History Of Caste

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Indian Thoughts and the Western Mind





Mayank Shekhar talks about the caste system and its origins in modern Indian history



Around 1960, Dharampal was traveling in train from Gwaliar to Delhi. He came across a group of people from two villages on teertha, pilgrimage, who had gone from near Luckhnow to Ramehswaram. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> Dharampal narrates in his works an experience he had through this interaction in the train.

“I said they must all be from one jati, from a single caste group. They said, ‘No, no! We are not from one jati—we are from several jatis.’ I said, how could that be? They said that there was no jati on a yatra—not on a pilgrimage. I didn’t know that.”

The so called caste lines that we all were told and believe as facts were not so. Dharampal, a 38 year old Gandhian then, admits he didn’t know. The small interaction threw the Gandhian into introspection. Where did we acquire this idea of caste based society? The ways of the society certainly was not the perspective of those who spoke for and about the Indian society. It was not even in the perspective of those who took the mantle to govern India after transfer of power from the British. During the interaction in train that lasted over 6 to 7 hours, Dharampal also enquired if they would go to see Delhi, the capital of the free India. Their negative response left Dharampal wondering.



“Those people on their pilgrimage were not interested in any of this. And they were representative of India. More representative of India than Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ever was. Or I and most of us could ever be.”



Dharampal describes this experience of his as



“I think in a way that meeting gave me a view of India, the larger India.”



The characteristics of a caste system, in its origin in the West, do not reflect in the ways of people of India or the Hindu society. The caste system in the West is a social stratification based on inheritance, endogamy, economic and political power. These were of the clergy, the rulers, and the commoner. Inheritance and endogamy were important elements of the caste system. In practice this lead to segregation and access to rights (consumption, occupational and ceremonial). In John Locke’s words, West was barbarian. What we know of India, its society and systems today, is what Westerners described of it. Their description was not a factual account of India. In Prof. Balagangadhar’s words, “Indians took to this way of talking about themselves the way ducks take to water.”



It is a little known fact that until the seventeenth century European traveler’s records from India reported a highly educated and productive Indian society. Together with China, India produced 73% of the world’s industrial production in 1750. While education was accessible only to the privileged in the eighteenth century England, India had an elaborate system of education. Drawing attention to civility amongst Indians and Indian education, John Locke attributed this barbarianism (in the West) to lack of education. These facts are not found in the textbooks.



The acquired knowledge of caste system is invariably accompanied with the stories around water wells, physical beatings, denial of access to temples and untouchability. One can certainly leave the emotional pitch found in these stories aside. The Christian missionaries and travelers who landed in India saw the so-called caste system and described their observations as such, but, there is no mention of any of the horror stories.



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