The untouchable castes of modern India

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

For a long time, the dominant idea was that, at least in the Vedic era, Indian society was divided into four classes, called varnas, each of which was associated with professional activities. Outside the varna division were the so-called untouchables.

Subsequently, within the varnas, smaller hierarchical communities were formed - castes, which also included ethnic and territorial characteristics, belonging to a particular clan. In modern India, the varna-caste system still operates, to a large extent determining the position of a person in society, but this social institution is being modified every year, partially losing its historical significance.

Varna

The concept of "varna" is first encountered in the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda, or the Veda of Hymns, is one of the four main and oldest religious Indian texts. It is compiled in Vedic Sanskrit and dates back to about the 2nd millennium BC. The tenth mandala of the Rig Veda (10.90) contains a hymn about the sacrifice of the first man Purusha. According to the hymn, Purusha-sukta, the gods throw Purusha on the sacrificial fire, pour oil on and dismember, each part of his body becomes a kind of metaphor for a certain social class - a certain varna. The mouth of the Purusha became brahmanas, that is, priests, the hands became kshatriyas, that is, warriors, the thighs became Vaisyas (farmers and artisans), and the legs became sudras, that is, servants. The untouchables are not mentioned in the Purusha-sukta, and thus they stand outside the varna division.

Varna division in India (quora.com)

On the basis of this hymn, European scholars who studied Sanskrit texts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries concluded that Indian society was structured in this way. The question remained: why is it structured that way? The Sanskrit word varṇa means “color,” and Oriental scholars decided that “color” meant skin color, extrapolating to Indian society the contemporary social realities of colonialism. So, the brahmanas, who are at the head of this social pyramid, should have the lightest skin, and the rest of the estates, accordingly, should be darker.

This theory has long been supported by the theory of the Aryan invasion of India and the superiority of the Aryans over the proto-Aryan civilization that preceded them. According to this theory, the Aryans (“aria” in Sanskrit means “noble”, the representatives of the white race were associated with them) subjugated the autochthonous black population and rose to a higher social level, consolidating this division through the hierarchy of varnas. Archaeological research has refuted the theory of the Aryan conquest. Now we know that the Indian civilization (or the civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro) really died unnaturally, but most likely as a result of a natural disaster.

In addition, the word "varna" means, most likely, not the color of the skin, but the connection between different social strata and a certain color. For example, the connection between the brahmins and the orange color reached modern India, which is reflected in their saffron robes.

Evolution of the varna system

A number of linguistic scholars of the 20th century, such as Georges Dumézil and Emile Benveniste, believed that even the Proto-Indo-Aryan community, before it split into the Indian and Iranian branches, entered into a three-stage social division. The text of Yasna, one of the components of the Zoroastrian holy book of the Avesta, whose language is related to Sanskrit, also speaks of a three-level hierarchy, where atravans (in today's Indian tradition, atornans) are at the head - priests, rateshtars are warriors, vastriya-fshuyants are shepherds-cattle breeders and farmers. In another passage from Yasna (19.17), a fourth social class is added to them - huitish (artisans). Thus, the system of social strata becomes identical to that that we observed in the Rig Veda. We cannot, however, say for sure to what extent this division played a real role in the II millennium BC. Some scholars suggest that this social professional division was largely arbitrary and people could freely move from one part of society to another. A person became a representative of a particular social class after choosing his profession. In addition, the hymn about the superman Purusha is a relatively later inclusion in the Rig Veda.

In the brahminical era, it is assumed that a more rigid consolidation of the social position of various strata of the population takes place. In later texts, for example in Manu-smriti (Laws of Manu), created around the turn of our era, the social hierarchy appears to be less flexible. An allegorical description of social classes as parts of the body, analogous to the Purusha-sukta, we find in another Zoroastrian text - Denkarda, created in the Middle Persian language in the 10th century.

If you travel back to the era of the formation and prosperity of the Great Mughals, that is, in the 16th - early 18th centuries, the social structure of this state seems to be more mobile. At the head of the empire was the emperor, who was surrounded by the army and the closest ascetics, his court, or darbar. The capital was constantly changing, the emperor, along with his darbar, moved from place to place, different people flocked to the court: Afghans, Pashtuns, Tamils, Uzbeks, Rajputs, anyone else. They received this or that place in the social hierarchy depending on their own military merit, and not only because of their origin.

British india

In the 17th century, the British colonization of India began through the East India Company. The British did not try to change the social structure of Indian society; in the first period of their expansion, they were only interested in commercial profits. Subsequently, however, as more and more territories fell under the de facto control of the company, officials were concerned with successfully administering taxes, as well as learning about how Indian society was organized and the “natural laws” of its governance. For this, the first Governor-General of India, Warren Hastings, hired several Bengali Brahmins, who, of course, dictated to him the laws that consolidated the dominance of the higher castes in the social hierarchy. On the other hand, in order to structure taxation, it was necessary to make people less mobile, less likely to move between different regions and provinces. And what could have ensured their anchoring on the ground? Only placing them in certain socio-economic communities. The British began to conduct censuses, where caste was also indicated, thus it was assigned to everyone at the legislative level. And the last factor was the development of large industrial centers such as Bombay, where clusters of individual castes were formed. Thus, during the OIC period, the caste structure of Indian society acquired a more rigid outline, which forced a number of researchers, such as Niklas Derks, to speak of caste in the form in which they exist today, as a social construct of colonialism.

British Army Polo Team in Hyderabad (Hulton Archive // gettyimages.com)

After the rather bloody Sipai Uprising of 1857, which in Indian historiography is sometimes called the First War of Independence, the Queen issued a manifesto on the closure of the East India Company and the annexation of India to the British Empire. In the same manifesto, the colonial authorities, fearing a repetition of unrest, promised not to interfere in the internal order of governing the country, concerning its social traditions and norms, which also contributed to the further strengthening of the caste system.

