Introduction

Dr Dunkin Jalki and Dr Sufiya Pathan, two formidable scholars, are at the forefront of establishing new narratives in caste studies. They belong to the Balagangadhara school and have done a tremendous amount of work that calls the current understanding of the caste system into question. Today, India is most closely associated with its pervasive and ‘evil’ caste system. The Balagangadhara school critically contests this narrative, and the result is an important book titled Western Foundations of the Caste System, edited by Dunkin Jalki, Sufiya Pathan, Martin Fárek, and Prakash Shah. The book’s central hypothesis is that the dominant descriptions reflect European historical experiences and European ideas about Indian society rather than the real state of Indian society.

What follows next is a summary of an important paper by Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan titled The Impossibility of Refuting or Confirming the Arguments about the Caste System. The authors elegantly demonstrate how every single criterion that forms the theoretical foundation of the caste system encounters serious problems when confronted with actual data from societal practices.

Textual Approaches and the Field Data Contradictions in the Caste Studies

Orientalist translations of Hindu texts, such as the Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, the Ordinances of Manu by William Jones (1798) describing a divinely ordained rigid system of hierarchy with Brahmins at the top and Shudras at the bottom inaugurated the academic or social-scientific study of caste. Till about the mid-19th-century, this ‘textual’ approach to the study of caste held sway. There was a stable consensus on many aspects of this “monstrous” system by scholars sympathetic and unsympathetic to India.

In the middle of the 19th-century, caste studies took an important ‘empirical turn’, subsequently becoming the cornerstone for the sociological study of caste in India. This was a collection of empirical facts existing in society and increasing formalization of this information. The beginning of the census in India in 1871 became an important starting point for this field data. However, huge problems arose soon and the complex data collected from the field gave a varied and unsatisfactory picture of the caste groups.

The troublesome disjunction between theoretical assertions about the caste system and empirical field evidence regarding caste persists to this day. In addition to the classical varna model, colonial officials gathering data in 1871 utilised a range of alternative classifications based on employment, nationality, and race. Because the four-fold varna system of the textual sources could not yield empirically valid results, numerous classifications were required. One officer thought it was “exceedingly doubtful” that the Hindus had ever been divided into four divisions. Another advocated for the rejection of Manu’s “now meaningless division into four castes.” This struggle of colonial scholars produced one of the most enduring axioms regarding the caste system, which scholars have repeated for over a century: the caste system is extremely complex. Dr Ambedkar thought that the mysteries of the castes remain in the domain of the ‘unexplained,’ not to say of the ‘ununderstood’.

While missionaries had some consensus about the four-varna model of the caste system at the beginning of the nineteenth century, colonial officials and scholars did not share that consensus once empirical studies began. After 150 years of continuous scholarship, there is still no consensus on any of the fundamental elements or properties of the caste system. Is endogamy (marrying within the same group) a characteristic of caste groups? Is it a hierarchy? Is violence a necessary consequence of the caste system, or merely a historical incidence? The empirical evidence on Indian caste customs has, in fact, become a burden to caste studies rather than a source of strength. Scholars have responded to these issues by developing increasingly ad hoc hypotheses to account for the exceptions but never questioning the validity of the classical theory of the caste system.

The Classical Conception of the Caste System

Due to a lack of consensus among caste scholars on the fundamentals of the caste system, the caste system has become so hazy that no study can contradict or confirm it. However, there appears to be a minimum level of agreement on a textbook version of the caste system, allowing scholars to continue their studies without questioning its existence. The caste system is based on four principles, as exemplified by the Social Science NCERT textbooks: (a) occupational division sanctioned by rituals (Hinduism), (b) hereditary membership, (c) endogamy, and (d) exclusion of and discrimination against the ‘outcaste’ groups (which includes commensality and ‘untouchability’). This is the Classical Conception of the Caste System (CCC).

Since the nineteenth century, field data has not supported the CCC. The disjunction was a common observation that was criticised. However, caste scholarship has moved away from recognizing this disjunction as an issue in the recent five to six decades. The disjunction is a unique feature of the caste system!

