Introduction

Caste seems to be the most paradoxical issue in our country today. Despite a complete immersion into a particular caste identity from birth till death, nobody seems to have a clear idea about what ‘caste’, ‘varna’, ‘jati’, or ‘kulam’ actually means. The state too talks about condemning the ‘caste system’ but has only strengthened it for decades by institutionalizing it. By dividing the society into ‘Forward’ castes, ‘Backward’ castes (with sub-categories like A, B, C, D), ‘scheduled castes’, ‘scheduled tribes’, and so on, to achieve “social justice” and win elections, successive governments have only caused more anger, friction, and divisions in society. It is not surprising that the international view of India is only in the caste paradigm. 

The colonials had an experience of our social systems which laid the basis for establishing an explanatory meta-narrative in the form of a ‘caste-system’. The missionary writers in the colonial period helped establish these narratives. It may or may not be a mischievous intent on the part of the colonials, but we should understand that the ‘caste-system’ which they thought existed was an experience for them, says eminent scholar Dr Balagangadhara Rao. They never attempted to find out what our own idea of the ‘caste-system’ was. It’s entirely possible that we had our own thoughts on the varna-jati. It is also possible that there was never an ideology of varna in our scriptures but which Indologists, western-educated Indians, and Marxist-influenced academia seem to have unearthed and then keenly propagated. 

However, it was a tragedy of the post-independence period that Indian intellectuals never even thought that these colonial narratives could be false. In a case of classic colonial consciousness, our thinkers, politicians, and academia simply accepted the colonial discourses of a caste-system in India—a religiously sanctioned hierarchical social system that made it almost morally obligatory to act in an immoral fashion. The colonials and the missionary narratives made the Brahmins an intense focus of all the evils in the varna system. The Brahmins continue to have the most disembodied power in all modern intellectual narratives. Even when there is an issue between two non-Brahmanical jatis, violent or non-violent, the cause seems to be ‘Brahmanism’.

Sudha Mohan And His Book 

Is there an alternative view? Can ‘varna, jati, kulams’ be completely different from ‘caste and sub-caste’? The former is the truth of Indian social systems and the latter belongs to the western world. It could be that superimposing western frameworks on Indian understandings has led to severe distortions. Today, each jati or varna or ‘caste’ has feelings of shame, anger, pride, and a bucketful of unfulfilled demands. Where have we gone wrong? Intellectuals in recent times, especially the Balagangadhara group, are trying hard to give an indigenous understanding of the so-called ‘caste system’. In addition, they also strive to show that many of the caste narratives have a western foundation- on their race theories; on Biblical themes; and on secularized Christianity. 

An addition to the literature is this wonderfully researched book by Mylavarupu Sudha Mohan called Sivasya Kulam. The book attempts a similar decoding by giving space to Indian understanding of this so-called ‘caste-system’; the latter simply refusing to get annihilated. He shows this by delving deeply into the Grama Devata (village deities) worship practices. He shows how colonial-missionary narratives studying these practices at a superficial level made them ‘Dravidian’, ‘anti-Brahmanical’, and tried to make them even ‘non-Hindu’ in an attempt to convert them or make the Hindus weak. Sudha Mohan demonstrates how many of these practices were Tantrik in nature with some of the root texts written in Sanskrit actually (a language of the oppressors if we have to believe the Indologists). Sudha Mohan is an aero engineer based in Canada and it is his singular interest to understand the varna vyavastha and counter the many polemics which led to this book, a painstaking effort of more than four years.

In the initial part of the book, the author delves into the evolution of the classic concept of the caste system, which is now embedded in the collective consciousness of the country. The Indologists, across time, strengthened this idea of cunning Brahmins who created a narrative of a divinely sanctioned graded hierarchy of society, with the classes fixed at birth based on ‘purity’. According to these narratives, reformers across all time periods, starting with Buddha, could not break the stranglehold of the Brahmins and Brahmanism. The singular purpose of Brahmins was to stay at the top and exploit the society. 

