Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development
Paper read before the Anthropology Seminar of Dr. A. A. Goldenweizer at The Columbia University, New York, U.S.A. on 9th May 1916.
From : Antiquary, May 1917, Vol. XLI
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar : Writings and Speeches Vol. 1 India
Many of us, I dare say, have witnessed
local, national or international expositions of material objects that make up
the sum total of human civilization. But few can entertain the idea of there
being such a thing as an exposition of human institutions. Exhibition of human
institutions is a strange idea; some might call it the wildest of ideas. But as
students of Ethnology I hope you will not be hard on this innovation, for it is
not so, and to you at least it should not be strange.
You all have visited, I believe, some
historic place like the ruins of Pompeii, and listened with curiosity to the
history of the remains as it flowed from the glib tongue of the guide. In my
opinion a student of Ethnology, in one sense at least, is much like the guide.
Like his prototype, he holds up (perhaps with more seriousness and desire of
self-instruction) the social institutions to view, with all the objectiveness
humanly possible, and inquires into their origin and function.
Most of our fellow students in this
Seminar, which concerns itself with primitive versus modern society, have ably
acquitted themselves along these lines by giving lucid expositions of the
various institutions, modern or primitive, in which they are interested. It is
my turn now, this evening, to entertain you, as best I can, with a paper on
“Castes in India : Their mechanism, genesis and development”.
I need hardly remind you of the
complexity of the subject I intend to handle. Subtler minds and abler pens than
mine have been brought to the task of unravelling the mysteries of Caste ; but
unfortunately it still remains in the domain of the “unexplained”, not to say
of the “un-understood” I am quite alive to the complex intricacies of a hoary
institution like Caste, but I am not so pessimistic as to relegate it to the
region of the unknowable, for I believe it can be known. The caste problem is a
vast one, both theoretically and practically. Practically, it is an institution
that portends tremendous consequences. It is a local problem, but one capable of
much wider mischief, for “as long as caste in India does exist, Hindus will
hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse with outsiders ; and if Hindus
migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem.”1
Theoretically, it has defied a great many scholars who have taken upon
themselves, as a labour of love, to dig into its origin. Such being the case, I
cannot treat the problem in its entirety. Time, space and acumen, I am afraid,
would all fail me, if I attempted to do otherwise than limit myself to a phase
of it, namely, the genesis, mechanism and spread of the caste system. I will
strictly observe this rule, and will dwell on extraneous matters only when it
is necessary to clarify or support a point in my thesis.
To proceed with the subject. According
to well-known ethnologists, the population of India is a mixture of Aryans,
Dravidians, Mongolians and Scythians. All these stocks of people came into
India from various directions and with various cultures, centuries ago, when they
were in a tribal state. They all in turn elbowed their entry into the country
by fighting with their predecessors, and after a stomachful of it settled down
as peaceful neighbours. Through constant contact and mutual intercourse they
evolved a common culture that superseded their distinctive cultures. It may be
granted that there has not been a thorough amalgamation of the various stocks
that make up the peoples of India, and to a traveller from within the
boundaries of India the East presents a marked contrast in physique and even in
colour to the West, as does the South to the North. But amalgamation can never
be the sole criterion of homogeneity as predicated of any people. Ethnically
all people are heterogeneous. It is the unity of culture that is the basis of
homogeneity. Taking this for granted, I venture to say that there is no country
that can rival the Indian Peninsula with respect to the unity of its culture.
It has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and
a much more fundamental unity—the indubitable cultural unity that covers the
land from end to end. But it is because of this homogeneity that Caste becomes
a problem so difficult to be explained. If the Hindu Society were a mere
federation of mutually exclusive units, the matter would be simple enough. But
Caste is a parcelling of an already homogeneous unit, and the explanation of
the genesis of Caste is the explanation of this process of parcelling.
Before launching into our field of
enquiry, it is better to advise ourselves regarding the nature of a caste I
will therefore draw upon a few of the best students of caste for their
definitions of it:
(1) Mr. Senart, a French authority,
defines a caste as “a close corporation, in theory at any rate rigorously
hereditary : equipped with a certain
traditional and independent
organisation, including a chief and a council, meeting on occasion in
assemblies of more or less plenary authority and joining together at certain
festivals : bound together by common occupations, which relate more
particularly to marriage and to food and to questions of ceremonial pollution,
and ruling its members by the exercise of jurisdiction, the extent of which
varies, but which succeeds in making the authority of the community more felt
by the sanction of certain penalties and, above all, by final irrevocable
exclusion from the group”.
