Pranav Jeevan P
Recently, I started reading Indian history and got interested in the social structures that have been existing in the country for over 3 millennia. So, I thought to read the sociology works that existed in literature to understand them better. I am not a formal sociology student, but someone who has already read a few of the western sociological theories and Annihilation of Caste (Ambedkar, 1936). I actually have read more books in Indian history than sociology. There was always a need to find sociological interpretations of the historical events. So, as any normal person, I goggled the top sociology books about India. And Google being Google, suggested a lot of books to read. So to begin with, I started combing through reviews and rankings and found few books that came over and over in every good lists. So it was reasonable to assume that these books were by written by established authorities in the field. The first book I read was Social Change in Modern India (1969) by M. N. Srinivas. A quick Wikipedia search confirmed his authenticity:
“In the Frontline obituary he was described as India's most distinguished sociologist and social anthropologist (Menon, 2012).”
So I proceeded to read the book to gain a deeper understanding of Indian society. Though the book shed light on many aspects of Indian society that I was ignorant of, I was getting uncomfortable with the way he was portraying the caste system. Even though he wrote detailed accounts of the rules and restrictions imposed on lower castes, he was stating them as mere information which in no way tarnished the heritage of “the Great Tradition of Hinduism”, a term he uses again and again throughout the book. He chose not to write much about how evil the atrocities were, and how it affected the lives of people who suffered due to the injustice inherent in the system. Instead, he was trying to focus on how the system enabled a small section of castes to have social mobility. The overall tone of the discourse was a "very sugar coated sulking against caste" (Jeevan & Chithra, 2019).
The way he has written about caste sitting in a high privileged pedestal is sickening. It’s either trying to justify why caste system existed, or why it was essential for a harmonious society or how some communities had social mobility and how it was glorifying the dominant castes. He doesn't try to justify it directly but only say everything from a Brahmin view point. Even an entire chapter was given to explain how the Brahmins had to change and adapt to the process of Westernization brought by the English rule. All focus is on how Brahmins lost their dominance and privileges (especially purity) than on how unjust the system was in the first place, a way of romanticizing the past.
Thus, for instance, in Mysore in the early 1930s priestly Brahmins did not patronize coffee shops, even coffee shops where the cooks were Brahmins. Elderly lay Brahmins also did not like to visit them; on those infrequent occasions when they did, they sat in an inner room specially reserved for Brahmins and ate off leaves instead of pollution-carrying aluminum and brass plates. Now very few coffee shops have rooms reserved for Brahmins—in fact, such reservation would be against the law. The most popular coffee shops in the city have a cosmopolitan clientele, and few customers bother about the caste of cooks and waiters (Srinivas, 1969, p. 123).
The problem with these writings are that they only give visibility to the voice of upper castes who dominate the fields of academia and gets to define what is important and how to exaggerate it. So only the lives of dominant upper castes are visible and that of the lower castes are either forgotten or simply sidelined from the discourse.
While I continued reading, it got worse to the point that he started to justify caste system. He was shamelessly glorifying one of the worst systems ever in existence that was used to dominate and oppress millions of humans, depriving them of their basic human rights and dignity as ”tolerant”.
“ The caste system provided an institutional basis for tolerance.Living in a caste society means living in a pluralistic cultural universe: each caste has its own occupation, customs, ritual,traditions, and ideas. Caste councils, especially the council of the locally dominant caste, are the guardians of such pluralism. Is cultural pluralism consistent with the fact that the castes of a region form a hierarchy, and that there is also mobility as well as argument about mutual rank? In the first place, the idea of hierarchy is favorable to, if not reinforced by, cultural differences between castes occupying different levels. Second, it is only the two ends of the hierarchy which are fixed, and in between there is much argument about mutual rank. When rank changes, the style of life becomes Sanskritized. Again, caste system made heresy-hunting unnecessary. A rebel sect or group in the course of time became a caste, which ensured its continuous existence though at the cost of sealing it hermetically from the rest of the society. To complete the irony, in some cases such a sect reflected in its microcosm the macrocosm of the caste system of the wider society. Witness, for instance, the Sikhs, Lingayats, and Jains. Occasionally, tribal groups such as the Kotas, Todas, Badagas, and Kurumbas used the model of the caste system to regulate their mutual relations. The tolerance of Hinduism continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Srinivas, 1969, pp. 75-76).
After this book, I went ahead to read another one by a different author. It was Caste and race in India (1932) by G. S. Ghurye. He was one of the established authors in sociology, being a professor of sociology and the second person to head the Department of Sociology in the University of Mumbai. I expected to gain some insights about caste systems which I failed to gain from my previous attempt. Unfortunately, what I came across was the reiteration of the same story. Even though he gave detailed review of practices and rules of pollution followed by these castes, he too failed to give a description of the degradation faced by lower castes. It was again a Brahmin centric approach to describe the social life and culture of India. Even when you read the descriptions, it feels like glorifying the power the upper caste held rather than a criticism on the inequalities and injustice which was prevalent. More surprisingly, he even tried to bring our attention to an incident where Brahmins were harassed, completely ignoring the harassment suffered by lower castes.
It is well known that in a village which is a gift to the Brahmins, a Paraiyan is not allowed to enter the Brahmin Quarter; but it is not known to many student that the Paraiyans will not permit a Brahmin to pass through their street; so much so that if one happens to enter their quarters they would greet him with cow-dung water. “Brahmins in Mysore consider that great luck will await them if they can manage to pass through the Holeya (untouchables) quarter of a village unmolested” (Ghurye, 1932, p. 11).