Endogamy

By consensus, endogamy is an important feature of the caste system. Endogamy, according to Dr Ambedkar, is “the only characteristic that can be called the essence of Caste, and which is peculiar to Caste.” A discussion of endogamy requires clarification on what constitutes an adequate unit of caste for in-marrying within one’s own caste. When caste scholars realise that castes are not primarily in-marrying groupings, they are inevitably confronted with this difficulty. As Dr Shanmukha observes from the field in Karnataka, jatis (or castes) such as Kurubas and Nayakas have numerous ‘sub-castes.’ Kurubas include Halu Kuruba, Jenu Kuruba, Sanna Kuruba, Dodda Kuruba, Kadu Kuruba, and others. Nayakas include Myasa Nayaka, Valmiki Nayaka, Beda Nayaka, Uru Nayaka, and others. Sub-castes do not marry among themselves. If a caste is an in-marrying group, what is the caste’s primary unit: a caste or a sub-caste? Nayaka or Myasa Nayaka; Kuruba or Kadu Kuruba? Caste scholars provide an ad hoc answer by now recognising sub-castes as real castes. If sub-castes are ‘real castes’, what about larger groups like Kuruba and Nayaka? What unites multiple sub-castes into a unified whole known as caste?

One prominent scholar Louis Dumont admits that endogamy as a principal basis for caste would have to admit many exceptions. Thus, he considers endogamy to be “a corollary of hierarchy, rather than a primary principle,” replacing one basic property of the caste system (endogamy) for another: hierarchy. Another problematic example is a sort of institutionalised intermarriage practised by Rajputs, Rarhi Brahmans, and some other castes in which males from a higher caste may marry women from a lower caste but not vice versa.

Gotra (roughly translated as lineage) confuses matters even more. It is not possible to marry within the same gotra. A Vadakalai Iyengar Tamil Brahmin, for example, seeks someone who is (a) Brahmin (caste), (b) Iyengar (sub-caste), (c) Vadakalai (sub-sub-caste), and (d) not from the same gotra. As a result, the Vadakalai sub-caste is both exogamous and endogamous. As a result, the caste system includes both endogamy and exogamy. Despite the discrepancies in the field data, intellectuals like Ambedkar argue that the essence of endogamy requires a “right understanding.” The right understanding is that in an originally exogamous Indian culture, artificial divisions created endogamous units. These endogamous units are further divided into smaller exogamous sub-units. It remains a fictitious claim about the pre-historical past of India. Anyway, the problems created by the anomalous observations on the field now become characteristic of Indian society itself: Indian society has both endogamy and exogamy. How did this incredible grafting happen? Brahmanism, of course.

As one scholar argues, “This isolation among the classes is the work of Brahmanism. The principal steps taken by it were to abrogate the system of intermarriage and interdining that was prevalent among the four Varnas in olden times.” In the absence of proper historical data, such concerns are simply resolved by attributing immoral intentions to Brahmins. The process’s alleged antiquity precludes any historical examination. Another convoluted defence contends that we should understand that the acceptable circle, the rationale, and the enforcement of endogamy also shifts through time and context. What does one make of such ad hoc shifts?

Endogamy has the ‘feature’ of changing in such a way that it is both a property of the caste system and yet we cannot speak of it in that way. In short, the so-called caste system exists in India at times, in certain regions, in certain contexts, and for reasons other than caste. This is how one must speak about Indian culture if we are to hold on to the notion of CCC, despite noting obvious flaws in it.

Are Arguments About Caste a Theory?

Declan Quigley has in the recent past provided one of the sharpest critiques of the decades of research on caste, including the much-acclaimed work of Louis Dumont. He notes that historical and ethnographic investigations have repeatedly demonstrated that our “theory [of the caste system] is at best inadequate, at worst wholly misleading. And yet it has remained remarkably resistant to attempts to modify it.” In his essay Is a Theory of Caste still Possible? (1993), he notes here that most of the so-called “defining characteristics of caste” are not, after all, unique to the “Hindu communities or to the ideology of Brahmanism” as caste scholars would have us believe.

