Caste Censuses: Destructive or Constructive?
Image Courtesy: Hindu Dvesha
The idea of a “caste census,” which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) initially resisted but later succumbed to the demand of the Congress Party, is surprising given the fact that organizations and parties across the political spectrum also seem to be advocating a casteless society. Sadly, since independence, a combination of scholars and academics, political leadership, media, and intellectuals has failed to provide a healthy understanding of our culture and civilization, which, at the very least, has endured for 5,000 years. It seems as if we have had no break from the colonial understanding of the so-called caste system. Colonial theories have stayed intact, and all the data from societal practices that countered them strongly were either ignored, rejected, or deformed to fit pre-existing theories and political agendas.
Caste, Varna, Jati, and Kula
The lived reality of Indian social systems encompasses the numerous jatis and kulas, which have largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. From colonial times to the present, scholarship has generally focused on varnas and equated them with caste, a term that originated in Western contexts. Western scholarship understood caste and sub-caste fundamentally as about hierarchies and classes. Thus, the understanding of varnas was framed as a “class system” characterized by social hierarchies, exploitation, discrimination, and various forms of inequality as the primary themes. Scholars have yet to consider the possibility that varnas represent a deeper meta-level reality and meaning.
Our texts simply describe the four varnas, but they never developed a theory of varna. However, theorizing about varna has been an incessant exercise for Indologists and scholars over the past few centuries. Post-independence scholarship perpetuates colonial ideas without engaging traditional experts in comprehending the fundamental concepts of civilization and its philosophies. Although many people are “immersed and swimming” in the “caste system,” they cannot articulate its rules, especially since no central organizations are enforcing them.
The overwhelming ideal of the nation, on an individual and collective level, too, is moksha. Three quartets form the bedrock of our civilization, as Sri Aurobindo articulated them: the four varnas, the four ashramas (brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha, and sannyasa), and the four purusharthas (dharma, artha, kama, and moksha). Metaphysical beliefs like karma, rebirths, and the Supreme Ideal (Self, Brahman, Purusha, and so on) form the basis of all three quartets, in turn. Studying each of the three quartets in isolation, without taking into account the other factors, can lead to distortion and intellectual violence. This effect is evident in various caste studies.
Varnas are a higher meta-level categorical classification where concepts such as guna, svadharma, adhikara, karma, and reincarnation play a major role. The four varnas scheme differs from the thousands of jatis (approximately 4,000 according to recent counts) based on birth, occupation, language, ethnicity, region, belief in gods, rituals, and more. Each jati has its own unique food practices, marriage considerations, and beliefs. For centuries, it has been nearly impossible to correlate the jatis in a one-to-one manner with the four standard varnas. Jatis typically evolve as opposed to the established varnas. Jatis spring up, merge, split, dissolve, and go up and down the social-political-economic scales all the time. The Manusmriti describes fifty jatis, and today there are four thousand. So, how do the jatis correspond to the varnas in an exact matching order? Nobody knows.
Field studies of jati practices refute every theoretical claim about the caste system in India, due to the jatis’ numerous and varied practices. For example, non-Brahmin priests from different jatis participate in various rituals throughout the country. In Telangana, for example, a village deity (Grama Devata) festival typically involves priests from both the Brahmin and the non-Brahmin jatis. Similarly, not all Brahmins are priests. It is also a fact of Indian society that the most powerful jatis across the country in the social-political-economic domains have been from the fourth or the Shudra varna. New data does come in all the time regarding jati practices, but there is always a desperate attempt to fit it into the original theory of a four-tiered varna system with exploitation and discrimination as its main struts.
The richness of Indian multiculturalism is because of its constantly evolving jatis. The present caste system understanding has the consequence of harming the evolution and flourishing of the jatis, the bedrock of our cultural pluralism. Sadly, nobody in the country from colonial times to the present has ever been able to establish a direct correlation between the vibrant and dynamic jati arrangement and the four constant varnas.
Caste Superimposition on Varna and Jatis
“Caste” and “subcaste” developed in Western contexts where class and hierarchy were the primary pillars, while varna and jati flourished in Indian settings. Surprisingly, Indian scriptures do not contain an equivalent word for caste. Over centuries, we have imposed caste, sub-caste, and even sub-sub-caste onto our varnas and jatis, resulting in severe misunderstandings and constant friction within Indian society.