I don’t know whether he conveniently ignored the fact that cow dung water is used as purification medium and also how the upper castes made a game out of this citing “great luck will await” to those who manages to pass through. Maybe, the author was trying to find at least one evidence where caste system was causing harassment to Brahmins. But, reading these sentences in between pages which go on and on about the inhuman rules and restrictions imposed by these same Brahmins over all those subordinate castes makes us see this futile attempt by author as ‘childish overcompensation’. Just like Srinivas, he also goes on to explain in detail every aspect of Brahmin life and the superiority enjoyed by them as if it was an elegant system. His description makes us feel that the superiority enjoyed by Brahmins was willingly crowned on them by the lower castes, who were happy to accept themselves as inferiors.
“Some of the lower castes carry their reverence for the Brahmins, especially in North India, to such extremes that they will not cross the shadow of a Brahmin, and sometimes will not take their food without sipping water in which the big toe of a Brahmin is dipped” (Ghurye, 1932, p. 14).
Then he went on to do something even worse, he started to explain how the lower castes were quite happy with the system designed for their oppression. He started giving examples of how certain events and rituals were allowed to be performed by the lower castes, like making pots for festivals and cooking for some rituals, showing the charity shown to them by upper castes and how they were content with it.
“These and other occasions, on which some of the groups, which were considered to be low castes, could feel their importance, relieved the monotonous depression of these groups, and gave zest to their life even in their degraded condition” (Ghurye, 1932, p. 27).
He goes on to explain that these “specific occasions for enjoying superiority” by lower castes made the village community “more or less a harmonious civic unit” (Ghurye, 1932, p. 27). Saying that the life of suffering led by oppressed castes by the unjust system as “harmonious” shows his lack of sensitivity to the degradation of bahujans. This neglect of injustices and human rights violation happens throughout the book.
There is one chapter dedicated to how vedas describe all the rules and rituals that should be practiced by the 4 varnas in his book. He details about all the unjust and totally unreasonable procedures in these ancient books of law which segregates and treats them as entirely sub human and undignified, who existence is only for serving the upper castes. But, instead of proving how discriminatory and one-sided these laws are, he goes to on to write about Brahmin compassion to Shudras, completely ignoring the fact that they made this horrible system of legal oppression. He tries to justify the system by showing these examples of kindness as allowed in it.
“The Sudra, thus had no civil or religious rights. Nevertheless, there are sentiments of compassion about him expressed here and there. A master is exhorted to support his Sudra servant when he is unable to work, and to offer funeral oblation for him in case he dies childless. Rarely, as in one case given by Apastamba, he is allowed to cook food, even though meant for religious function, under the supervision of members of the other three classes. This extraordinary tolerance towards the Sudra might have been dictated by the peculiar conditions prevailing in the south during early migration of the Indo-Aryans” (Ghurye, 1932, p. 58).
What strikes to me as odd is how he calls this “extraordinary tolerance” because he never uses that adjective to describe the rules of subjugation which actually is quite disconcerting.
After reading the so called “top books” by these established figures in Indian sociology, I wanted to know why these books were so much respected and represented in media and internet. So I searched the syllabus of B.A sociology in many Indian universities and found that books by these authors were cited as reference books in almost all courses on Indian Sociology. A simple checking was enough to further clarify the point that most of the books taught in academia are similarly written by Brahmin or upper caste sociologists who dominate the narrative on caste and its effects. M. N. Srinivas was also against the system of reservations for affirmative action policies by Indian Government. If such people dominate the sociological discourses in academia, the issue of caste will never be discussed from a bahujan-centred subaltern view point. When books written by these glorified figures are considered canonical in the field, the criticisms and rational enquiry from a bahujan view will be overruled or diminished. As long as these books remain in the sociology curriculum of universities, the graduates who study sociology will only have a myopic view of caste seen from a Brahmin upper caste perspective.
Most space in sociology and anthropology, even today is dominated by these upper caste academics who try to dominate the discourse on how caste system works by marginalizing the voices of people who actually suffer the atrocities. It was bright to my attention today that even a book like Annihilation of Caste (Ambedkar, 1936) which was freely available was taken over and modified as a commodity and remodeled on savarna "knowledge" by adding essays and references of high caste academics who Ambetkar was fighting all his life. Some people like Arundhati Roy, who wrote and introduction to this book, and many other Messiahic liberals, who identify themselves as saviors of the untouchable, sadly aid them without acknowledging their privilege, and thus depriving the oppressed even their right to resist. "Brahmins oppress them, brahmins revolt for them, brahmins save them. And Brahmins appropriate them. The same cycle again and again” (Jeevan & Chithra, 2019). The whole of academia and media is dominated by these savarnas that they take away the space to voice the issues from these oppressed castes. They even make the rules on who gets visibility, which discourse gets recognition and how the bahujans should resist the oppression. Thus in effect, there are no issues in India other than what these people raise.
References
Ambedkar, B. R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste.
Ghurye, G. S. (1932). Caste and race in India. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Jeevan, P., & Chithra, L. (2019, March 14). Sugar coated sulking against caste. Retrieved from Cloudwalker: https://curiouspolymath.blogspot.com/2019/03/sugar-coated-sulking-against-caste.html?m=1
Menon, P. (2012, August 17). A scholar remembered. Frontline. The Hindu.
Srinivas, M. N. (1969). Social Change in Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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