Different scholars at different times have focused on single and multiple properties of the caste system, but these properties (endogamy, commensality or eating practices, occupation, purity practices, and so on) have proven to be slippery eels. Indian intellectuals like Dr Ambedkar thought of the caste system as a system devised by the Brahmins, which made endogamy the primary means to maintain a class hierarchy. Other castes evolved based on occupations, and imitated the Brahmin class to maintain endogamy within the class. Though various properties came into vogue to define the caste system, scholars have repeatedly shown that whatever theories the Indologists might have put forth, there was no correlation between the field data and the societal practices. Each of the properties had a rejection in the actual practices across the country. In any other field, when data does not fit the theory, the latter gets into the dustbin. Amazingly, in caste studies, contradictory data makes way for ad hoc adjustments in the data itself or in the auxiliary hypothesis. The core hypothesis stayed intact despite contradictions.

Caste, Varna, Jati, Kula- Confusion Galore

‘Caste’ was a Portuguese word (casta) which was about classes and notions based on purity and impurity of blood, involving the ‘Old Christians’ and the ‘New Christians’ (the recently converted Muslims and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula). This came into application in Indian social systems when the Portuguese, landing first on Indian soil, saw priests behaving in a manner suggesting some “pure-impure” connotations. By 1555, the English began using the word ‘cast’. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, it had come to have wide application in Indian society. Later, as the Aryan and still later, the Dravidian identities evolved, Indologists made the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas the descendants of the ‘invading’ Aryans, and the Sudras (along with other depressed classes and tribes) the descendants of the oppressed ‘Dravidians’. 

Many serious scholars insist that the only reality of the country are the innumerable jatis with their diverse practices and traditions. Sudha Mohan says it is a term to cover all the so-called thousands of ‘castes’ existing in the country. At its very core, jati implies a grouping of people based on certain commonalities that are based on Acharas (customary practices) and Sadhana (spiritual practices as a loose translation). Jatis can be ascertained based on sex (streejati, purushjati), language (Telugujati, Bengalijati), occupation (weavers, goldsmiths, priests, leather workers, carpenters, and so on), and any number of possible groupings in the society based on eating practices, marriage practices, rituals, and so on. According to the author,  Jati is a term that either differentiates or clubs things together; spiritually, this division or grouping highlights certain commonalities that are based on the Achara of that group.  

Initially, there was a mention of only a few, but over the centuries, jatis have evolved into many thousands—3,000 to 4,000 of them today. Their practices and customs could be as wide-ranging as possible; a non-belief in the Vedas or in traditional ideas may be a feature of some jatis. Jatis can dissolve, merge into one unit, or split into two or more. They are flexible in their rules, and this evolution has increased their numbers across the centuries. Individual jatis have gone up and down on the social, political, or economic scale.

In contrast, the varnas have always been four in number, and at some level, may represent an ideal or simply ungraded categories based on birth (with deeper connections to karma), qualities (guna), and the nature of actions (swadharma). There are numerous valid scriptures and textual references which show an equality of the varnas or even a reversal of hierarchies. These remain conveniently ignored. The varnas may simply be categories, and no category has ever had a denial of their four purusharthas of dharma, kama, artha, and moksha in the huge corpus of Indian scriptures.

Starting from colonial times to the present, the one-to-one correlation of jatis to varnas has been the most difficult, dubious, and irrational exercise. The colonials even tried to squeeze ‘social status’ as a criterion to enter the varna categories. A hierarchical ordering of the categories as the only narrative has been the great disruptive contribution of colonials and Indologists. To reiterate, categories do not have a hierarchy (black, white, yellow, and orange are categories of colors; Assamese, Telugu, Tamil, and Gujarati are categories of languages). Cherry-picking from a huge corpus of literature allowed a selective interpretation of a hierarchical categorization of the varnas.

Correlating jatis to varnas, when it became problematic, led to the creation of weird categories like sub-caste and sub-sub-caste. Even a huge monolith of Brahmin varna comprises hundreds of jatis with varieties of eating practices, marriage practices, and ritual practices. Some consume non-vegetarian food, and many do not officiate in temples. Varnas are mainly ‘duty-based’ in Indian thought. It became a ‘right-based’ division in scholarly writings. Jatis belonging to Sudra varna have many times been the most powerful socially, politically, and economically in most parts of India. The negative connotation of being a Sudra has been a persistent narrative since colonial times; and it only requires a few corrective measures in our educational, political, and legal systems to get rid of this connotation. Amazingly, as this book shows, colonial writings conveniently ignored (which even present scholars are also guilty of) that the priests of a majority of Grama Devata temples belong to the Sudra varna. 

