Gandhi promoted the use of harijan or ‘the begotten of Hari (or God)’ to refer to those reckoned as Untouchables. What was new here was not the term – Kabīr uses the word harijan to refer to enlightened souls – but its application. For the first time the term was used of those whom the bulk of Hindu society shrank from in one way or other simply for reasons of their birth. Though the name came into common usage at the time – Gandhi even started a weekly newspaper called Harijan in 1933 – it was not uncontroversial, even among so-called harijans themselves. A number of these found the appellation patronizing in that it, no doubt unwittingly but covertly, re-affirmed and perpetuated a status that they were keen to repudiate. Ambedkar, who became a lifelong adversary of Gandhi with respect to the way caste should be opposed in shaping a democratic India, recalled ‘how his own refusal to accept the name “Harijan” cost him a scholarship’ (see Leslie 2003:31). Today harijan is still used in names of societies of one sort or other, but it is fast giving way to the preferred term dalit.
Gandhi himself was not low caste; he came from a merchant background. In his formative years, his thinking was shaped by various Indian and other influences, which included the Bhagavad Gītā and Sant-Mat, especially teachings from Kabīr and Narasimha Mehta. Mehta was a fifteenth-century poet-saint of Gujarat (Gandhi's homeland). Gandhi makes significant references to Mehta in his writings. For example, in articles written in Gujarati in the weekly, Navajīvan (5 and 12 December 1920), he quotes one of Mehta's lyrics and concludes from this that it is dharma to reject untouchability and that it is ‘the very limit of adharma to refuse to touch Antyajas (= Untouchables) however clean’ (see Iyer 1986, vol.1:66–72). But in spite of his aversion to untouchability and the life-threatening risks he took on occasion to suit the action to the word in this respect, Gandhi never seems to have repudiated the varṇa system, which for him was the bedrock of Hinduism. Caste inequality was a perversion of varṇa, and untouchability an extreme expression of caste-inequality, but varṇa itselfrepresented natural dharmic order:
‘I believe that caste has saved Hinduism from disintegration’ he wrote in 1920. ‘But like every other institution it has suffered from excrescences. I consider the four divisions [of varṇa] alone to be fundamental, natural and essential. The innumerable sub-castes are sometimes a convenience, often a hindrance ... But I am certainly against any attempt at destroying the fundamental divisions. The caste system is not based on inequality, there is no question of inferiority ... I am inclined to think that the law of [caste-] heredity is an eternal law and any attempt to alter that law must lead us, as it has before led, to utter confusion. I can see very great use in considering a Brahmin to be always a Brahmin throughout his life ... If Hindus believe, as they must believe, in reincarnation, transmigration, they must know that nature will, without any possibility of mistake, adjust the balance by degrading a Brahmin, if he misbehaves himself, by reincarnating him in a lower division, and translating one who lives the life of a Brahmin in his present incarnation to Brahminhood in his next’.
(quoted in Jaffrelot 2005:61–2)
A robust statement, and not without seeming inconsistency! Gandhi professes to believe here in both the behavioural and hereditary views of caste (by taking reincarnation into account), but it is difficult to see how if ‘the caste system is not based on inequality’ and ‘there is no question of inferiority’, why ‘degrading’ a Brahmin (is this not a term implying inequality/inferiority?) who misbehaves in one life into a ‘lower’ division in the next, should be regarded as any sort of sanction at all. Ambedkar was implacably opposed to this reformative view of caste, and believed it was nothing more than prevarication. On the other hand, by his blanket condemnations of Hinduism – a concept he never clarified in his writings and speeches, but which presumably included Hinduism's literary and intellectual achievements – he was in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nevertheless, both Gandhi's and Ambedkar's disparate ideologies of caste, while pulling apart in several respects, converged to produce an egalitarian and democratic Constitution which continues to play a crucial guiding role in highlighting and outlawing the discriminatory excesses of caste.
