This is the paper I wrote for my History Seminar class, in completion of my B.A. requirements. I’m proud enough of it to post it here, though I’m also quite aware of its many flaws, chiefly the fact that it sort of falls apart toward the end. But, I also think that it is a good exposition of a better than average grasp of the mechanics of writing such a paper. As with most aspects of my academic career, it is more significant for the potential it hints at than for any exceeding amount of ability it displays. In any case, I got an A…so somebody liked it. I dare you to read the whole thing and stay awake.
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The Indian struggle for independence was a fight to define the country’s identity. This is true not just in relation to India’s former colonial masters and the world at large, but also within the country itself. Contention with the British brought to the foreground issues of ethnicity, tribalism and caste which had been subsumed by centuries of social and political structure implemented from above by the Aryans, the Mughals, and then the English. Of course, these issues were always present but had been neatly glossed over by orthodox worldviews or, in the case of the English, rigid political systems whose logical extensions were equally rigid anthropologies. The identity crisis experienced by India was finally resolved by a gradual reconfiguring of the political structure at the grassroots level.
During the gradual British conquest of the subcontinent, the Indian problem of identity found its roots in European Orientalism. It would be easy to define this term as being the study of the East, its root term being “Orient.” But even at this most fundamental level, we encounter semantic difficulties. Ronald Inden indicates that “Orient” historically referred to two different concepts; the first, older, idea denotes roughly the area covered by the Ottoman Turkish Empire. (1)
The second concept is that of the Far East. This includes the more distant territories of China, India, Korea and even Japan. India’s status as a subcontinent falls under this second overarching rubric of “Oriental.” (2)
The difference between these two notions encased within one word may seem purely academic, but they mean a lot in practical use. According to Inden, “(Western Europe) saw the Semitic Near East and Aryan Persia as sharing a fundamentally monotheistic and individualist culture/values with Christian Europe (and America) and contrasted this world with the more distant East, that comprising India and China (along with Japan and Central and Southeast Asia). (3) Subsequent reference to the term Orientalism in this paper will refer to the study of the Far East, specifically the society, customs and norms of India. But the internal dichotomy of the word “Orient” should be taken as an example of the sense of distance possessed by the early Orientalists.
This line of study eventually contributed to the paternalistic attitude the British held vis-à-vis the subcontinent. Inden references the implicit Orientalist view that the development of Western society happens along lines of individual human agency as opposed to India, where actions and progress are framed within the context of the caste system and Brahmanical law. He argues that this necessitated “the wholesale dismissal of Indian political institutions” and “the depiction of Indian thought as inherently symbolic and mythical rather than rational and logical.” (4)
This distancing played a very practical role in Western interactions with the people of India. “Often, though not invariably, so called orientalists saw Hindus as the prisoners of an inflexibly hierarchical and Brahman-centered value system,” writes Susan Bayly. “Their insistence on this point played a significant part in the making of a more caste-conscious social order.” (5)
In an article on tribalism in India, Ajay Skaria highlights Partha Chatterjee’s concept of “’the rule of difference’ – the idea that the colonized were fundamentally different from the colonizers. If the difference between the colonizers and the colonized were to be erased, there would be no justification for colonial presence.” (6)
Under British rule, the result of this was an increased focus on caste as a socially and politically crucial institution. This was likely a case of the British conveniently using a hierarchical system that was already in place, and, as Bayly points out:
“…This is not to say that caste was in any simplistic sense a creation of the colonial scholar-officials, or a misperception on the part of fantasising (sic) Western commentators. Nor is it to say that the ‘modernisation’ of India would somehow have taken a casteless or caste-denying form under a different kind of political order.” (7)
In fact, the quality of English understanding of social divisions in India is more important than the degree to which they stressed such divisions. In his book “The Martial Races of India,” Sir George MacMunn – a Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery – makes an unabashed statement of purpose in the introduction. He states that he has undertaken his study of the militaristic segment of India’s population in order to satiate the English interest in the sepoys’ assistance in WWI and address the “admiration of the way that they and the police have resisted inoculation with the Ghandi poison….” (8)
If this was not a bold enough indication of the polemical nature of MacMunn’s undertaking, his subsequent note on methodology would clearly indicate what the reader should take away from the volume.
