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
The atomistic conception of
individuals in a Society so greatly popularised— I was about to say
vulgarized—in political orations is the greatest humbug. To say that
individuals make up society is trivial; society is always composed of classes.
It may be an exaggeration to assert the theory of class-conflict, but the
existence of definite classes in a society is a fact. Their basis may differ.
They may be economic or intellectual or social, but an individual in a society
is always a member of a class. This is a universal fact and early Hindu society could not have
been an exception to this rule, and, as a matter of fact, we know it was not.
If we bear this generalization in mind, our study of the genesis of caste would
be very much facilitated, for we have only to determine what was the class that
first made itself into a caste, for class and caste, so to say, are next door
neighbours, and it is only a span that separates the two. A Caste is an
Enclosed Class.
The study of the origin of caste must
furnish us with an answer to the question—what is the class that raised this
“enclosure” around itself? The question may seem too inquisitorial, but it is
pertinent, and an answer to this will serve us to elucidate the mystery of the
growth and development of castes all over India. Unfortunately a direct answer
to this question is not within my power. I can answer it only indirectly. I
said just above that the customs in question were current in the Hindu society.
To be true to facts it is necessary to qualify the statement, as it connotes
universality of their prevalence. These customs in all their strictness are
obtainable only in one caste, namely the Brahmins, who occupy the highest place
in the social hierarchy of the Hindu society; and as their prevalence in
non-Brahmin castes is derivative of their observance is neither strict nor
complete. This important fact can serve as a basis of an important observation.
If the prevalence of these customs in the non-Brahmin Castes is derivative, as
can be shown very easily, then it needs no argument to prove what class is the
father of the institution of caste. Why the Brahmin class should have enclosed
itself into a caste is a different question, which may be left as an employment
for another occasion. But the strict observance of these customs and the social
superiority arrogated by the priestly class in all ancient civilizations are
sufficient to prove that they were the originators of this “unnatural institution”
founded and maintained through these unnatural means.
I now come to the third part of my
paper regarding the question of the growth and spread of the caste system all
over India. The question I have to answer is : How did the institution of caste
spread among the rest of the non-Brahmin population of the country? The
question of the spread of the castes all over India has suffered a worse fate
than the question of genesis. And the main cause, as it seems to me, is that
the two questions of spread and of origin are not separated. This is because of
the common belief among scholars that the caste system has either been imposed
upon the docile population of India by a law-giver as a divine dispensation, or
that it has grown according to some law of social growth peculiar to the Indian
people.
I first propose to handle the
law-giver of India. Every country has its law-giver, who arises as an
incarnation (avatar) in times of emergency to set right a sinning humanity and
give it the laws of justice and morality. Manu, the law-giver of India, if he
did exist, was certainly an audacious person. If the story that he gave the law
of caste be credited, then Manu must have been a dare-devil fellow and the
humanity that accepted his dispensation must be a humanity quite different from
the one we are acquainted with. It is unimaginable that the law of caste was
given. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Manu could not have outlived
his law, for what is that class that can submit to be degraded to the status of
brutes by the pen of a man, and suffer him to raise another class to the
pinnacle? Unless he was a tyrant who held all the population in subjection it
cannot be imagined that he could have been allowed to dispense his patronage in
this grossly unjust manner, as may be easily seen by a mere glance at his
“Institutes”. I may seem hard on Manu. but I am sure my force is not strong
enough to kill his ghost. He lives, like a disembodied spirit and is appealed
to, and I am afraid will yet live long. One thing I want to impress upon you is
that Manu did not give the law of Caste and that he could not do so. Caste
existed long before Manu. He was an upholder of it and therefore philosophised
about it, but certainly he did not and could not ordain the present order of
Hindu Society. His work ended with the codification of existing caste rules and
the preaching of Caste Dharma. The spread and growth of the Caste system is too
gigantic a task to be achieved by the power or cunning of an individual or of a
class. Similar in argument is the theory that the Brahmins created the Caste.
After what I have said regarding Manu, I need hardly say anything more, except
to point out that it is incorrect in thought and malicious in intent. The
Brahmins may have been guilty of many things, and I dare say they were, but the
imposing of the caste system on the non- Brahmin population was beyond their
mettle. They may have helped the process by their glib philosophy, but they
certainly could not have pushed their scheme beyond their own confines. To
fashion society after one’s own pattern ! How glorious ! How hard ! One can
take pleasure and eulogize its furtherance, but cannot further it very far. The
vehemence of my attack may seem to be unnecessary ; but I can assure you that
it is not uncalled for. There is a strong belief in the mind of orthodox Hindus
that the Hindu Society was somehow moulded into the framework of the Caste
System and that it is an organization consciously created by the Shastras. Not
only does this belief exist, but it is being justified on the ground that it
cannot but be good, because it is ordained by the Shastras and the Shastras
cannot be wrong. I have urged so much on the adverse side of this attitude, not
because the religious sanctity is grounded on scientific basis, nor to help
those reformers who are preaching against it. Preaching did not make the caste
system neither will it unmake it. My aim is to show the falsity of the attitude
that has exalted religious sanction to the position of a scientific explanation.