As indicated earlier, caste inequality has given rise to a process of low-ranking communities attempting to better their caste status; this is known as ‘Sanskritization’. Put somewhat simplistically, this is the process by which castes strive to elevate themselves in the hierarchy by adopting religious, occupational and other behavioural codes, and on occasion even myths and names, that reflect or imitate higher-caste or twice-born practices (presumed to be based on the Brahminic Sanskritic tradition). These attempts may be more or less successful depending on circumstance.
It is important to realize that Untouchables are themselves not a homogeneous group. There is a hierarchy even here, often fiercely protected in local contexts. Leslie quotes another researcher, K.S. Singh (writing in 1993) as follows:
Scheduled castes in every region and area in the country have their own hierarchy which prohibits the acceptance and exchange of water and food. For a Mala, a Madiga is an untouchable, and for both of them a Thoti is an untouchable. For a Meghwal, a Regar and a Bhangi are untouchables, whereas among the latter two the Bhangi is an untouchable.
(Leslie 2003:40)
This culture of divisive and entrenched caste inequality all the way down was what made Ambedkar's heart sink in his struggle against caste discrimination, yet with respect to the discriminations of caste in general, including those of Untouchability, there have been changes from the time of Ambedkar's death to the present day. Writing in 1955 about the Camārs (‘leather-workers’) of Madhopur, a village in Uttar Pradesh some 25 miles from Benares, B.S. Cohn observed that the Camārs,
have long stood near the bottom of the regional society of Uttar Pradesh in wealth, power, and caste position ... In Madhopur ... a Camār's touch does not ordinarily carry defilement to the body of another. When most high-caste persons refer to a Camār as ‘untouchable’, they mean only that they cannot take food or water from him, and that his touch will pollute food, water, and the utensils used for food and water. Camārs are regarded as defiled especially because of their repugnant traditional occupations of skinning, tanning, and midwifery,8 and because of their reputation for eating carrion beef.
(Cohn in Marriot 1955: see p.61)
Such expressions of Untouchability are not atypical in many Indian villages even today. Only a generation or so ago, an Untouchable could lodge a poignant protest against the higher castes in more general terms as follows:
We've lived our whole lives at your doors,
But we never met each other.
You were inside, we were outside.
You were in the temple, we were on the steps
Because you thought us Untouchable.
But those days are over.
We've begun a new life.
We've founded our own temples,
Regained our lost faith.
Our gods are where we are.
All are equal here ...
This faith is going to
Penetrate every corner of the world.
Now you can scream.
It's fallen! It's fallen!
Brahmin dharma has been overthrown.
You lit your own pyre.
What can you do now?
(H.Barisode in Hiro 1982:14)
As the sentiments of this poem indicate, through protest and appropriate legislation (though the latter lacks proper enforcement in some contexts), slowly but surely the situation is changing for the better. As the poem implies, Untouchables have built their own temples and installed their own priests (moral: priestly ministration in Hinduism is far from being a Brahmin monopoly). In some cases, these temples are imposing city structures, built on donations given by devotees with secure and respectable jobs. The dalits are finding the self-confidence to set their own affairs in order, rather than being only the recipients of concessions and hand-outs b
y the upper castes.
In order to appreciate what real change might mean with respect to caste practice in India today, let us look at a particular rural example. In his general survey of the social changes that had occurred in the village of Ramkheri (mentioned earlier) in the period between the 1950s and the early 1990s, the anthropologist A. Mayer, after noting that the village population had increased from 912 to 2063, and recording the names of over 20 Hindu castes, ranging from the Brahmin to the Bhangi (‘sweeper’), that lived in the village during this time, writes as follows:
During village feasts in 1954, ‘The food served in these feasts ... included both kacca and pakka dishes [food cooked in water and oil respectively] ... Hence, the more restrictive rules were observed. Because the cooks were Gosain, the Brahmin priests could only take raw foodstuffs home to cook. Rājpūts and what I called their allied [upper]castes ... were able to eat this food and sat in the same line to do so: the more marginal castes of the division ... would have needed to sit separately, but avoided showing their inferiority by taking raw supplies home to cook ... The Balais and Camārs [so-called Untouchables] ... ate separately, being fed later, and the Bhangi collected the scraps and took them home to eat ... [B]oth rank and separation were shown’.
