectly through the speeding up and intensification of economic change:

• Modern industry created all kinds of new jobs for which there were no caste rules.
• Urbanisation and the conditions of collective living in cities made it difficult for caste-segregated patterns of social interaction to survive.
• Modern educated Indians attracted to liberal ideas of individualism and meritocracy began to abandon the more extreme caste practices.

However, caste proved remarkably resilient:

• Recruitment to industrial jobs — whether in the textile mills of Mumbai, the jute mills of Kolkata, or elsewhere — continued to be organised along caste and kinship-based lines. The middlemen who recruited labour for factories tended to recruit from their own caste and region, so that particular departments or shop floors were often dominated by specific castes.
• Prejudice against the untouchables remained quite strong and was not absent from the city, though not as extreme as in the village.

The Cultural and Domestic Spheres

It was in the cultural and domestic spheres that caste proved strongest. Endogamy, or the practice of marrying within the caste, remained largely unaffected by modernisation and change. Even today, most marriages take place within caste boundaries, although there are more intercaste marriages. While some boundaries may have become more flexible or porous, the borders between groups of castes of similar socio-economic status are still heavily patrolled.

Caste and Politics …