Castes

Thus, the opinion of Susan Bailey seems to be more balanced, who argues that, although the varna-caste structure of society in its current form is largely a product of the British colonial heritage, the castes themselves as units of social hierarchy in India did not just come out of thin air. … The notion of the mid-twentieth century about the total hierarchy of Indian society and the caste as the main structural element of it, which is best described in the work "Homo Hierarchicus" by Louis Dumont, is also considered unbalanced.

It is important to note that there is a difference between varna and caste (a word borrowed from Portuguese) or jati. “Jati” means a smaller hierarchical community, which implies not only professional, but also ethnic and territorial characteristics, as well as belonging to a particular clan. If you are a brahmana from Maharashtra, that does not mean that you will follow the same rituals as a brahmana from Kashmir. There are some nationwide rituals, such as tying a brahmana cord, but to a greater extent caste rituals (eating, marriage) are determined at the level of a small community.

Varnas, which are supposed to represent professional communities, practically do not play this role in modern India, with the exception, perhaps, of the pujari priests, which become the brahmins. It happens that representatives of some castes do not know which varna they belong to. The position in the socio-economic hierarchy is constantly changing. When India became independent from the British Empire in 1947 and elections began to be held on the basis of equal direct voting, the balance of power in different states began to change in favor of various varna-caste communities. In the 1990s, the party system was fragmented (after a long and almost undivided period of the Indian National Congress in power), many political parties were created, which at their core have varna-caste ties. For example, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the largest by population, the Socialist Party, which relies on the peasant caste of the Yadavs, who nevertheless consider themselves Kshatriyas, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which proclaims upholding the interests of the untouchables, constantly replace each other in power. It doesn't even matter what socio-economic slogans are put forward, they simply meet the interests of their community.

Now there are several thousand castes on the territory of India, and their hierarchical relations cannot be called stable. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, the sudras are richer than the brahmanas.

Caste restrictions

More than 90% of marriages in India take place within a caste community. As a rule, Indians by caste name determine to which caste a particular person belongs. For example, a person may live in Mumbai, but he knows that historically comes from Patiala or Jaipur, then his parents are looking for a groom or a bride from there. This happens through matrimonial agencies and family ties. Of course, the socio-economic situation is now playing an increasingly important role. An enviable groom must have a Green Card or American work permit, but the Varna-caste relationship is also very important.

There are two social strata whose representatives do not strictly observe the varna-caste matrimonial traditions. This is the highest stratum of society. For example, the Gandhi-Nehru family, which was in power in India for a long time. The first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a brahmana whose ancestors came from Allahabad, from a very high caste in the brahminical hierarchy. Nevertheless, his daughter Indira Gandhi married a Zoroastrian (Parsa), which caused a big scandal. And the second stratum that can afford to violate the varna-caste prohibitions is the lowest strata of the population, the untouchables.

Untouchable

The untouchables stand outside the varna division, however, as Marika Vaziani notes, they themselves have a caste structure. Historically, there are four hallmarks of untouchability. First, the lack of overall food intake. The food consumed by the untouchables is “dirty” for the higher castes. Secondly, the lack of access to water sources. Thirdly, the untouchables do not have access to religious institutions, temples where the higher castes perform rituals. Fourth, the absence of matrimonial ties between untouchables and pure castes. This kind of stigmatization of the untouchables is fully practiced by about a third of the population.

Until now, the process of the emergence of the phenomenon of untouchability is not completely clear. Orientalist researchers believed that the untouchables were representatives of a different ethnic group, race, possibly those who joined the Aryan society after the end of the Indian civilization. Then a hypothesis arose, according to which those professional groups whose activities for religious reasons began to have a "dirty" character became untouchable. There is an excellent, even for some period banned in India book "The Sacred Cow" by Dvigendra Dha, which describes the evolution of the sacralization of the cow. In early Indian texts we see descriptions of cow sacrifices, and later cows become sacred animals. People who were previously engaged in slaughtering cattle, finishing cow skins and so on, became untouchable due to the process of sacralizing the image of the cow.

Untouchability in modern India

In modern India, untouchability is largely practiced in villages, where, as already mentioned, about a third of the population fully observes it. At the beginning of the 20th century, this practice was deeply rooted. For example, in one of the villages of Andhra Pradesh, untouchables had to cross the streets, tying palm leaves to their belt to cover their tracks. Representatives of the higher castes could not step on the traces of the untouchables.

In the 1930s, the British changed their policy of non-intervention and began a process of affirmative action. They established the percentage of that part of the population that belongs to the socially backward strata of society, and introduced reserved seats in representative bodies created in India, in particular, for Dalits (literally "oppressed" - this term borrowed from Marathi is usually politically correct to call untouchables today) … Today this practice has been adopted at the legislative level for three groups of the population. These are the so-called "Scheduled Castes" (Dalits or actually untouchable), "Scheduled Tribes", and also "other backward classes." However, most often all these three groups can now be defined as "untouchable", recognizing their special status in society. They make up more than a third of the inhabitants of modern India. Seat reservations create a tricky situation since casteism was banned back in the 1950 Constitution. By the way, its main author was the Minister of Justice, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who himself was from the Maharashtrian caste of blizzard-mahars, that is, he himself was untouchable. In some states, the percentage of reservations already exceeds the constitutional bar of 50%. The most violent debate in Indian society is about the lowest socially positioned castes involved in manual cesspool cleaning and the most severe caste discrimination.