(1996:36)
But in 1992 the situation was appreciably different. Since only pakka food tended to be cooked during feasts, the expression of caste distinction (and inequality) was less a matter of all castes sitting down to eat at the same time, than of the positioning of the eating-line or pangat, which had now become the chief indicator of rank. The question now was ‘whether two castes [could] sit together in one pangat, or whether they must be in two pangats, or else in one pangat but with a gap (ceti) between them to symbolise their difference’ (39). Even here changes were taking place. Some cetis or gaps (6–12 inches) and pangats that existed to indicate differences or inequality between castes in the period 1982–3 had disappeared by 1992. In one feast witnessed by the researcher at this later time, only a Camār Untouchable ‘was seated separately at a distance (but he was served at the same time as everyone else, which would not have happened in 1954)’ (Mayer 1996:42). Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that most resistance to change occurred – and this is still generally the case – on the part of the higher non-Untouchable castes with respect to Untouchables. Mayer also notes that women, in general more conservative than their menfolk, in this village had begun to follow the example of the latter, especially among the younger generation. And it is not without significance that in the public spaces of the village teashops and wayside restaurants (dhabas), the rules of commensality obtaining between all the castes (including the Untouchables) had become more relaxed. ‘Not only the clientele but also the staff [of the dhabas] are of various castes, [the] cooks and dishwashers including both [higher] and [lower] castes such as Chamars and Balais’ (ibid.:45).
Occupational changes had taken place too. In 1954, almost all those of the artisan castes, e.g. carpenters, potters, barbers and tanners, tended to follow their traditional callings; so did the agricultural castes, though these were joined by castes whose traditional jobs were defunct in the village, e.g. weaving and oil-pressing. But in 1992, a greater breakdown of the correlation between caste and occupation had occurred. For example, none of the blacksmith-caste were plying their ancestral trade, while most members of the potter-caste were making bricks. None of the tanners were sticking to their last of tanning hides and making shoes;they gathered hides for sale in the nearby town of Dewas, while the goatherds farmed for a living. The priestly ministers of the village continued to include a Brahmin and a number of other castes that served their respective constituencies, but even here there had been changes with some taking up other jobs.9 But though such changes were taking place, group memories were still sharp. Everyone knew what each person's traditional occupation had been and caste was; this was necessary information to negotiate the inherited system of marriage alliances which had remained largely intact (see Mayer 1996:47ff.).
If there is one thing that has not changed over the years, it is this notion of the endogamous caste/subcaste unit. Respondents in 1992 found it difficult to grasp that there was no such unit in my own country – they simply could not understand how marriages could then be made. And when I asked them why, if eating together had arrived without objection, there should not be marriage together [i.e. intermarriage], they did not see this as even a theoretical possibility. To intermarry would be to dissolve the castes and then where would people be ....
(ibid.:57)
In village India, and in the lower socio-economic groups of urban contexts at least, this mentality remains the same. It will take a long time for it to change in any substantial way. But if it is the case that Sanskritization continues with respect to caste in general and particularly in the village, it is also true that a new social phenomenon has been identified in recent times (though hardly with respect to marriage practices); this has been called ‘substantialization’. Here increasing caste solidarity is being expressed within the proximities of ‘horizontal’ strata of the hierarchy rather than through inter-action ‘vertically’ as it were, as in the past. This is a form of homogenization, and it occurs in the wake of new economic demands and their social consequences: new kinds of jobs have been created and older ones undermined; social mobility has become more volatile, and bloc voting patterns in the political arena have become more consequential. This has resulted in communities coming together in certain ways to consolidate the energies of caste proximity and to compete with rival groupings.
However, it is in urban India, where about 35 per cent of the population live at the time of writing, especially in the great metropolitan cities, that thinking about caste and its implications is changing most rapidly. This is the significant divide that remains today where caste is concerned.