Grama Devatas And Varied Practices

The author wonderfully details the Grama Devata and other forms of worship that belong, at their very roots, to the Tantrik traditions and involve practices like Pasubali (animal sacrifice). Hindu society consists of two parallel religious systems- Vaidikam and Tantrikam. The practices of the latter are clearly Siva-Sakti worship, and they are the various Kulams of South India. They have their counterparts in North India, like the Nath tradition. The Tantrik practices range from simple Grama Devata practices to more esoteric ones. At the extreme end, there might be practices that can offend one’s sensibilities as they involve uninhibited sex, alcohol, blood, and meat.

However, in many of the common Grama Devata festivals, the traditional Brahmins also get involved, but the further rituals typically involve non-Brahmin priests. For example, in one of the villages in Telangana, in a three-day festival called Bodurai, a Brahmin initially performs some rituals and then recedes. Later, a specific community of Chaakalis (cloth washers) conducts the priestly rituals. Many of these temples have priests from the toddy-tapper (Gouds), carpenter (vadrollu), and other so-called “lower castes” performing rituals. The point is that the interface between the Vaidikam and the Tantrik methods has been ranging from indifference, to a mutual give and take, to a complete shunning (as in the extreme Vamachara practices). At no point perhaps, there was a violent suppression of one by the other.

The colonials and the missionaries studied these Tantrik and the so-called left-hand practices superficially. The use of the term ‘caste’ to refer to Varna/jati/Kula restricts the actual dimensions of the Varna/Jati/Kula concept itself and undermines its religious authority, says the author. The objective of the missionary-colonial writings was finally to prove that Varna and Kula were deeply associated with discrimination, oppression, and untouchability practices. Their incomplete understanding of the Siva-Sakti traditions or their wanton ignoring of many uncomfortable practices finally led to a narrative of Dravidianism, demonolatry, untouchability, and a detachment of many groups from the main body of Hinduism. Proving them as oppressed non-Hindus or non-Aryans was a useful strategy for both conversion purposes and creating a huge faultline in the Hindu society. 

Tantrik traditions and the Vaidikam traditions differ in many practices (Achara-Bheda), and these include practices involving mutual untouchability many times. There were untouchability practices where the so-called low castes would shun the Brahmins of the Vaidikam traditions. Varna/kula were never about the purity of race as constructed by the colonials based on the fashionable Aryan theories of that time. Saucha and Asaucha were practices as part of Achara and Sadhana but not about race.

As mentioned earlier, despite all contradictions, the basic story of a hierarchical society with permanent oppression persisted in colonial understandings. However, many scholars like Cornish agreed readily that Hindu society consisted of many economically rich Sudras who also played the roles of kings, priests, and traders. In a huge society with thousands of jatis having many diverse practices in their spiritual path, it was clear that occupation, trade, and mutual interactions existed effectively and efficiently in the society. The colonials and the missionaries collapsed the entire phenomenon they observed in India as a ‘Hinduism’ (a false religion) controlled by the Brahmanical priests and exploiting society by denying education, occupation, and social status to all.

The story of exploitation could not be true for two important reasons: one, India was an economic powerhouse of the world for centuries till the colonials landed; and second, all the invaders of the world would not attack a poor world. Most of the economic and political power lay with the non-Brahmins. As the colonial records of the nineteenth century themselves clearly suggest, the Brahmanical denial of knowledge was false, as Dharampal elegantly shows (The Beautiful Tree).  ‘Caste’, ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘untouchable’, ‘Panchama’ were finally colonial words that we simply internalized without questioning, says the author.

Many of the Tantrik traditions associated with the Grama Devata rituals have deep connections with traditional medicine. The discouraging or active banning of many Tantrik practices was a body-blow to many traditional medicine forms at the expense of western systems. Finally, a colonial narrative was built that equated modernity with westernization. The dismantling of non-Vaidik traditions never happened completely. However, a distortion did occur, leading to many disastrous consequences- Dravidianism being the most glaring, along with pushing traditional medicine into the realm of the ‘primitive.’

