Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-1
Understanding Castes for their Annihilation part-1
Castes admittedly are a bewildering reality of India; amplified by some to the extent that would make them appear indestructible and ignored by some as a nonissue. Castes as a result, go on kicking menacing the lives of millions and fortifying the powerbases of the ruling elite. There is however a way of understanding castes and it is not as difficult as it is made out, only if one is focused on their annihilation. This essay “The Caste Question in India” by Comrade Anuradha Ghandy may be counted among the latter genre.
The importance of this essay is not so much because it purports to explain caste in its entirety, from its origin in antiquity to its contemporary forms down to the programme for its annihilation, as because it is written by Anuradha Ghandy, one who led a revolutionary life living among Dalits and Adivasis, realized that castes held the key to India’s democratic revolution and was impelled by those conviction to study it with specific objective to create a framework for revolutionaries to deal with it. Anuradha Ghandy, Anu for us friends, had written this long essay in mid-1990s. She had discussed the draft with few friends which included me. We did not know why it was not published as thereafter Anu had gone underground. Only after her death, the Anuradha Gandhy Memorial Committee recovered it along with other of her writings. Since it was published in November 2011 in ‘Scripting the change’, the collection of her selected writings, it has been acknowledged to be a significant departure from the customary understanding of castes all streams of communists reflected thus far. It is therefore a welcome initiative to make it available in Telugu for broader masses of people for whom it was truly meant.
The essay marks the culmination of Anu’s study on caste, as a student of sociology and thereafter a revolutionary practitioner. Here she takes a comprehensive review of the caste system, beginning from the theories of origin of castes through the significant developments in history and ending with a practical programme towards annihilation of caste. Anu at the beginning itself identifies the caste system as an ideology as well as social system and transcends the stereotypical debate about the base and superstructure that shrouded the caste question in communist circles. Following Marx and Engels she identifies different stages in pre-British Indian society: (i) Tribal-oligarchy, (II) Ancient communal and state ownership which proceeded especially from the union of several tribes by agreement and/or conquest accompanied by the enslavement of the Shudra-helots, i.e., the ‘Arthashastra Mode’ and (iii) Feudal or estate property accompanied by the Jati-based system, i.e., feudalism of an Indian variety. While successfully navigating through the dark abysses of history she emerges into the contemporary period extending the unbroken thread of her argument to the programme of the party of the proletariat against caste system. It declares that class struggle against the caste system as an integral part of the struggle to accomplish New Democratic Revolution. She even tries to indicate what would remain of castes after such a democratic revolution is accomplished.
In its broad sweep Anu presents her own understanding of the origin and developments of castes. It was not in the mode of scholastic discovery but as reconstruction through interpretation of historical resources. However, it provides a coherent materialistic perspective, contrasted with the usual religio-cultural perspective within which the emergence and growth of caste system is normally discussed. With India’s mythologized history, it becomes necessarily a speculative exercise to provide materialist form to caste like institution. It may not be accepted in the academic world but if the purpose is to prepare people for change, it serves it well. Anu’s essay is precisely aimed at this change and hence could be expected to fulfil its expected purpose. In explaining India’s caste system in materialist terms one natural question however needs to be answered, which is that how such an intricate system has developed only in India and not elsewhere. Anu also seems to have skirted past the issue.
Simply speaking, the caste system in India is a form of social stratification which most ancient societies had in proportion to the scale of their surplus production. In small-scale and low-technology societies, stratification is limited by low levels of accumulation and usually organized in terms of age, gender, and kinship position. In contrast, large-scale, wealthier societies are more likely to be stratified into enduringly complex groups or classes reproducing themselves. India with its rich natural endowment, in the ancient times was a wealthy country and hence its society had evolved to have a complex stratification. According to economic historian Angus Maddison (The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective), India was the richest country in the world and had the world's largest economy until the 17th century. The question remains however why with the change in modes of production and onslaught of modernity other stratificatory systems have disappeared all over the world but in India the caste system still survives with its menacing prowess.
