Caste and colonial rule (original) (raw)

Is there a secular trend of decline in the strength of caste in Indian society? My assessment is that there is, although one cannot be categorical because there are many counter-currents that act against the main current. Further, I believe that the trend of change towards the weakening of caste began during the British rule around the middle of the 19th century and has continued, with many ups and downs, till the present. This view is at odds with the current enthusiasm for identity politics in which signs of the growing importance of caste are seen as indications of a progressive movement towards the attainment of social justice. In the early years of independence, forward-looking Indians had their minds on development and modernisation, and when they thought of caste, they thought of it as an obstacle. Liberal and radical intellectuals alike believed that caste belonged to India's past, not its future. Marxists were particularly scornful of those who undertook to study and write about caste. They believed that it was a fit subject for bourgeois sociologists but not for those concerned with the real contradictions in society. They believed that caste consciousness was an obstacle to class formation. But we cannot for that or any other reason wish it out of existence. Caste continued to receive the attention of sociologists and social anthropologists in the 1950s and 1960s, and they were joined by small numbers of political scientists and others. It was M.N. Srinivas who more than any other scholar pointed to the continuing, and in some respects increasing, importance of caste. Without taking anything away from Srinivas's foresight, it must be pointed out that in making his case about the resurgence of caste in independent India; he took all his examples from the field of politics. If we focus our attention on the political process alone, we are likely to conclude that caste has grown stronger and not weaker since the time of the Emergency. Caste is now used more extensively and more openly for the mobilisation of political support than it was ever before. If our objective is to assess long-term trends of change in caste, it will be a mistake to concentrate solely on politics, and that too on electoral politics. A serious weakness in the scholarly writing on caste in the last 25 years and particularly since the time of the Mandal agitations has been the neglect of all aspects of caste other than the political. The association between caste and occupation has weakened, slowly but steadily, while restrictions on marriage