The author points out that the Hindu societies of India had two divisions—’Dakshinacharis’ and ‘Vamacharis’, termed by the Europeans as the right-hand and left-hand practices. The Sudra varnas of South India too had two major groups—the right-hand and left-hand jatis. There were many achara-bhedas (differences in practices) while the end goal remained the same. The infighting that occurred between the kulams focused only on materialistic rights while forgetting the Sadhana and Achara required for spiritual realization, says Sudha Mohan. 

The missionaries were clearly disdainful of the ‘Left-hand’ practices, which included many times the Grama Devata rituals, and their purpose remained to cut these practices to make them ready for proselytization. However, it is an amazing facet of Indian culture that, despite resistance from both Hindu and non-Hindu elements, Grama Devata worship remains a thriving and throbbing part of our great culture. The author also demonstrates how many Buddhist practices were based on Tantrik rituals, demonstrating a clear mutual exchange of practices and an inherent harmony. The colonial enterprise of pitting Buddhism as standing against Hinduism has largely been a successful one. Despite glaring inconsistencies in the story, we have largely internalized this. 

The Mess Today

Finally, thanks to a lot of ignorance peddled as knowledge across centuries by scholars (Balagangadhara Rao terms it ‘bullshit’), we now have an India divided into many ‘castes’ further subdivided into ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ institutionalized by the government; a list of scheduled castes, which is a heterogenous group of 1200 jatis and 65 million people merging into a single group of ‘Dalits’ based on the single tenuous idea of ‘untouchability’; and diverse groups across various states with wide-ranging practices, comprising 8.2% of the total population (2001 Census) as scheduled tribes. At various times, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are in and out of the Hindu fold depending on the convenience of the scholars.

As Jakob De Roover demonstrates (Scheduled Castes vs. Caste Hindus: About a Colonial Distinction and Its Legal Impact), Dalits’ or scheduled castes’, are a political and legal creation since the beginning of the twentieth century. Scholars could not define exactly what untouchability was. The definitions have been tenuous and vague, and scholars have included any practice as untouchability to fit the data into their preconceived notions. Untouchability definitions and the criteria have been circular. Many practices no longer exist, and untouchability as a practice is illegal, yet a huge monolithic group exists where, despite all positive discrimination (reservations, lower cut-off marks, legal privileges, and so on), anger and hate seem to be ever increasing. 

Simultaneously, the data for Dalit exploitation is methodologically faulty, has plenty of cherry-picking, and selective interpretations. Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan (Are There Caste Atrocities in India? What the Data Can and Cannot Tell Us) shows this in the book ‘Western Foundations of The Caste System’. Yet, the intellectual dishonesty regarding the figures never comes into question but does manage to give a massive negative image of India on national and international platforms. Much money, many agendas, and many careers, both national and international, perpetuate and thrive on the continuing Dalit exploitation story in India.

Similarly, concerning the ‘tribal’ (‘aboriginal’ or ‘indigenous’) populations, Koenraad Elst writes, ‘If we go by the historical definition, the question whether tribals are Hindus is very simple to answer: they are Indians but not prophetic-monotheists, so they are Indian Pagans or Hindus. They have many elements in common, partly by distant common roots, partly by the integration of tribal elements in the expanding literate Sanskritic civilization, and partly by the adoption of elements from the Vedic-Puranic Tradition in the tribal Traditions.’ As Balagangadhara writes, anthropologists spent about 100 years attempting to get rid of a pernicious and incoherent concept like ‘tribe’ only to see it sneak back in, via Indology and other social sciences, into the Indian Constitution, Indian legislation, and their administration. 

There was no attempt to understand Indian society through our own eyes; not only that, we perpetuated the western narratives vigorously. The political and legal systems now perpetuate a most ubiquitous ‘caste system’ by dividing the country into various caste and tribal groups and then proceeding to take care of each segment. The narrow political goals have been the reason for increasing atomization of the country with just about everyone having a sense of injustice as a group. Eminent economist Dr Bhikhu Parekh says, ‘Justice is generally an individualist concept; the due to an individual based on his qualifications and efforts. Justice needs redefinition obviously in non-individualist terms if social groups are subjects of rights and obligations. We should also demonstrate continuity between the past and present oppressors and oppressed. We must also analyse the nature of current deprivation and that it is a product of past oppression conferring moral claims on the oppressed. These questions are important in India where positive discrimination has no roots in the indigenous cultural tradition and is much resented.’    