“I have therefore endeavoured to draw the picture and tell the story of Rajput and Turk, of Afghan and Sikh, of Mahratta and Mogul, not as the scientist and ethnologist would want it, but rather as the ordinary reading and understanding public would wish to see it,” writes MacMunn. (9)
It is commendable that MacMunn clearly indicates his credentials, or lack thereof, before engaging the reader. Nonetheless, it is clear from the very introduction that MacMunn has only a rather low level of understanding of his subject matter, and this is the same level he intends to convey to his audience. Further on, MacMunn explicitly conveys that the picture he is rendering is one in which the players fit very neatly into the slots provided for them by their caste and ethnicity:
“We do not speak of the martial races of Britain as distinct from the non-martial , nor of Germany, nor of France. But in India we speak of the martial races as a thing apart and because the mass of the people have neither martial aptitude nor physical courage…the courage that we should talk of colloquially as ‘guts.’” (10)
Clearly, in India, there are martial races and there are non-martial races; there are merchant castes and non-merchant castes; there are politicians and non-politicians. But the lines between these sets of people are very clear and unable to be broken. The difference between Westerners and Indians could not be clearer: in Europe, England and America a person could have several different roles. He could even be a soldier, merchant and politician all at the same time. In India, though, people are (or, at least, were supposed to be) one thing for the rest of their lives.
Other writings on the same subject are not so regimented, but they still convey the same tendency of making over-arching conclusions based on a person’s caste or race. A good example of this is “The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India,” by R.V. Russell, Superintendent of Ethnography for the Indian Civil Service, and his assistant Rai Bahadur Hira Lal. This four-volume collection is written in a much more sober and ostensibly objective manner than MacMunn’s work. However, it is just this systematic manner that betrays a lack of understanding on the part of the authors.
The entry for the caste of Basor (bamboo worker) serves as a clear example of the methodology. It fills barely five pages. Those pages are segmented into six paragraphs which, in order, deal with numbers and distribution, caste traditions, subdivisions, marriage, religion and social status, and occupation. (11) One is presented with the stark details of who these people were but left with a deeply inadequate understanding.
In his book “Caste, Class and Democracy: Changes in a Stratification System,” Vijai P. Singh discusses the relationship between the pan-India varna caste system with localized jati system. In doing so, he hints at some of the difficulties inherent in the Orientalist approach. He writes, “Leaving aside other aspects of stratification, even the ritual structure is not accepted as fixed by some caste groups.” (12)
Singh goes on to explain that there is mobility within the caste system in the form of the process of sanskritization. By this term is meant the process by a lower caste group can elevate its rank within the caste system – sometimes as quickly as in one or two generations. Three means of achieving this mobility are cited: acquisition of wealth, adoption of a higher caste group’s cultural practices, and avoidance of external opposition while also maintaining group integrity. (13)
Paradoxically, despite their efforts to codify the distinctions of the caste system, the British also provided a means by which caste mobility could be achieved. Singh points to Westernization as another means of climbing the ranks of the caste system. Westernization consists of adopting the habits and culture traits of Western society. Singh provides such examples as eating beef or pork, wearing Western cloths, acquiring a Western education and using Western medicine and technology. (14)
“Westernization therefore involves the adoption of some of those customs and practices that are associated with the British in India,” writes Singh. “Many of these customs are at variance with the life styles of higher-caste culture, but they have been accepted by many higher castes themselves, especially the educated elites, as they present channels of mobility outside the caste system.” (15)
The complexity of the social situation in India had prompted the British to project a pattern onto the population that was at best too rigid to reflect the reality of their environment. From the top-down perspective of colonial rule, it became easy to misperceive the reality that existed amongst the general population of Indians. However, this misunderstanding of the social dynamics of India on the part of the British did not negate the fact that there was very real ambiguity concerning Indian national identity. This ambiguity would have to be brought to manageable level before self-rule could be successfully implemented.
A.O. Hume points to this dilemma in his 1888 speech on the objects of the Congress movement (though he could not have known the eventual end to which this line of thought would be taken). He lists as the first object of the Congress, “The fusion into one national whole of all the different and, till recently discordant, elements that constitute the population of India.” (16)
An easy way to begin looking at these discordant elements is to classify them. Three crucial, though by no means exclusive, categories can be found in ethnicity, tribalism and caste. Approaching the problem from this perspective provides a useful means of avoiding the colonial mistake of attempting to classify indigenous identity by instead trying to classify the difficulties that confronted indigenous identity. Each of these topics reveals a different way in which the Indian quest for identity interacted with the restrictions put in place by the colonial apparatus.
