The issue of casteism outside Hinduism has sparked controversies and discussions, with the attack on Dalit Christians in Janwada, Shankarpally Mandal in Rangareddy District of Telangana.
Though the system of hierarchical social division based on caste exists across South Asian countries, India stands out from the rest by a unique feature. The institution of caste in India has a religious sanction by Hinduism, which can’t be seen in other countries which has/had the social division based on caste.
To understand the evolution of Caste and how the institution of caste gained religious sanction in India, we must therefore clearly define what caste is.
Caste is a self-enclosed, that naturally restricts intercourse between its members and outsiders, and prohibits dining with others. These restrictions on inter-dining and marriage can be seen in tribal societies across the world, from this we can deduce that caste was a feature of every tribal society.
Now that we have defined what caste is, we must define how caste, a feature of every ancient uncivilized tribal society fused into civilized society and evolved into hierarchical social division in India and institutionalized by religious sanctions.
As Dr. Ambedkar in his paper ‘Caste in India’ says different races entered India and fought with each other, after a fistful of fights they settled as peaceful neighbours, and with constant contact and mutual intercourse they developed a common culture superseding the individual distinctive traditions of each race.
To understand this evolution of common culture one must understand ancient Indian history, for the same purpose let’s take Historian D.D. Kosambi
As DD Kosambi says “THE ENTIRE COURSE OF INDIAN HISTORY SHOWS TRIBAL ELEMENTS BEING FUSED INTO A GENERAL SOCIETY.” This phenomenon, which lies at the very foundation of the most striking Indian social feature, namely caste.
To understand how this fusion took place we must therefore divide Indian history into 4 phases.
1. Entry of Aryans and Merging of constantly fighting Aryan and Non- Aryan communities to form a new Aryan community
2. Achieving a class division between the Ganas, the agricultural producing class, and the ruling class which appropriates the surplus production.
3. Incorporating the strongest of the non-Aryan Ganas, by introducing the usage of iron thereby creating a division of labour and incorporating it into the wider Aryan community.
4. Role of Buddhism in Spreading
1. Usage of iron tools
2. Introducing division of labour
These 4 Phases at times happened parallel to one another sometimes one after the other.
Now let’s understand these 4 phases, through which Indian society which once was a dispersed yet loosely connected ancient nomadic tribal society transformed into settled self-sufficient agrarian village communities, which further ossifies into primitive, self-sufficient, stagnant, and isolated village economies.
According to Historian DD. Kosambi, Aryans entered India in two phases between 2000- 1000 BC. These Aryans being pastoral tribes didn’t have a specific tradition, they appropriated the traditions of tribes whom they had defeated, thus Aryans successfully acted as a catalyst in transforming societies from the New Stone Age to the Iron Age. Aryans first entered India around 2000 B.C. By then there lived a few Pastoral tribes and few tribes who were accustomed to agriculture of simple form, and a few tribes which are still in the Nomadic stage, according to DD. Kosambi Aryans destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization around 1750 B.C. and they fought with the Non – Aryan Tribes who were living there and subjugated them.
Evolution of Brahmanism and Merging of Aryan and Non-Aryan races to form a new wider Aryan community.
A little introspection into Ancient Indian History will tell us during the Rig Vedic period or early Vedic period there was no Varna system, rituals were done by a person in a family, and there was no bar or restriction on anyone to perform those rituals, this shows a separate Brahmin class is absent in the early Vedic period, or Rig Vedic period. However the origin of Brahmin class lies in keeping the Vedic mantras secret without writing them down, whoever wants to learn these mantras has to choose a teacher who lives in the forest, serves him, collects food for him, feeds his cattle, does all his chores, and learn from him all the Rig-Vedic mantras for few years. Those who have completed learning of Rig Vedic Mantras in above mentioned way will be termed as Priests.
As mentioned above Aryan and Non – Aryan races constantly fought among and with each other, these newly formed Priestly classes performed rituals on behalf of whoever granted them rewards and elevated their status to Aryans, and thus the priests expanded the Aryan community and formed a new Brahmin class, with the priests of both Aryan and Non-Aryan races.
The Heads of the Non – Aryan community are taken into the Aryan Ruling Class and the Commoners are taken as common slaves (Shudras) to the whole Aryans.
This marks the start of the evolution of common culture as stated by Ambedkar.
Achieving a class division between the Gana, the agricultural producing class, and the ruling class which appropriates the surplus production.
As we have seen above, the Aryans by constant contact and fighting with Non – Aryans created a separate Brahmin class and subjugated the Non- Aryan commoners as combined slaves ( Shudras ) of the whole Aryan community, they also formed a new Ruling Class by appropriating the heads of the Non – Aryans.
The second phase of Aryans migrated to India around 1200-1000 B.C, these migrated Aryans were accustomed to the usage of iron (change in modes of production), and this brought large areas under cultivation, thereby production of food increased, which made surplus possible. These surpluses gave rise to two things
1. A class of people who expropriated the surplus produced
2. A method namely Varna Dharma by which surplus produced was expropriated (relations of Production).
The appropriation of Non – Aryan communities into Aryan Varna Dharma continues and the Expropriation of surplus continues, let’s examine how this takes place in detail.
