Shedding colonial baggage

Shedding colonial baggage

BB Kumar’s book is a rich collection of materials and painstaking analysis, writes Satya Mitra Dubey

India: Caste, Culture and Traditions
Author: BB Kumar
Publisher: Yash Publications
Price: Rs 2,100

Author BB Kumar, being a teacher, an academic administrator in the field of higher education, an active researcher with training in anthropology, with his natural inclination for a textual and empirical understanding of Indian society mixed with first hand familiarity with the linguistic, socio-cultural and political problems of the tribes of the Northeast, can easily depend on his experience and study to write a book on Indian castes, culture and traditions.

According to him, “The confusion of the average Indian about our social structure, culture and tradition is enormous. The root cause is our culture and tradition illiteracy that is quite high in society, especially among our university degree holders. One reason for this is the continuance of the old colonial education in our country even after Independence.”

Kumar is of the view that social science disciplines such as anthropology, history and Indology, apart from the mindset of a large section of educated Indians, are coloured by colonial misinterpretations. This is primarily the motivating factor for writing this book. “Efforts should be made to get our social sciences and education rid of the all pervasive colonial hangover without any delay. The book, written with this perspective in mind, tries to inform about Indian social structures — varna and caste — and the various other aspects of our culture and tradition in the succeeding chapters,” Kumar says.

Al Beruni mentions only four castes and eight outcastes in Hindu society and the fact that all the four castes, as observed by him, had no hesitation in eating together, Kumar says, indicates that the caste system in its present form is a post-Turk phenomenon. The constant invasions, wars, defeats and reprisals in the medieval period generated insularity among Hindus, leading to the hardening of commensality and extreme forms of the notions of purity and pollution.

The early administrators of East India Company were primarily interested in profit through loot, expansion and consolidation of the British Empire. The well-integrated Indian society and stable village communities were portrayed in their reports, monographs and surveys as consisting of isolated, mutually-exclusive castes, tribes, communities, linguistic groups, sects, religions and mass of people geographically scattered and racially distinct.

Some of the early Western translators of Sanskrit texts into English deliberately misinterpreted the philosophical and religious concepts. By this the main purpose was to strengthen colonial rule, propagate Christianity and convert Indians. To achieve these objectives, Indian customs and traditions were degraded.

Going through these bold assertions, a natural question may arise: Has Kumar offered sustainable evidence to prove his line of argument? Yes.

The author recognises the valuable contributions made by William Jones and a host of other scholars and administrators. But at the same time, he points to the negative, distorted and motivated pictures of Indian society as presented by Abbe JA Dubois, Max Mueller, James Mill, ET Dalton, HH Risley, among others.

James Mill’s History of British India was recommended as a basic text for candidates of the Indian Civil Service. Even a pro-colonial scholar like Max Mueller calls this book “most mischievous”. According to a well-known Sanskrit scholar, Prof Wilson: “Mill, in his estimate of Hindu character, is guided by Dubois … Orme and Buchanan, Tenant and Ward, all of them neither very competent nor very unprejudiced judges. Mill, however, picks out all that is most unfavourable from their works and omits the qualifications which these writers felt bound to give to their wholesale condemnation of the Hindus.”

Brahmins, being the intellectual class in India, were especially targeted. Dubois considered them the greatest hurdle in winning “India for Christ”. The Boden Professorship of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford was established to translate Sanskrit books into English so as to enable the British to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion. Macaulay, who had a design of “proselytisation through education”, proposed to pay £10,000 to Max Mueller for translating the Rig Veda in such a manner that it would destroy the belief of Hindus in the Vedic religion.

In Kumar’s assessment, in the early phases, the process of differentiation and stratification based on the varna system was positive. The varna system played significant roles in division of labour in Indian society and helped in organising occupational structure. Its contributions were pivotal in the socio-cultural integration of Indian society. The present degraded form of rigid and untouchabilty-based caste system is the product of the latter phases. In the first decades of the 20th century, such views were strongly upheld by scholars like Bhagwan Das and Anand K Coomaswami. Even Mahatma Gandhi had highlighted the positive roles of varna and caste.

The author has tried to discuss different aspects of caste in different chapters with special emphasis on its relationship with varna, professions and mobility, clan and marriage, food taboos and commensality, caste clusters, socio-religious practices, panchayats and castes and the caste-tribe continuum. There are chapters on deities and priests, the jajmani relationship and Scheduled Castes.

In the evaluation of any work, there are bound to be different opinions. This book, too, is not an exception. For its rich collection of materials and painstaking analysis, this book deserves admiration. At the same time, in this era of ideological controversies and political motivations, some others may find it tradition-oriented.

Both these stands will make this book more readable and valuable.

The writer is a senior sociologist and political analyst