(2) Mr. Nesfield defines a caste as “a
class of the community which disowns any connection with any other class and
can neither intermarry nor eat nor drink with any but persons of their own
community”.
(3) According to Sir H. Risley, “a
caste may be defined as a collection of families or groups of families bearing
a common name which usually denotes or is associated with specific occupation,
claiming common descent from a mythical ancestor, human or divine, professing
to follow the same professional callings and are regarded by those who are
competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community”.
(4) Dr. Ketkar defines caste as “a
social group having two characteristics :(i) membership is confined to those
who are born of members and includes all persons so born ; (ii) the members are
forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group”.
To review these definitions is of
great importance for our purpose. It will be noticed that taken individually
the definitions of three of the writers include too much or too little : none
is complete or correct by itself and all have missed the central point in the
mechanism of the Caste system. Their mistake lies in trying to define caste as
an isolated unit by itself, and not as a group within, and with definite
relations to, the system of caste as a whole. Yet collectively all of them are
complementary to one another, each one emphasising what has been obscured in
the other. By way of criticism, therefore, I will take only those points common
to all Castes in each of the above definitions which are regarded as
peculiarities of Caste and evaluate them as such.
To start with Mr. Senart. He draws
attention to the “idea of pollution” as a characteristic of Caste. With regard
to this point it may be safely said that it is by no means a peculiarity of
Caste as such. It usually originates in priestly ceremonialism and is a
particular case of the general belief in purity. Consequently its necessary
connection with Caste may be completely denied without damaging the working of
Caste. The “idea of pollution” has been attached to the institution of Caste,
only because the Caste that enjoys the highest rank is the priestly Caste :
while we know that priest and purity are old associates. We may therefore
conclude that the “idea of pollution” is a characteristic of Caste only in so
far as Caste has a religious flavour. Mr. Nesfield in his way dwells on the
absence of messing with those outside the Caste as one of its characteristics.
In spite of the newness of the point we must say that Mr. Nesfield has mistaken
the effect for the cause. Caste, being a self-enclosed unit naturally limits
social intercourse, including messing etc. to members within it. Consequently
this absence of messing with outsiders is not due to positive prohibition, but
is a natural result of Caste, i.e. exclusiveness. No doubt this absence of
messing originally due to exclusiveness, acquired the prohibitory character of
a religious injunction, but it may be regarded as a later growth. Sir H.
Risley, makes no new point deserving of special attention.
We now pass on to the definition of
Dr. Ketkar who has done much for the elucidation of the subject. Not only is he
a native, but he has also brought a critical acumen and an open mind to bear on
his study of Caste. His definition merits consideration, for he has defined
Caste in its relation to a system of Castes, and has concentrated his attention
only on those characteristics which are absolutely necessary for the existence
of a Caste within a system, rightly excluding all others as being secondary or
derivative in character. With respect to his definition it must, however, be
said that in it there is a slight confusion of thought, lucid and clear as
otherwise it is. He speaks of Prohibition of Intermarriage and Membership by
Autogeny as the two characteristics of Caste. I submit that these are but two
aspects of one and the same thing, and not two different things as Dr. Ketkar
supposes them to be. If you prohibit intermarriage the result is that you limit
membership to those born within the group. Thus the two are the obverse and the
reverse sides of the same medal.