The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) serves as one of the fundamental bases for the establishment of the caste system. The theory makes the highly improbable contention that the Aryans (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas) arrived in small numbers from the outside world and managed to dominate a giant majority (Dravidians) of the indigenous population. The minority status of the first three orders continues to persist. Thus, if we believe caste scholars, indigenous Indians who became Dravidians, Shudras, tribals, and Dalits are so naive that they permanently accepted an inferior position for thousands of years because their ancestors did so. In no culture did invaders come in as a minority and yet remain so. In the Americas, the majority faced simple extermination. This never seemed to have happened in Indian culture.
Jati practices and rituals throw up many contradictions in the caste system story, yet scholars consistently ignore the data, constantly striving to align the data with preexisting caste theories, which primarily focus on discrimination. There are three strands to the caste story in India:
- The actual varna and jati arrangement, where the rules of the former are unknown and the study of the latter has been inadequate.
- The British experience with Indian social systems that shaped their understanding of the caste system.
- The post-independence political and bureaucratic hardening of the system by creating increasing classifications in their zeal for “social justice.”
These three strands have combined to create a confusing and inconsistent depiction of the caste system, where all facts and observations may be true, but the explanations are blatantly false.
Equal Opportunities or Equal Outcomes
What is the primary purpose of conducting censuses? Is it for ensuring equality of outcomes or equality of opportunities? Today, the entire caste narrative is mired in conceptual confusion, with some factions attempting to dismantle Hinduism itself to counteract the “evils” of the caste system, others striving to establish an unfeasible casteless society, and yet others promoting censuses to guarantee “equal outcomes” in society. The American philosopher Thomas Sowell elegantly demonstrates the eternal and impossible nature of the last dream. While we can achieve equal opportunities for all in a few generations, the history of the world shows that we can never achieve an equal outcome based on any grouping generally, and specifically in the “caste system” in Indian society.
Therefore, it is crucial to consider the motivation behind conducting these censuses. Sowell demonstrates that a particular group will always have a disproportionate representation in any profession, regardless of other factors. As an example, he quotes the predominance of Blacks in basketball and Whites in tennis in the USA. In the past, Germans, who made up less than one percent of the population, were considered the best pilots in Russia.
Establishing equal opportunities for individuals aspiring to pursue a career in a particular field differs significantly from advocating for equal representation of all groups in that field. It appears that the caste censuses solely aim to achieve equal outcomes, which could potentially lead to a disastrous social engineering program in modern India. At the individual level, the concept of creating equal opportunities and justice is fundamental. One can create level fields for everyone without making varna or jati the criteria but focusing on other parameters, like economic deprivation or lack of access to available opportunities. Economic programs will significantly impact the social fabric of the country by addressing past injustices and providing present-day reparations at the “group level.”
Reservations
Prof. Bhikhu Parekh (“Nehru and the National Philosophy of India”) points out that, as a permanent government policy now, reservations or positive discrimination raise important questions about the nature of justice, the trade-off between justice and such other equally desirable values as efficiency, social harmony, and collective welfare, and the propriety of making social groups bearers of rights and obligations. It also raises questions about the redistributive role of the state, the nature and extent of the present generation’s responsibility for the misdeeds of its predecessors, and the meaning of social oppression.
Professor Parekh emphasizes that “justice” is an individualistic concept that grants rewards based on the individual’s qualifications and efforts. Justice needs to be redefined in non-individualist terms, especially if social groups are considered subjects of rights and obligations. We should also demonstrate continuity between past and present oppressors and oppressed. We must also analyze the nature of current deprivation and determine that it is a product of past oppression, which confers moral claims on the oppressed. These questions are significant in India, where positive discrimination lacks roots in the indigenous cultural tradition and faces significant resentment from caste groups.