Thus the great man theory does not
help us very far in solving the spread
of castes in India. Western scholars, probably not much given to
heroworship, have attempted other explanations. The nuclei, round which have
“formed” the various castes in India, are, according to them : (1) occupation;
(2) survivals of tribal organizations etc. ; (3) the rise of new belief; (4)
crossbreeding and (5) migration.
The question may be asked whether
these nuclei do not exist in other societies and whether they are peculiar to
India. If they are not peculiar to India, but are common to the world, why is
it that they did not “form” caste on other parts of this planet? Is it because
those parts are holier than the land of the Vedas, or that the professors are
mistaken? I am afraid that the latter is the truth.
In spite of the high theoretic value
claimed by the several authors for their respective theories based on one or
other of the above nuclei, one regrets to say that on close examination they
are nothing more than filling illustrations— what Matthew Arnold means by “the
grand name without the grand thing in it”. Such are the various theories of
caste advanced by Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Mr. Nesfield, Mr. Senart and Sir H.
Risley. To criticise them in a lump would be to say that they are a disguised
form of the Petitio Principii of formal logic. To illustrate : Mr. Nesfield
says that “function and function only. .. was the foundation upon which the
whole system of Castes in India was built up”. But he may rightly be reminded
that he does not very much advance our thought by making the above statement,
which practically amounts to saying that castes in India are functional or
occupational, which is a very poor discovery ! We have yet to know from Mr.
Nesfield why is it that an occupational group turned into an occupational caste?
I would very cheerfully have undertaken the task of dwelling on the theories of
other ethnologists, had it not been for the fact that Mr. Nesfield’s is a
typical one.
Without stopping to criticize those
theories that explain the caste system as a natural phenomenon occurring in
obedience to the law of disintegration, as explained by Herbert Spencer in his
formula of evolution, or as natural as “the structural differentiation within
an organism”—to employ the phraseology of orthodox apologists—, or as an early
attempt to test the laws of eugenics—as all belonging to the same class of
fallacy which regards the caste system as inevitable, or as being consciously
imposed in anticipation of these laws on a helpless and humble population, I
will now lay before you my own view on the subject.
We shall be well advised to recall at
the outset that the Hindu society, in common with other societies, was composed
of classes and the earliest known are the (1) Brahmins or the priestly class ;
(2) the Kshatriya, or the military class ; (3) the Vaishya, or the merchant
class and (4) the Shudra, or the artisan and menial class. Particular attention
has to be paid to the fact that this was essentially a class system, in which
individuals, when qualified, could change their class, and therefore classes
did change their personnel. At some time in the history of the Hindus, the
priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and
through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself. The other classes being
subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some
into large, others into very minute groups. The Vaishya and Shudra classes were
the original inchoate plasm, which formed the sources of the numerous castes of
today. As the military occupation does not very easily lend itself to very
minute sub-division, the Kshatriya class could have differentiated into
soldiers and administrators.
This sub-division of a society is
quite natural. But the unnatural thing about these sub-divisions is that they
have lost the open-door character of the class system and have become
self-enclosed units called castes. The question is : were they compelled to close
their doors and become endogamous, or did they close them of their own accord?
I submit that there is a double line of answer : Some closed the door : Others
found it closed against them. The one is a psychological interpretation and the
other is mechanistic, but they are complementary and both are necessary to
explain the phenomena of caste-formation in its entirety.
I will first take up the psychological
interpretation. The question we have to answer in this connection is : Why did
these sub-divisions or classes, if you please, industrial, religious or
otherwise, become selfenclosed or endogamous? My answer is because the Brahmins
were so. Endogamy or the closed-door system, was a fashion in the Hindu
society, and as it had originated from the Brahmin caste it was whole-heartedly
imitated by all the non-Brahmin sub-divisions or classes, who, in their turn,
became endo gamous castes. It is “the infection of imitation” that caught all
these sub-divisions on their onward march of differentiation and has turned
them into castes. The propensity to imitate is a deepseated one in the human
mind and need not be deemed an inadequate explanation for the formation of the
various castes in India. It is so deep-seated that Walter Bagehot argues that,
“We must not think of . . . imitation as voluntary, or even conscious. On the
contrary it has its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose
notions, so far from being consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so
far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. The main
seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes
predisposing us to believe this or disinclining us to believe that are among
the obscurest parts of our nature. But as to the imitative nature of credulity
there can be no doubt.”3 This propensity to imitate has been made the subject
of a scientific study by Gabriel Tarde, who lays down three laws of imitation.