Quigley identifies the issues as a result of how empirical data is handled since most caste theories appear to involve an unjustifiably arbitrary selection of facts. According to Quigley, caste scholars, as exemplified by Dumont, chose empirical facts that support their beliefs and dismiss those that contradict them. His solution begins by talking about the ‘institutions’ of caste and accepts the usual aspects attributed to caste in CCC accounts. He arranges the empirical facts in such a way that none of the CCC’s characteristics is diminished or ignored. He agrees that the institutions associated with caste are present in varying degrees in other civilizations at different periods in history. All of these institutions, however, come together in a way that is unique to the Indian caste system.

How do these all come together? Quigley proposes a model of Indian society where the king is the central figure. According to him, caste systems are the product of a certain degree of centralization which involves the organization of ritual and other services around the king and dominant lineages. A beehive-like structure where the king sits at the centre and “attaches other castes” and their services to himself leads to the caste system. Thus, all kinds of inter and intra caste activities, competitions, fights will continue as we notice them on the field.

In the ritual-based hierarchy, the castes that supply the king’s priests will undoubtedly have a higher status than the castes who supply the farmers’ priests. Untouchables who are subjected to oppression are excluded from the community entirely since their primary function is to act as scapegoats and to take out pollution (i.e., whatever threatens social order) beyond the community’s boundaries. Similarly, some people in the area (renouncers, independent sects, and members of different ethnic groups) do not fit within the local caste system. Quigley thus explains all of the fundamental elements of the caste system.

In this arrangement, the closer a caste is to the king, the higher its standing (whether religious, economic, intellectual, or other social statuses). In today’s post-monarchical Indian society, the crucial question is who is the king, who concentrates “ritual and other services” around him. The answer is that when Hindu kingship collapsed in the face of colonialism, well-to-do members of dominant castes became the new kings. What exactly is a “dominant caste” and how does one determine which caste is dominant? In the beehive model, it is not the Brahmins who are at the centre, but the elites or dominant castes who link with other castes “by using their resources to employ members of other castes to perform various services for them.”

How does this model account for the whole caste system, which includes several ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ castes? Quigley’s answer is that it is not only the dominant caste houses that would strive to reproduce this pattern by employing members of other castes to perform various jobs for them. Obviously, the greater one’s wealth, the greater one’s ability to accomplish this. In a breath-taking argument, Quigley claims that no household is so destitute that it cannot afford to hire others to perform specialised ritual functions (funerals, marriages, or caste initiation rites). Thus, Quigley contends that, unlike other intellectuals, the Brahmin caste does not occupy the top of the hierarchy, but that all castes play this role. That is, any caste can serve as “ritual specialists” i.e., priests to another caste. The caste system is a collection of many little beehive-like patterns involving many different caste households. There is a king-like dominant caste in the midst of each beehive-like arrangement, as well as a priest, various service providers, and a scapegoat (for taking out pollution or whatever threatens social order).

Since the caste system is an arrangement of priestly services and all “other services” around a dominant caste, in practical terms, the caste system comes into existence by virtue of anything and everything that Indians do in their day-to-day life. Thus, caste is not a product of Hinduism; in fact, Hinduism is a product of caste organization.

A 19th-century missionary wrote, “Idolatry and superstition are like the stones and brick of a huge fabric, and caste is the cement which pervades and closely binds the whole. Let us, then, undermine the common foundation, and both tumble at once, and form a common ruin.” The story is replicated in the 21st-century scholarship while proposing a radical break. This has been the story of the last 150 years: first, an exercise in critiquing the writings on caste only ends up attempting to bolster the CCC, and, second, contemporary scholarship on caste is a rehash of the CCC ornamented with more empirical data and sophisticated language.

Instead of viewing the flaws as grounds for calling into question the very foundations of the caste system, they have either explained them away by developing a plethora of ad hoc hypotheses or just ignored them. What kind of conceptual entity must the CCC be in order to withstand 150 years of empirical (and conceptual) refutation? It is not unquestionably the poor faith or stupidity of generations of brilliant scholars trying to understand Indian society. Perhaps S. N. Balagangadhara’s and his study team’s hypothesis provides a better understanding.