Prema Kurien presents the argument that in the state of Kerala the social structure of interdependent castes and religious groups broke down in the face of colonialism. As a result, each of the resulting units started to develop “autonomous ethnic identities.” (17)
Kurien studied three communities in Kerala: the Mappilas (Muslims), the Ezhava (lower-caste Hindus) and Syrian Christian (upper-caste). She stresses that these religious denotations are merely an easy means of discerning the individual groups. Their ethnicity and, implicitly, what she takes as her definition of ethnicity can be found in differences amongst the groups defined around a complex aggregate of qualities such as family and community structures, inheritance systems, gender roles, and economic position. (18)
The author goes on to identify ethnicities as “segmented communal groups, whose members have a common descent belief, a sense of distinct identity from the rest of society and institutionalized boundary-marking mechanisms….” She also differentiates between ethnicity and caste by defining the former as segmented, complete, socially independent units and the latter as specialized, interdependent parts of a larger social group. (19)
The organization of society in Kerala before and during the early part of colonialism was defined along caste lines with a small Brahman class, a Kshatriya class and a Sudra class, but no Vaisyas. Jews, Christians and Muslims conducted most business transactions. (20)
British rule brought with it a drastic reconfiguring of this organization of Kerala society. Previously, the district of Malabar had been ruled by the Muslim sultans of Mysore, who leveled drastic measures against the high-caste landlords. The British bolstered the landlords in order to undercut the power of the Muslim Mappila minority after their conquest of Malabar (1799). As a result, the landlords wrested control of Muslim-owned lands and implemented exorbitant rent. This caused the Muslims to further distance themselves from the high-caste Hindus and spurred a revolt amongst the cultivating classes which had to be brutally repressed. (21)
Meanwhile, the British formed an alliance with the Christians in order to solidify their political power in the region, while commercialization was providing an opportunity for the low-caste Ezhavas to improve their positions. Once they were able to get a toe-hold in this segment of the community, they started pushing for more improvements in their social standing. This activism would eventually lead to the rise of the communist party in Kerala. (22)
Finally, the British tendency to view Indian society as being a constant struggle between Hindu and Muslim finished the job of turning three caste groups into three different ethnic groups. “Unlike in the Western situation, however, in the pre-colonial context in India, there had been no well developed “Hindu” or “Muslim” identity and no clear social or political separation between the two groups,” writes Kurien. “Thus the salience of religious identities and the subsequent cleavage that developed between the religious groups was fostered through colonial policies.” (23)
Originally, the Muslims and Christians in Kerala were considered honorary Nayars (a sub-caste closely aligned with the Brahmins). After the effects of colonialism wreaked havoc on that system, the Muslims soon found solace in an invading group of Northern Muslims and “adopted distinct types of clothing and hair styles, food prescriptions, and rituals to demonstrate their separation from the Hindus.” (24)
According to Kurien, the Christians were soon separated from the rest of the Nayars because of their patronage by the colonial state, and because of their adoption, then Christianization of Brahmanical rituals. (25)
The ethnicization of the Ezhavas came about as a result of their embrace of commercialism. This fuelled the process of sanskritization and allowed them to attain positions which had previously been reserved for higher-caste citizens. This led to activism under the leadership of Sri Narayana Guru, who touted the slogan, “One caste, one religion, one God for mankind.” (26)
The case of Kerala is one of colonial forces effecting a change in the social statuses of a given region. A community which had once been stratified, diverse but also closely-knit had been pulled apart and sectioned into separate ethnicities. In tribalism, one finds an example of social classification imposed from above in an entirely arbitrary manner.
Skaria locates the source of tribal classification in a system of thought, called Anachronism, which compliments Orientalism. He describes Orientalism as being a system that ascribes cultural qualities to certain groups of people and classifying them separately, in reference to each other. In contrast, Anachronism “ranked these societies in relation to each other, situating them above all in relation to time, or, more specifically, in relation to the modern time that was epitomized by Europe.” (27)
According to Skaria, this system is predicated on the British idea of “wildness,” as opposed to civility. Tribes would be possessed of the former quality, whereas castes reflect the latter, generally speaking. Several factors determined the “wildness” of a given group of people, such as the level of technology and means of subsistence used by the group, the environment the group inhabited (hills and forests being more wild that plains and coastlines), and the presence of literacy and written script. (28)
Tribal classification clearly demonstrates the distorted view with which the British regarded the subcontinent. Skaria points out that certain groups, like the Bhils of Dangs District were arbitrarily given the label of “tribe” even though the only difference between them and Kolis (who were considered a caste) was that the Kolis had taken up settled agriculture in significant numbers. Furthermore, such groups would often be labeled tribes even though they had more in common with local castes than they did with other tribes across India with which they were grouped. (29)
The British sense of tribalism also contributed to their paternalistic behaviors. Skaria points out that there was often reluctance on the part of British officials to prosecute a tribe member when he was charged with killing a native female as a witch. The feeling on the part of British judges was often that the tribesmen didn’t know any better. “The tone was set in the very first case of witch killing tried from Dangs, there the judge remarked that allowance must be made for the ‘particular superstitions’ about witchcraft, and the ‘general moral degradation of the Dangis. (30)
Skaria points out that the feeling of superiority of cast compared to tribe persisted into the post-colonial era, but also notes that the matter of trying witch killers did become less charged when the British left. He attributes this to the changing mentality of the leadership. “What tended to be emphasized was the unity of the nation, and the constructedness of categories such as tribe or caste.” (31)
Nothing could undercut this sense of unity easier than the issue of caste. Often, the people of India were not pitted against the British in the fight to claim their identity, but against each other. The battlefield in such cases was often the very history of the people.
