Sanskritization Vs. Ethnicization in India: Changing Indentities and Caste Politics Before Mandal Author(S): Christophe Jaffrelot Source: Asian Survey, Vol
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Sanskritization vs. Ethnicization in India: Changing Indentities and Caste Politics before Mandal Author(s): Christophe Jaffrelot Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 40, No. 5, Modernizing Tradition in India (Sep. - Oct., 2000), pp. 756-766 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3021175 . Accessed: 09/02/2014 08:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Asian Survey. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.205.50.42 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:18:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions II SANSKRITIZATIONVS. ETHNICIZATION IN INDIA Changing Identities and Caste Politics before Mandal Christophe Jaffrelot In the 1970s, the JanataParty-led state governments of Bihar and Uttar Pradeshin India launched new reservationpolicies for lower castes. The controversy surroundingthese policies came to a fore when up- per castes resisted the implementationof the Mandal Commission Report in 1990. While reservationpolicies played a role in the crystallization of the low caste movements in South and West India, their momentum was sus- tained by the ideology of "pre-Aryanism"or Buddhism in these regions. In the North, however, the state policies were more or less the startingpoint of the whole process. This article will discuss the crystallizationof lower caste movements in India, arguing that the mobilization of the lower castes was delayed and did not imply any significant change in caste identities: the emancipatory and empowerment agenda in India materialized without any prior ethnicization. HistoricalBackground The North-Southdivide is a locus classicus of Indian studies, partly based on cultural-and more especially linguistic-differences. It also derives from economic and social contrasts. First, the kind of land settlementthat the Brit- ish introduced in India was not the same in these two areas. While the zamindari (intermediary) system prevailed in North India, the raiyatwari Christophe Jaffrelot is Director at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationalesand Editor-in-Chief,Critique internationales,Paris, France. Asian Survey, 40:5, pp. 756-766. ISSN: 0004-4687 ? 2000 by The Regents of the University of California/Society. All rights reserved. Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, JournalsDivision, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 756 This content downloaded from 137.205.50.42 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:18:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CHRISTOPHEJAFFRELOT 757 (cultivator)system was more systematicallyimplemented in the South.1 Sec- ond, these two regions always had a differentcaste profile. In the Hindi belt, the caste system is traditionallythe closest to the varna model with its four orders (Brahmins, Kshatriyas,Vaishyas, and Shudras)and its Untouchables. In the South, the twice-born are seldom "complete"because the warriorand merchantcastes are often absent or poorly represented,as in Maharashtraand Bengal. Correlatively, the upper varnas are in larger numbers than in the North. According to the 1931 census, the last one asking about caste, upper castes representedfrom 13.6% (in Bihar) up to 24.2% (in Rajasthan)of the population. In the South, the proportion of the Brahmins and even of the twice-born is often low. In AndhraPradesh, for instance, the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas represent respectively 3% and 1.2% of the population. In Maharashtra,a bridge state between the North and the South, the twice-born were only marginally a larger number with 3.9% Brahmins, 1% Kshatriyas, and 1.69% Vaishyas. However, the factor of caste does not explain the North/Southdivide only for arithmeticreasons. In fact, the caste system underwenta more significant and early change out of the Hindi belt. The caste system has been analyzed by anthropologistsas a sacralized social order based on the notion of ritual purity. In this view, its holistic character-to use the terminology of Louis Dumont2-implies that the dominant,Brahminical values are regardedby the whole society as providing universal references. Hence, the central role played by Sanskritization,a practice that M. N. Srinivas has defined as "the process in which a 'low' Hindu caste, or tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual, ideology and way of life in the direction of a high, and fre- quently, 'twice-born caste,' that is the Brahmins, but also the Kshatriyasor even the Vaishyas."3 Low castes may for instance adopt the most prestigious features of the Brahmins' diet and therefore emulate vegetarianism. The caste system underwenttransformations because of the policies of the British Raj. Among them, the introductionof the census made the most di- rect impact because it listed castes with great detail. As a result, castes im- mediately organizedthemselves and even formed associations to take steps to 1. In North India, when the colonizer went to levy estate taxes, they often used intermediaries, mainly zamindars. Those intermediarieswere allowed to levy taxes due by the peasants against payment of a tribute. They were recognized as landownersby the British in exchange for col- lecting taxes in the rural area. In the South, where the Moghul administrationhad not been as powerful, the British did not find such a dense network of zamindars (or the equivalent). The tendencythen was to select individualfarmers as land proprietorsand direct taxpayers:hence the system raiyatwari,from raiyat (cultivator). The latter was more conducive to the formationof a relatively egalitarianpeasantry than the zamindari system. 2. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 3. M. N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1995, 1966), p. 6. This content downloaded from 137.205.50.42 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:18:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 758 ASIANSURVEY, VOL. XL, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER2000 see that their status was recorded in the way they thought was honorable to them. Caste associations were therefore created to pressure the colonial ad- ministrationto improve their rank in the census. This process was especially prominentamong the lower castes. In turn,caste associations were secularizedwhen the British startedto clas- sify castes for usage in colonial administration. These associations claimed new advantagesfrom the state, principallyin terms of reservations(quotas) in educational institutions and in the civil service. Caste associations-even though they often lack a resilient structure-therefore not only played the role of pressure groups, but also that of interest groups. Subsequently, they also became mutual aid structures. They also founded schools as well as hostels for the caste's children and created co-operative movements for in- stance. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph have aptly underlinedthe modern char- acter of these caste associations.4 They argued that caste associations behaved like a collective enterprise with economic, social, and political objectives, in a way, which brings to mind the modern image of lobbies. In addition to the concessions they could get from the British, the most importantsocial change that these associations have achieved concerns the unity of the caste groups. They have successfully incited the sub-castes to adopt the same name in the Census and to break the barriersof endogamy. It seems to me, however, that intermarriages are only one aspect of the ethnicization of caste. The subjective representationof the collective self plays a crucial role in this transformation.Caste is largely a mind-set and a belief system. Those who live in such a society have internalizeda hierarchi- cal patternrelying on the degree of ritual purity. Therefore the primaryim- plication of ethnicization of caste consists in providing alternative nonhierarchicalsocial imaginaires. This is a key issue so far as the emanci- patory potential of the low caste movements is concerned since in their case, the ethnicizationprocess provides an egalitarianalternative identity. Besides intermarriages,the ethnicizationof the low castes, for efficiently questioning social hierarchies,therefore, must imply the invention of a separate,cultural identity and more especially a collective history. While such an ethnicization process endowed the lower castes and even the Untouchables of South and West India with egalitarian identities, such a mental emancipation did not occur to the same extent in the North. I hypothesize that this North/South- West contrastis largely due to the resilience of the ethos of Sanskritizationin the Hindi belt. 4. See Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "The Political Role of India's Caste Associations" in Social Change: The Colonial Situation, ed. ImmanuelWallerstein (New York: J. Wiley, 1966). This content downloaded from 137.205.50.42 on Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:18:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CHRISTOPHEJAFFRELOT 759 The Ethnicization of Caste in West and South India The ethnicizationprocess