History Of Caste

[acharya]

Paolo Aranha, PhD Student – Department of History and Civilization, European University
Institute (Florence, Italy)
Missionary constructions of Hinduism and caste in the controversy on the Malabaric Rites (XVII-XVIII centuries)
The adaptationist methods followed by the Jesuits in their Madurai mission after the arrival of
Roberto Nobili in 1606 produced both in India and in Europe the so called "Controversies on the
Malabaric Rites". The whole principle of "missionary adaptation" (accomodatio) was based on the belief
that in regions as India or China it was possible to draw a clear line between social and cultural
phenomena on one side and religious beliefs and practices on the other.
The Jesuits claimed that the caste system was purely social, so that neophytes could bring it with
them once they joined the Catholic Church. Caste distinctions were seen as compatible with
Christianity and even untouchability was supposed to be analogous to European forms of social
distinction and exclusion. If castes were merely social, it was necessary to trace the borders of the
"Indian heathenism" ("Hinduism" was not yet an available category) as a specific religion.
The paper analyses the implicit characters that the religion of the great majority of South Indians had
in the eyes of the Jesuit missionaries and tries to verify whether this meant an interiorisation and
privatisation of religion. It also considers the way the critics of the “Malabaric Rites” described the
Indian native religion. The dichotomy between “aristocratic analogies” and “demotic descriptions”,
proposed by Ines Županov in her book Disputed Mission (OUP India, 1999), will be applied in order
to see whether it allows us also to detect the line that connects different treatises against the
Malabaric Rites written between the XVII and the XVIII centuries.
Finally, using the sources of the Roman Archives of the Holy Office and of the Congregation for the
Propagation of the Faith, the paper analyses reports and theological debates, substantiated with
abundant ethnographic accounts, through which the central Catholic bureaucracy in Rome tried to
interpret the Indian castes and particularly the practices of untouchability.
The aim is to extend the debate on the colonial construction of Hinduism to a phase and to actors
which have not yet been sufficiently studied, i.e. the early modern Catholic missionaries in South
India and the pre-orientalistic interpretations they produced on the religion of the people they sought
to convert. The paper will discuss to which extent these missionary constructions could be also
interpreted as colonial productions, in a period and a region where France, Great Britain and other
minor European nations were still competing with each other and all depended to a great extent on
local South Indian powers.


Scaria Zacharia, Professor Emeritus of Malayalam – School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University
(Changanacherry, India)
Caste system and Indian Religion
The question “are there native religions in India” has to be asked in the larger context of the
everyday life of Indians. The colonial wisdom eschewed everyday life and drew from textual sources
provided by the upper class priestly groups of Indian society. Indology and orientalism reinforced
this process and developed it to the extent of influencing the self-perception of ordinary western
educated Indians. So, there is justification in searching for alternative methodologies to understand
the ‘religious’ heritage of India.
Let me draw your attention to Kerala, which had Jews, Christians and Muslims as distinct religious
communities even during the first millennium of CE. These Semitic religious groups existed in
Kerala society as distinct but totally integrated communities. (In this context, I’d love to describe
Kerala society as a hyphenated society where oneness is maintained along with distinctions. It works
like a hyphenated compound where hyphen maintains both distinctiveness of components and
oneness of the compound.) The working principles of this model can be learned from the study of
Tarisappally Copper Plate Grants to Thomas Christians (8th Century), Jewish Copper Plate Grants
10th Century. The identification of these religious communities during the pre-colonial period can
provide clues for understanding religious identification in India as a distinct process. The sixteenth
century document of the Synod of Diamper refers to the traditional Thomas Christians’ claim that
they are a distinct Jati ‘sect/community’. The colonial wisdom has no hesitation in translating Jati as
‘caste’. The terms kulam and Jati are used by Jews also to refer to their community. We find ample
reasons to contest the colonial practice of translating Jati as Caste from the living experience of
Indian Jews and Christians for the Jews and Christians Jati was and is their community identity. The
leader of the Christian community was described in the pre-colonial period as Jatikkukartavyan which
means ‘the head of the community’.<b>
The Portuguese and other colonialists translated Indian concepts and practices in terms of western
Christian concepts and practices causing total intellectual confusion, which is carried on to the
present. For example, colonialists translated Marthomayude margavum Vazhipadum as law of St.
Thomas. The arbitrary manner in which the marga is translated as law can be cited as the typical
example of Western intellectualisation of Indian Knowledge and experience. The critical concept in
the pre-colonial Indian Christian discourse is inangu ‘communion’. The religiosity was performed
during the pre-colonial India through Inangu ‘communion’ and it was not exclusivist or
monopolistic. We hope this dimension of the everyday Indian religious life is pertinent in
understanding the caste system of pre-colonial India.</b>