Balagangadhara stresses that Indian intellectuals and reformers enthusiastically embrace the criticism of the Brahmin priesthood, a reformulation of the Protestant criticism of Catholic Christianity, as a scientific criticism of the caste system. Accepting the European cultural experience of India as a scientific framework for Indians to understand their own culture makes it impossible for Indians to access the true nature of their traditions. Jawahar Lal Nehru, our first Prime Minister, was Hindu only by an accident of birth.  Our first Law Minister, Dr B.R. Ambedkar wrote, ‘Caste has a divine basis. You must therefore destroy the sacredness and divinity with which Caste has become invested. In the last analysis, this means you must destroy the authority of the Shastras and the Vedas.’  In an emotionally charged time, our first education minister for ten long years was a Muslim intellectual soaked in Islamic theology. They were all patriots, but how could there have been an incentive to understand the traditions of Hinduism or its social systems in a better light using our own frameworks?

The Way Forward

There have been no serious efforts on the part of our social sciences to supply a theory of Indian society that would unite rather than divide. Most Indologists translate ‘varna’ as a class. All societies are class societies, with many evils rooted in class hierarchies. What makes varna different then? There are many factors involved in deciding social class: birth, education, occupation, political power, spiritual status, and so on. What is the nature of the class that Varna suggests?

As Martin Farek (Western Foundations of The Caste System) says, “…we should aim to develop a new theory of the phenomena described by the Indian terms varna and jati… If we really want to take the traditional Indian understanding seriously, a new approach to its research is necessary. It will focus on theorizing the domestic Indian framework within which ideas such as guna (mode of nature), adhikara (eligibility or qualification) and svabhava (natural inclination) make sense. This kind of research will create new hypotheses, which should enable us to answer important questions such as: What is the Indian framework of understanding of varna, jati and biradari? How do Indians decide about the status of different people? However, it is difficult to have a reasonable discussion about these problems with many Indians today. Generations educated under British rule have passed the colonial legacy to people of independent India…” 

How wonderful would it be if the word ‘caste’ itself undergoes annihilation? By retaining the term, we are continuing the colonial legacy and the baggage of the improper understanding of our varna, jati, and kula systems. How wonderful would it be for India if all the jatis and the varnas become equal categories with no institutionalized segmenting of society based on hierarchical gradings? The negative connotation of the word Sudra must disappear urgently. One of the most important aspects of our ancient, medieval, and contemporary times is that jatis belonging to the Sudra varna (by exclusion since they were not Brahmins, Kshatriyas, or Vaisyas) were the most powerful in the social, political, and economic sense.  

The anger is only increasing, the fissures are deepening. The Dravidian story is the most tragic of them all. The Dravidian race theory was initially on the basis of language, with later involvement of other factors, as the author elegantly shows. The Dravidians became a separate race, a separate culture, and a separate ‘non-Hindu non-Aryan’ society, strongly fighting to retain their independence. This book by Sudha Mohan breaks many of the myths surrounding the ‘caste system’. A deep study of the book helps one to realize that the various groups across the country—the ‘forward’ castes, the ‘backward’ castes, the ‘scheduled’ castes, and the scheduled ‘tribes’ are the diverse jatis with all kinds of practices, an array of flowers in the same garden of India as Hindus.

Maybe, it is all a simplistic reduction. However, it is far better to have simplistic paradigms to unite people rather than divide them, as has happened till now. This well-researched book surely should be a good reference for both ordinary citizens and scholars to understand Grama Devata rituals and how well they connect to ‘mainstream’ Hinduism. As again, Balagangadhara says, Hinduism is a common name of a huge mass of traditions in the country. Traditions stand on rituals. The latter brings people together and unites societies. Religious cultures continually divide people. It is a religious framework to understand a ritualistic world, which is responsible for the mess we are in. This book remains a grim reminder of this. There is always hope. But only if our social sciences wake up from their deep slumber.

SIVASYA KULAM: Decoding Caste, Untouchability and White Man’s Burden. MVNL Sudha Mohan. 2022. Samvit Prakashan. Rs 499. It is available for purchase on Amazon, HindueShop and the publisher website.