Just such a battle took place over the legend of Sivaji, a hero who presided over the expansion of the Maratha state in the seventeenth century. Stories of the exploits of Sivaji were relayed through the years in the form of popular ballads called pavadas. (32) Though the people of Maharashtra may have been united in the pride they felt in such legends, they did not agree about the historical or social significance of the tale they told.
Rosalind O’Hanlon points out that early pavadas tended to be written in a way that encouraged integration of very different social and regional groups. They conveyed kshatriya values of loyalty and nobility behind which the population at large could unite. By the late nineteenth century, though, the ballads were being written to advance one specific leader or social group over another, thus making the very history of the people a contentious subject. (33)
O’Hanlon highlights three examples of such purposeful interpretations of the myth of Sivaji by Marathi caste groups. One was written by Mahatma Jotirao Phule, an activist for low caste rights, in 1869. Phule crafted a pavada that celebrated the power of the sudras, led by Sivaji in the Marathi fight against the Muslims. Phule represented the Brahmans of Maratha as having usurped power from the sudras since the time of Sivaji and specifically aggrandizing themselves in the colonial era. (34)
Another account of the Sivaji myth is provided by a reformist Brahman, Rajaramasatri Bhagavat, who wrote in 1889. O’Hanlon writes, “Bhagavat set out to argue that western Indian society had always been distinguished by the absence of social conflict, and by its ability to synthesize the best in local and all-India religious culture into a harmonious whole, and argued the achievements of Sivaji to be the product of this harmony.” (35)
Conservative Brahmin Ekanath Annaji Josi wrote a pavada in 1887 which ignored local culture and tradition and offered up Sivaji as the savior of orthodox Hinduism. Josi also used the myth as a platform to speak out against the corruption of Hinduism by western influences. (36)
O’Hanlon points out that the pavadas of these three authors were addressing a population that was still deeply embedded in the folk culture of their section of India. The pavadas were the ideal means of conveying political ideals to such a group, which was largely pre-literate and uneducated in the workings of modern government. (37)
In Phule’s account, Sivaji is referred to as a sudra. One interesting aspect of this pavada is that it takes advantage of a certain ambiguity that existed in Maharashtra with regard to sudra and kshatriya castes. (38) At the same time that the British were using a strict codification of caste differences to depict the foreign nature of the Indian population, here is an example of an Indian trying to break down those strict barriers to reclaim his place in society from a group which he feels has benefited unjustly from the colonial presence.
One finds a similar utilization of ambiguity in the account written by Bhagavat, though he puts it to different use. His account of the Sivaji legend stresses the unity of all the Marathas and specifically argues that there was little difference between Brahman and kshatriya and that even the former went to battle to fight for the people. (39)
O’Hanlon describes Josi’s account as clearly reflecting his Brahmanistic principles. It is written in an elaborate style that uses many long Sanskrit words. Furthermore, his pavada contrasts the threatened and degraded state of India in Sivaji’s time with “a golden age of Hindu India, in which the gods were properly respected, when great sages and rishis guided men in the truths of religion….” (40)
By the time the end of British rule in India came about, it was clear that India needed a new golden age. The Indian people needed to cultivate a sense of nationality that could somehow embrace all the divisions and contentions that populated their history. This golden age was not achieved by semi-mythological warriors, but by real people working on the local and pan-Indian level. They used democracy as a dowsing rod to locate important nationalist characteristics in their own tradition – both indigenous and acquired.