One of his three laws is that imitation flows from the higher to the lower or,
to quote his own words, “Given the opportunity, a nobility will always and
everywhere imitate its leaders, its kings or sovereigns, and the people
likewise, given the opportunity, its nobility.”4 Another of Tarde’s laws of
imitation is : that the extent or intensity of imitation varies inversely in
proportion to distance, or in his own words “The thing that is most imitated is
the most superior one of those that are nearest. In fact, the influence of the
model’s example is efficacious inversely to its distance as well as directly to
its superiority. Distance is understood here in its sociological meaning.
However distant in space a stranger may be, he is close by, from this point of
view, if we have numerous and daily relations with him and if we have every
facility to satisfy our desire to imitate him. This law of the imitation of the
nearest, of the least distant, explains the gradual and consecutive character
of the spread of an example that has been set by the higher social ranks.”
In order to prove my thesis—which really
needs no proof—that some castes were formed by imitation, the best way, it
seems to me, is to find out whether or not the vital conditions for the
formation of castes by imitation exist in the Hindu Society. The conditions for
imitation, according to this standard authority are : (1) that the source of
imitation must enjoy prestige in the group and (2) that there must be “numerous
and daily relations” among members of a group. That these conditions were
present in India there is little reason to doubt. The Brahmin is a semi-god and
very nearly a demi-god. He sets up a mode and moulds the rest. His prestige is
unquestionable and is the fountain-head of bliss and good. Can such a being,
idolised by scriptures and venerated by the priest-ridden multitude, fail to
project his personality on the suppliant humanity? Why, if the story be true,
he is believed to be the very end of creation. Such a creature is worthy of
more than mere imitation, but at least of imitation ; and if he lives in an
endogamous enclosure, should not the rest follow his example? Frail humanity!
Be it embodied in a grave philosopher or a frivolous housemaid, it succumbs. It
cannot be otherwise. Imitation is easy and invention is difficult.
Yet another way of demonstrating the
play of imitation in the formation of castes is to understand the attitude of
non-Brahmin classes towards those customs which supported the structure of
caste in its nascent days until, in the course of history, it became embedded
in the Hindu mind and hangs there to this day without any support—for now it
needs no prop but belief—like a weed on the surface of a pond. In a way, but
only in a way, the status of a caste in the Hindu Society varies directly with
the extent of the observance of the customs of Sati, enforced widowhood, and
girl marriage. But observance of these customs varies directly with the
distance (I am using the word in the Tardian sense) that separates the caste.
Those castes that are nearest to the Brahmins have imitated all the three
customs and insist on the strict observance thereof. Those that are less near
have imitated enforced widowhood and girl marriage ; others, a little further
off, have only girl marriage and those furthest off have imitated only the
belief in the caste principle. This imperfect imitation, I dare say, is due
partly to what Tarde calls “distance” and partly to the barbarous character of
these customs. This phenomenon is a complete illustration of Tarde’s law and
leaves no doubt that the whole process of caste-formation in India is a process
of imitation of the higher by the lower. At this juncture I will turn back to
support a former conclusion of mine, which might have appeared to you as too
sudden or unsupported. I said that the Brahmin class first raised the structure
of caste by the help of those three customs in question. My reason for that
conclusion was that their existence in other classes was derivative. After what
I have said regarding the role of imitation in the spread of these customs
among the non-Brahmin castes, as means or as ideals, though the imitators have
not been aware of it, they exist among them as derivatives ; and, if they are
derived, there must have been prevalent one original caste that was high enough
to have served as a pattern for the rest. But in a theocratic society, who
could be the pattern but the servant of God?
This completes the story of those that
were weak enough to close their doors. Let us now see how others were closed in
as a result of being closed out. This I call the mechanistic process of the
formation of caste. It is mechanistic because it is inevitable. That this line
of approach, as well as the psychological one, to the explanation of the
subject has escaped my predecessors is entirely due to the fact that they have
conceived caste as a unit by itself and not as one within a System of Caste.
The result of this oversight or lack of sight has been very detrimental to the
proper understanding of the subject matter and therefore its correct
explanation. I will proceed to offer my own explanation by making one remark
which I will urge you to bear constantly in mind. It is this : that caste in
the singular number is an unreality. Castes exist only in the plural number.
There is no such thing as a caste : There are always castes. To illustrate my
meaning : while making themselves into a caste, the Brahmins, by virtue of
this, created non-Brahmin caste; or, to express it in my own way, while closing
themselves in they closed others out. I will clear my point by taking another
illustration. Take India as a whole with its various communities designated by
the various creeds to which they owe allegiance, to wit, the Hindus,
Mohammedans, Jews, Christians and Parsis. Now, barring the Hindus, the rest
within themselves are non-caste communities. But with respect to each other
they are castes. Again, if the first four enclose themselves, the Parsis are
directly closed out, but are indirectly closed in. Symbolically, if Group A
wants to be endogamous, Group B has to be so by sheer force of circumstances.
To Be Continued In ----- Casts In India - Part - IV
To Be Continued In ----- Casts In India - Part - IV
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