The caste system as a Western Experience of India

According to Balagangadhara, the concept of the caste system exists only in the western experience. When early European travellers and visitors arrived in India, they faced an unfamiliar world. They had to gradually transform the alien world into a familiar habitat. During the adaption process, they developed a variety of new signs, heuristics, shortcuts, maps (both cultural and geographical), and so on, which assisted them in creating a cultural habitat in India. The caste system is a collection of such entities imagined, posited, and created by the West in the process.

In its early stages, the caste system was portrayed as a tale of wicked Brahmins, their sinful acts, and oppressed people. This narrative is about the Protestant Reformation’s anti-clerical attitudes and how the Catholic Counter-Reformation reacted to them. Starting with Martin Luther, theologians across Europe were lambasting the Catholic Church and the role that priests played at the time. In analysing Indian society, Francis Xavier, a Catholic priest, appears to be reproducing Luther’s criticism of Catholic clergy as early as 1543. Xavier portrays Parava and other local populations in his letter to Ignatius as illiterate, confused, destitute, exploited, but intellectual people anxious to receive Christ. On the contrary, Xavier portrays Brahmins as unscrupulous priests who constantly exploit “the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their [Brahmins’] slaves” in the name of religion. He ends his diatribe by declaring, “If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.”

Multiple European writings about India were merely Europe’s attempt to understand Indian society through the lens of their own culture: a Church, a people, a “false” but nevertheless religion, a class of exploitative priests, and so on. European writers have encountered such clever priests and superstitious masses all over India since the days of Xavier. In this way, the concept of the caste system arose. What is the evidence? From texts to practises, it can be found everywhere.

Balagangadhara says:

“[…] The notion of such a system [the caste system] unified the British experience of India; they implemented certain political and economic policies based on their experience… In fact, this experience was of no particular object but constituted the basis of their going-about with the Indians. By creating such a ‘system’ the British lent stability, coherence, and unity to their cultural experience. Both the caste system and the Indian religions are constructs in this specific sense. It is not as though colonialism brought ‘Hinduism’ and ‘the caste system’ into existence. The Europeans spoke about these entities as though they existed…”

Concluding Remarks of Jalki and Pathan

The underlying concept of the caste system has permeated not only our most basic observational accounts of Indian culture but also the way Indian institutions and the state function. Today, a critique of the “caste system” and the subsequent reconceptualization of caste studies has many significant and profound ramifications. Despite being fundamentally faulty, the so-called theories of the caste system have been considerably more effective than we are now aware of. Whether professional or popular, the literature produced over the decades has largely been political rather than scientific. These erroneous perceptions of India have a tremendous impact on both India’s internal policies and its international relations.

On the one hand, most of India’s development activity, from its “Poverty Alleviation Programme” to its education reform, is based on perceived caste inequalities. The question is not whether India has serious social issues (like economic inequality and growing social unrest) that require urgent and compelling attention. The point is, why should we presume that the caste system is to blame for these issues? What if, as Balagangadhara claims, the caste system is a western experiential entity? On the other hand, unscientific social theories about India, particularly the caste system, have a significant impact on how the West sees and treats India. As a result, the dominant frameworks through which the world community addresses issues concerning India are centuries-old, unscientific, and overtly racist statements, albeit disguised as humanitarian concerns. Even a scientific feat, such as a Mars mission, generates headlines in the British press, such as “How can poor countries afford space programmes?”

Balagangadhara cautions that in the rapidly globalising world if what the west knows about India resembles what it claims to know about the caste system, it will result in a massive calamity. India will not fare much better if it accepts European perspectives on itself as scientific theories about its society and culture. It is high time to acknowledge the flaws in the concept of the caste system and the literature on it. The writers of this incredibly thought-provoking essay conclude by stating that we must now acknowledge the nature and dire repercussions of the wider Western project of portraying its experience in India as social scientific knowledge about Indian culture.

Further Readings

1. For those who are more curious, here is the original paper.
2. Western Foundations of the Caste System edited by Martin Fárek, Dunkin Jalki, Sufiya Pathan, and Prakash Shah.