One of the indigenous seeds of democratic nationalism could be found in local government organizations call panchayats. According to one description by William and Charlotte Wiser, these local bodies were not originally conceived with the most democratic ends in mind. In “Behind Mud Walls,” their account of five years spent in the village of Karimpur, the Wisers wrote, “The official revival of the village panchayat (assembly of arbitrators) is an acknowledgement of the power of the leaders.” (41)
This insight is quickly mitigated by the authors’ observation of the group’s function. “They come into it as representatives of the village, and while acting on the panchayat they are expected to consider the order and well-being of the community rather than personal ambitions.” (42)
Over time, this crystallized into something more closely expressing the ideal of popular sovereignty. In describing one level of panchayat, the Wisers write:
“The twenty-three members of the gram panchayat, or village council, are elected every five years. The most recent election was held a year ago and was the third time that the men and women of the village gathered together to vote.” (43)
But, on the pan-Indian level, democratic ideals were largely adopted from the very people the Indians were kicking out, as well as their Western compatriots – specifically, the United States. The thoroughly westernized Jawaharlal Nehru demonstrated this in a speech delivered to the Constituent Assembly in 1947. In this “objectives resolution,” Nehru laid out many of the characteristics the Assembly had agreed should make up the new government. (44) The end result is what could easily be described as a rough draft for a constitution.
Most Westerners would find this document very familiar. It contains provisions that are very clearly stated in the Constitution of the United States of America. This includes the delegation of power – the territories would “exercise all powers and functions of government and administration, save and except such powers and functions as are vested in or assigned to the Union” – as well as the source of it – “all power and authority of the Sovereign Independent India, its constituent parts and organs of government, are derived from the people.” (45)
Though the struggle for independence brought the issue of Indian identity to the foreground in a very urgent way, there may never have been a real identity crisis. There had always been a deeply entrenched sense of nationalism in India; one which adapted indigenous traditions while simultaneously acquiring new traditions from the myriads of people who travelled through the country, ruled it, lost it, settled in it and became a part of it. This adaptability is what allowed India to avoid the destructively reactionary rejection of autocratic rule and augmentation of conservative indigenous influences which has led many other countries down the path of dissolution.
[1] Ronald Inden, “Orientalist Constructions of India,” Modern Asian Studies Vol. 20, no. 3 (1986): 404-405.
2 Ibid., 406.
3 Ibid., 405.
4 Ibid., 402-403.
5 Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, The New Cambridge History Of India, IV.3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 97.
6 Ajay Skaria, “Shades of Wildness: Tribe, Caste and Gender in Western India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 3 (1997): 727.
7 Ibid., 97.
8 Sir George MacMunn, The Martial Races of India, 2nd ed. (Quetta: Abid Bokhari, 1977 [reprint, 1933ed.]), v.
9 Ibid., v.
10 Ibid., 2.
11 R.V. Russell and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, v. 2 (Delhi: Rajdhani Book Centre, 1975 reprint), 208-214.
12 Vijai P. Singh, Caste, Class and Democracy: Changes in a Stratification System. (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1976), 22.
13 Ibid., 23.
14 Ibid., 24.
15 Ibid., 24.
16 A.O. Hume, “A.O. Hume on the aims and objects of Congress, 30 April 1888,” in The Indian Nationalist Movement: 1885-1947, ed. B.N. Pandey (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 6.
17 Prema Kurien, “Colonialism and Ethnogenesis: A Study of Kerala, India,” Theory and Society 23, no. 3 (1994): 385.
18 Ibid., 386-387.
19 Ibid., 388-389.
20 Ibid., 392.
21 Ibid., 398.
22 Ibid., 400.
23 Ibid., 401.
24 Ibid., 402.
25 Ibid., 403.
26 Ibid., 403.
27 Ajay Skaria, op. cit. 727.
28 Ibid., 728-731.
29 Ibid., 731-732.
30 Ibid., 738.
31 Ibid., 740.
32 Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Maratha History as Polemic: Low Caste Ideology and Political Debate in Late Nineteenth Century Western India,” Modern Asian Studies 17, no. 1 (1983), 1-2.
33 Ibid., 3.
34 Ibid., 3.
35 Ibid., 4.
36 Ibid., 4.
37 Ibid., 6.
38 Ibid., 8.
39 Ibid., 9.
40 Ibid., 26.
41 William H. Wiser and Charlotte Viall Wiser, Behind Mud Walls: 1930-1960, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967 [reprint, 1930 ed.]), 22.
42 Ibid., 22.
43 Ibid., 206.
44 Jawaharlal Nehru, “Objectives Resolution In The Constituent Assembly, 31 January 1947,” in The Indian Nationalist Movement: 1885-1947, ed. B.N. Pandey (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 206-207.
45 Ibid., 206.