Sociologists commonly identify three major forms of stratification in complex societies: caste systems with rigid borders, highly differentiated statuses, and little possibility of mobility; the system of estates characteristic of European feudal societies, which distinguished between the clergy, the nobility, and the broad category of peasants, merchants, and artisans; and class systems, more common in modern societies. The first two systems are dominated by ascribed status, or status into which one is born. Class systems, in contrast, provided a greater space for mobility for achieved status. In the class system, the contemporaneous meritocratic ideal places a premium on achievement, in spite of economic, cultural and institutional pressures for general reproduction of structures of inequality.
The caste system completely denies mobility. A person born in a caste finds his life chances frozen by his caste. Dr. Ambedkar gave a succinct definition of caste: “A caste is an enclosed class.” This definition clarifies the distinction as well as interrelationship between class and caste. The essential element of the caste system is the division of society into many mutually exclusive groups called castes which are in perpetual contention with each other for hierarchical superiority within its varna cluster, but internalize their varna hierarchy in a macro-varna structure. The caste into which a person is born defines his or her social status through life, and prescribes the group within which that person could live, marry and die. Caste is also defined by religious rituals and governed by the doctrine of karma and dharma of Hinduism. This doctrine informs a person that his caste status in this birth is because of his past deeds and he could get a better caste status in the next birth by observing dharma, which is nothing but abiding by the caste code here and now. The question remains how such a structure came into being; whether it was created by an ideology or material factors peculiar to India.
There are many countries where caste-like features are encountered. The Osu people in Nigeria and southern Cameroon are treated by the Igbo indigenous religious system to be a “living sacrifice”, an outcaste, untouchable, and subhuman people. There is another caste-like system among the Mande societies in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Ghana, previously Ancient Manden, where people have traditionally been divided by occupation and ethnic ties. Besides, there are several other caste-like stratifications like Wolof in Senegal and Fulani in West Africa. Wolof lived in highly stratified societies based primarily on blood relationships. There were three highly separated castes: freemen (gor or jambur); those of slave descent (jaam); and artisans (ñeeño). Intermarriage rarely took place between the castes. Fulanis are a nomadic Muslim ethnic group located primarily in present-day Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger. The Fulanis continue to adhere to a fairly rigid caste system. The major castes, in their order of stature, are the nobility, the traders, the tradesmen, and the descendants of slaves. There is a varna-like system among the Borana in north-east Kenya and southern Ethiopia wherein Borana Gutu (pure) are treated as the highest, followed by Gabbra, Sakuye and Watta—a traditional hunter-gatherer caste, being the lowest. The Wattas are considered unwanted, worthless, and condemned to lifelong servitude by members of the higher castes. In Yemen there exists a caste-like system that keeps the Al-Akhdam (the Arabic Akhdam means ‘servants’) social group as perennial manual workers (scavengers) for the society through practices that mirror untouchability. Though practising Islam for over 1000 years, they are treated quite like Dalits, and like Dalits they prefer to be called Al-Muhamasheen, or ‘marginalized ones’. Likewise, there are people in Japan known as Burakumin (Buraku, meaning ‘community’ or ‘hamlet’, and min meaning ‘people’, or Hisabetsu Buraku, meaning ‘discriminated communities’/’discriminated hamlets’). Studies comparing the caste systems in India and Japan have noted similar discriminations. Like the Burakumins, the Baekjeongwere an “untouchable” outcaste group of Korea. The condition of the Baekjeong in pre-colonial Korean society was quite similar to the Dalits under the rule of the Peshwas. They were seen as a contemptible and polluted group of people that others feared and avoided meeting. If they saw Yangban (the higher caste) adults or even their children along the road, they were expected to bow and pay respect. Like Dalits, they too began their resistance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, firstly aiming at reform and later a more radical change. The system, however, disappeared in the turbulence that the Korean society underwent.
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O- Anand Teltumbde