This critical evaluation of the various
characteristics of Caste leave no doubt that prohibition, or rather the absence
of intermarriage—endogamy, to be concise—is the only one that can be called the
essence of Caste when rightly understood. But some may deny this on abstract
anthropological grounds, for there exist endogamous groups without giving rise
to the problem of Caste. In a general way this may be true, as endogamous
societies, culturally different, making their abode in localities more or less
removed, and having little to do with each other are a physical reality. The
Negroes and the Whites and the various tribal groups that go by name of
American Indians in the United States may be cited as more or less appropriate
illustrations in support of this view. But we must not confuse matters, for in
India the situation is different. As pointed out before, the peoples of India
form a homogeneous whole. The various races of India occupying definite
territories have more or less fused into one another and do possess cultural
unity, which is the only criterion of a homogeneous population. Given this
homogeneity as a basis, Caste becomes a problem altogether new in character and
wholly absent in the situation constituted by the mere propinquity of
endogamous social or tribal groups. Caste in India means an artificial chopping
off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from
fusing into another through the custom of endogamy. Thus the conclusion is
inevitable that Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste,
and if we succeed in showing how endogamy is maintained, we shall practically
have proved the genesis and also the mechanism of Caste.
It may not be quite easy for you to
anticipate why I regard endogamy as a key to the mystery of the Caste system. Not
to strain your imagination too much, I will proceed to give you my reasons for
it.
It may not also be out of place to
emphasize at this moment that no civilized society of today presents more
survivals of primitive times than does the Indian society. Its religion is
essentially primitive and its tribal code, in spite of the advance of time and
civilization, operates in all its pristine vigour even today. One of these
primitive survivals, to which I wish particularly to draw your attention is the
Custom of Exogamy. The prevalence of exogamy in the primitive worlds is a fact
too wellknown to need any explanation. With the growth of history, however,
exogamy has lost its efficacy, and excepting the nearest blood-kins, there is
usually no social bar restricting the field of marriage. But regarding the
peoples of India the law of exogamy is a positive injunction even today. Indian
society still savours of the clan system, even though there are no clans ; and
this can be easily seen from the law of matrimony which centres round the
principle of exogamy, for it is not that Sapindas (blood-kins) cannot marry,
but a marriage even between Sagotras (of the same class) is regarded as a
sacrilege.
Nothing is therefore more important
for you to remember than the fact that endogamy is foreign to the people of
India. The various Gotras of India are and have been exogamous : so are the
other groups with totemic organization. It is no exaggeration to say that with
the people of India exogamy is a creed and none dare infringe it, so much so
that, in spite of the endogamy of the Castes within them, exogamy is strictly
observed and that there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy than
there are for violating endogamy. You will, therefore, readily see that with
exogamy as the rule there could be no Caste, for exogamy means fusion. But we
have castes ; consequently in the final analysis creation of Castes, so far as
India is concerned, means the superposition of endogamy on exogamy. However, in
an originally exogamous population an easy working out of endogamy (which is
equivalent to the creation of Caste) is a grave problem, and it is in the
consideration of the means utilized for the preservation of endogamy against
exogamy that we may hope to find the solution of our problem.
Thus the superposition of endogamy on
exogamy means the creation of caste. But this is not an easy affair. Let us
take an imaginary group that desires to make itself into a Caste and analyse
what means it will have to adopt to make itself endogamous. If a group desires
to make itself endogamous a formal injunction against intermarriage with
outside groups will be of no avail, especially if prior to the introduction of
endogamy, exogamy had been the rule in all matrimonial relations. Again, there is
a tendency in all groups lying in close contact with one another to assimilate
and amalgamate, and thus consolidate into a homogeneous society. If this
tendency is to be strongly counteracted in the interest of Caste formation, it
is absolutely necessary to circumscribe a circle outside which people should
not contract marriages.
Nevertheless, this encircling to
prevent marriages from without creates problems from within which are not very
easy of solution. Roughly speaking, in a normal group the two sexes are more or
less evenly distributed, and generally speaking there is an equality between
those of the same age. The equality is, however, never quite realized in actual
societies. At the same time to the group that is desirous of making itself into
a caste the maintenance of equality between the sexes becomes the ultimate
goal, for without it. Endogamy can no longer subsist. In other words, if
endogamy is to be preserved conjugal rights from within have to be provided
for, otherwise members of the group will be driven out of the circle to take
care of themselves in any way they can. But in order that the conjugal rights
be provided for from within, it is absolutely necessary to maintain a numerical
equality between the marriageable units of the two sexes within the group
desirous of making itself into a Caste. It is only through the maintenance of
such an equality that the necessary endogamy of the group can be kept intact,
and a very large disparity is sure to break it.
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