Let us look at the origin and meaning of the word caste. American Heritage Dictionary says: “an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, and economic position.” The word caste is derived from the Roman word casta (used in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian) which meant ‘pure’ or chaste (in Latin Casto; Cut off and separated’). It can also mean “lineage” or “race.” The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes caste as “each of the hereditary classes of Hindu society, distinguished by relative degrees of ritual purity and of social status” and as “any exclusive social class”. Accordingly examples of caste-based societies are given: colonial Latin America under Spanish and Portuguese rule, Japan, Korea, some parts of Africa, and across the Indian subcontinent. (Read casteism in India Part 1, and Part 2 )
In this series, Kanchan Banerjee attempts to find the origin of casteism in India along with Hinduism’s concept of varna classification and ostracism. He explores how the original varna system had an evolutionary plan embedded in it as expressed by various Indian thinkers and in what ways many modern thinkers’ works, especially in the fields of developmental psychology, are following a similar pattern to classify socio-psycho evolution of people and societies.
It turns out that basically the scholars who wrote these dictionaries and books, confused the Indian ideas of jati, kula and varna with caste. They failed to really understand the Indian society due to their ignorance; but Indians fell in the same trap, British educated Indians followed what their white masters said and also failed to study it on their own.
This study also took a wrong direction due to certain pre-conceived notions that the Brahmins were the cause of all social evils in India. In his 1993 book Interpretation of Caste (Oxford Clarendon Press), Declan Quigley wrote that: ‘ Unable to visualize a general structure of caste which would displace Dumont’s theory; they hang on to it unremittingly even though their own evidence shows again and again that this theory simply does not explain what is known about India… The entrenched idea that “Brahmans are the highest caste” has done most to hinder an alternative formulation of how caste systems work.’
It is worth noting here that it is almost an instinctive nature of human population to classify based on economic or social status. If we look at the 18th century Europe, especially Germany, one can find that it was divided among Princes, nobles, burghers, peasants and serfs. Inter-class marriage was quite restricted. Korea and Japan not only had different classes, but untouchability also existed. In the US it is not hard to find different church congregations for predominantly blacks or people of certain socio-economic-ethnic strata which people from other groups tend to avoid.
In India, converted Muslims and Christians maintained and still maintain their jati identities. Marriages and burials in many cases are marked with these class-differences.
Many think that after the advent of Islamic rules and finally the European colonization, many of the existing socio-political orders in India broke down in many cases and in some it was more stratified –creating scores of jaatis. Various communities belonging to different occupational and political structures created their own local systems of justice and governance – akin to the panchayat system. Many believe that Indian society, for centuries were dependent of panchayat-like decentralized systems for judicial, political as well as social managements. Scholars such as Dhramapal has documented that there was a different Panchayat system before the modern one was introduced early in the last century.