In urban locations that have developed out of the ancient past, the living plan often follows the same pattern as in the villages. For example, in the holy city of Hardwar, lying on the banks of India's most sacred river, the Ganges, as it flows through the northern state of Uttaranchal, the highest castes, namely the Brahmins and others, live closest to the ritually pure precincts of the Ganges, while the lower castes live further and further away in proportion to their increasing ritual impurity (Jameson 1976: Chapter 1). Or as Leslie observes (with respect to another example), ‘In Tamilnadu, for example, “untouchables” still refer to the village proper as ūr, while their own separate hamlet is called cêri; this suggests that the inhabitants of the latter do not really belong to the village’ (2003:35). Such rural distinctions are still a pan-Indian phenomenon.
But modern urban areas are not designed in this way, and the insignia of received caste-status has less scope to be displayed. It is in the metropolitan city, among the rising middle-class in particular, that the traditional manifestations of caste rank are undergoing the most rapid change. At the lower socio-economic levels, represented in general by those who sweep, clean, tan, fetch, haul and carry, many hereditary lifestyle discriminations, and some new ones, continue to obtain. Such people live in the poorest accommodation, often in hovels, shacks and slums, with little or no schooling provided for their children, or adequate health care and other basic necessities. In the maelstrom of big-city life today their voices struggle to be heard, if indeed they are heard at all. But among the rising middle-class, a category that is expanding apace, the acquisition of wealth increasingly undermines or at least masks traditional caste-rank, and confers the trappings of a new social status. In these circumstances, there is little or no scope for caste-identification or overt discrimination in such public domains as restaurants, transport facilities, schools, shopping centres, and office blocks. If solidarities continue to assert themselves among the middle-classes in the big city, they are largely the solidarities of regional and linguistic identity, where a preponderance of one community, e.g. Tamils or Bengalis or Punjabis, can be found in neighbourhoods o
r even apartment blocks. With regard to the urban phenomenon, the sociologist André Béteille writes:
The social world created by education, occupation and income, the office, the firm, the law court and the laboratory, cuts across the social world of caste. The social circle of the Brāhmaṇ judge, diplomat, engineer, civil servant or manager is not the same as that of the Brāhmaṇ clerk, schoolteacher or cook. Particularly among the higher occupational strata, many relationships are formed that cut across caste, as may be easily seen from the patterns of residence in large metropolitan cities where housing goes directly with occupation and income, and only indirectly with caste.
(cf. Fuller 1996:174)
As I have indicated, caste competition and/or consolidation is far from dead; nevertheless, as C.J. Fuller points out, it is difficult to endorse caste hierarchy in contemporary public discourse. Euphemisms such as ‘cultural difference(s)’ with reference to ‘communities’ or Samāj (‘society’) tend to be used instead, and ‘the language of difference can be a coded means to assert the status of one's own caste and to justify inequality among castes. Hence the significance of this language partly lies in the opportunity that it provides to say the publicly illegitimate, legitimately’ (1996:14).
But there is a twist in the tail. Recent Government legislation endorsing positive or affirmative action and various concessions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes can in some instances lead to rather bemusing reactions. In May 2007 disturbances broke out in the western state of Rajasthan. The Gujjars, traditionally low-caste pastoralists and herders (but not Untouchables), and as a caste representing 10% of Rajasthan's population, demanded to be downgraded to dalit status. The British newspaper, The Guardian, of 30 May that year, quoted a dalit writer on caste as follows: ‘The problem for the Gujjars is that they face too much competition from rival farming castes. They want an easier competition, from the lowest castes such as dalits and tribals, and therefore agitate to be socially downgraded’. Whether they want an easier competition or more congenial circumstances, in terms of Government action, in which they can strive to overcome their social disadvantages, their demand represents a move away from what has been the norm. If this indicates a new trend, perhaps it can be called ‘Dalitization’. In any case, in terms of the broad picture, caste is certainly alive and well in India – but it is changing its spots.
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 26