American Race and Indian Castes
Few studies challenge or articulate the theory of justice based on reservations. Some work, however, relies on American literature without appreciating that the historical relations between “upper-caste” Hindus and the “untouchables” and tribals bear little resemblance to those between American Whites and Blacks. Martin Fárek (“Caste, Race, and Slavery”) discusses the evolution of the present scholarship that conflates race and caste, and how there is pressure on legislative bodies and courts in the US and UK to use caste as a cudgel to inconvenience Indians and Hindus. There are three main characteristics for comparison: endogamy, color consciousness, and hierarchy.
He describes how the simplistic understanding of endogamy, which guides the complex relationship between thousands of groups (jatis) in India, suffers from fallacies, assumptions, and contradictions. Similarly, color consciousness, where “fair” becomes superior or preferable, suffers from the vagueness and subjectiveness of the impressions without any backing from either the societal practices or the Indian texts. Considering hierarchy, scholars are yet to explain the existence of thousands of jati groupings in India, rather than only two basic racial groups in the United States. How could a dual system of race transpose itself to a society with thousands of mobile jatis with no fixed hierarchy and variable group status across time and space?
Farek writes that the most curious issue is the numerical puzzle. In 1921, the census in India indicated that Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas accounted for about 21 million people and well over 300 million members of the Shudras, the alleged progeny of the conquered aboriginals. In comparison, the census of 1860 in the fifteen slaveholding states of the US before the Civil War showed 8,039,000 “whites,” 3,950,000 slaves, and 251,000 “free colored persons.” Thus, while in American slavery, the ruling race numbered more than double the number of enslaved people, in India, the alleged ruling castes comprised only about seven percent of the population. It is problematic to consider that the conquering Aryan race came in sufficient numbers, established their caste system, and, despite all that, became a minority.
Taking the idea of slavery, which never existed in Indian culture, castes in India turned into the development of the old division between free people (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vysyas) and slaves (Shudras) by colonial era scholarship. These theories and speculations were enthusiastically perpetuated by the post-independence, Marxist-influenced scholars deeply influenced by the oppressor-oppressed paradigms.
But what was the history of the even sharper division of the two present groups in Indian society, the “touchables” and the “untouchables?” De Roover’s research (“Scheduled Castes vs. Caste Hindus: About a Colonial Distinction and Its Legal Impact”) shows that the strict separation between “Caste Hindus” (or touchables) and “Depressed Classes” (or untouchables) in India today comes from the caste laws established during colonial times. This two-fold basic division in Indian society, typically ascribed to Hinduism, is the basis of legal and political action today.
Sufiya Pathan (“Are there Caste Atrocities in India? What the Data Can and Cannot Tell Us”) explains in great detail a most startling finding: the actual crime data reveals that the Scheduled Castes experience thirty times less crime than the overall population in the country. It is also surprising that the Scheduled Castes, around 65 million people and 1200 jatis with as varied practices as possible, have been homogenized into a single group based on a single criterion of an “ex-untouchability” status. Ironically, the definition of untouchability has always been unclear, right from the earliest days of parliamentary debates, and today it is illegal too.
Conclusion
A poor understanding of our social systems, especially jatis, cannot be the beginning of the caste-based census. The social sciences need to adopt a new perspective on Indian culture, fostering a genuine and respectful dialogue with traditional scholars. The social scientists, after all, are not studying or trying to understand a dead Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Mesopotamian civilization. We remain a vibrant and dynamic civilization and culture, with its very existence in jeopardy. Caste censuses of this kind under political pressure should articulate a clear purpose and not simply seek to score points. We must firmly reject a census that would atomize society based on flawed theorizing. A colonial consciousness, permeating our social sciences, wears Western lenses to understand India and is deeply problematic.
References
- Parekh, B. (1991). Nehru and the National Philosophy of India. Economic and Political Weekly, 26:1/2, pp.35-48.
- Farek, M. (2022). Caste, race, and slavery: On comparisons between race in the United States and caste in India, and to forgotten assumptions behind the legal categories. Onati Socio-legal Series, 13:1.
- De Roover, J. (2017). Scheduled Castes vs. Caste Hindus: About a Colonial Distinction and its Legal Impact. Socio-Legal Review, 13:1.
- Jalki, D., & Pathan, S. (2017). Are there Caste atrocities in India? What the data can and cannot tell us. In, Western Foundations of the Caste System, pp. 57-84.