It’s the tradition of tribal communities to submit the gathered food or yield of the hunt to the head of the tribe, the head of the tribe performs ritualistic offerings to God and redistributes it. This is called Potlatch in anthropology. The origin of Class Division and Exploitation lies in these Ritualistic offerings, the chief or head of the tribe who redistributes the yield of the hunt or gathering has a larger scope to save for himself more, as they move from food gatherers and hunters to Food producers and as the Produce increases, the chief or head of the tribe receives a lot of produce, to expropriate these produce these heads of the tribe formed into a ruling class[Kshatriya] and to make others believe this expropriation is natural they required the help of the newly formed Brahmin class.
These newly formed Brahmin and Ruling classes helped each other in introducing class division and expropriating the surplus, the other important thing we find during this period is the usage of the word vish to indicate the commoners (Vaishya) in the appropriated tribe, who works for the Brahmins and Kshatriyas.
This completes the three phases in which Aryans entered India formed into new classes, introduced the division of labour, and created two four classes in which Shudra and Vaishya will serve the Brahmin and Kshatriyas.
As we have seen the evolution of Brahmin Kshatriya Vaishya’s Shudras classes and how surplus was extracted, this process continued for around 400 years from 1000 B.C to 600 B.C, during these years a major part of eastern India and northern India flourished, transformed from Ganas to kingdoms and major Kingdoms. Guilds of traders and Manufacturers are formed from Vaishyas. This increase in kingdoms led to a major increase in exploitation, increase in Yagnas and sacrifices of animals, in retaliation to this exploitation and animal sacrifices Buddhism was born. Buddhism now helpes spreading the division of labour and civilization to ancient uncivilized nomadic tribal societies in the South of India.
As I mentioned earlier each phase at times took place parallel to each other or sometimes one after the other, when the society transformed from a nomadic pastoral state to a settled agriculture stage In north India, South of India was still in its early stage, some tribes were in its nomadic stage, some tribes took agriculture during monsoon and returned to pastoral life.
Buddhism played a major part in transforming South India. Buddhists built monasteries at the junctures where ancient tribal societies performed rituals, and taught them a way of life that follows peace, a life that won’t associate itself with violence, and introduced agriculture to these nomadic pastoral tribals. Traders (Vaishya’s still working as agriculture labourers) constantly traded with these tribes who were in the process of transformation from nomadic tribal society to self-sufficient village economies. Traders collected the forest produce from these tribals and provided them with the tools produced by required for agriculture. Traders also donated to monasteries and used these monasteries as warehouses, thus traders funded Buddhist monasteries which provided safety to their goods stored, which also helped Buddhism to flourish.
These tribal units with the introduction of the division of labour formed into self-sufficient agrarian economies and tribal units in which the division of labour was absent took the form of production guilds of the specific produce they are expertise in. With these tribal units developing into self-sufficient villages, their dependency on traders was reduced, affecting traders’ business. Traders who lost their businesses stopped funding monasteries. now the Buddhist way of life would no longer suffice the growing needs of village economies, so they needed a system for their growing needs, Vedic culture provided them the social structure to cater to those growing needs, and this led to the downfall of Buddhism.
When the south of India reached a stage of self-sufficient villages, the manufacturer guilds and trader guilds started moving into newly formed village economies and settled as caste.
These tribal units which took the form of either producers or traders didn’t lose their 2 main tribal features.
1. Each tribe that took the form of caste has its traditions, rituals, and practices.
2. Restrictions on marrying outside the tribe.
These two are the features of every tribal society and they’ve retained them.
Now the newly formed Brahmins move in and settle in these villages the same way they have done in the North of India and introduce to them panchangam which predicts the onset of monsoon, which is crucial for agrarian economies, thus Brahmins obtained a stronghold over these economies and controlled them.
These newly formed Brahmin classes successfully appropriated the natural traditions of every tribal society as ancient Vedic culture, they further ossified the division of labour, when more and more trade and manufacturing guilds started moving into newly formed villages they classified them as SHUDRAS, Thus Vaishya’s became smaller, endogamy the natural traditions was made a customary practice by granting it religious sanction. The social hierarchical social order was then given by Manu based on the commodity value that each guild turned into a caste produced.
Now the case of untouchables according to Babasaheb’s who were the untouchables, Untouchables are the last tribal units that took up agriculture in a bond with the settled agrarian community and were followers of Buddhism, the untouchability was enforced upon them for their habit of beef-eating.
As Babasaheb says “Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy.” The tribes in India fused to form Brahmin and Kshatriya classes and they further imposed restrictions on marriage and used caste as a tool to prevent marrying outside the caste.
This pretty much explains Ambedkar’s theory of Common Culture evolution.
As we have seen the characteristic of caste is endogamy which is a feature of every tribal society we can deduce that religion has nothing to do with the institution called caste. People in India have practiced Casteism assuming every tradition in the society is a product of Vedic culture, which was not the case in reality. Through decades of rigorous practice of Endogamy and rules imposed to protect the endogamy, Caste became part of a Common Culture that evolved with the mixing of Aryan and Non-Aryan races.
As Ambedkar says “common culture is the binding factor for India’s population” which we call unity in diversity, Caste which became a part of the common culture has become a norm that every Indian carries across religions.
People generally assume Casteism exists only in Hinduism, which is false because people fail to acknowledge caste as an integral part of the common culture that binds Indians together. From Karamchedu, Tsunduru, and the recent Janawada incident all the victims are Dalit Christians who’ve changed their religion, but the hierarchical place assigned to them imbibed in the people’s lifestyle treated them as Untouchables, attacked them and hacked them to death.
This clearly shows Caste in India has no religious barriers, and the solution to a caste-free society lies in Socio-Religious reformations.