Is Varna a hierarchical social system in India with ‘Brahmins’ occupying the top of this hierarchy with Shudras at the bottom and a social group that finds itself outside this ‘hierarchy’?
There is no correlation between the ‘Varnas’ and occupation and between ‘Varna’ and political power. Therefore, it is not possible to suggest that ‘Varna’ is a social system, hierarchical or otherwise. Furthermore, it is not clear what ‘Varnas’ are or what criteria have to be used to classify people into Varnas. If one uses ‘birth’ as a criterion (that is, one says that one’s parents have to belong to one of the Varnas in order to ‘qualify’ as a member of that Varna), then the vast majority of Indians fall outside this classificatory framework. (This group would include Jains, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Lingayats, many Saivites, some Viashnavites, and so on.) From this it follows that whatever ‘Varnas’ are, such a classificatory system cannot be a social system because it fails to classify the majority of the people in a society. Therefore, no one specific social group falls outside this ‘system’ but many, many groups.
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The question about caste hierarchies is far, far more important than we realize. Contained in this issue of caste hierarchies is the first element of an answer to the puzzle of ‘the Indian caste system’. Though not the only one, it is a very crucial element in the quest for an answer about India, her culture, Hinduism and the caste system. Let me begin with a short answer to your question and say a bit more about why this issue is important.
1. You ask whether "there is a perception of caste hierarchies among Brahmins". My guess is that there is no such general perception, even if, regionally, multiple Brahmin jatis fight for superiority. There is no way to establish, say, that the ‘Babburkamme’ is superior to ‘Havyaka’ in Karnataka. In fact, many from either of the two would not even know of the existence of the other. In Bangalore itself, for instance, where the former is preponderant, I did not even know of their existence until I was 15 years old. In this sense, even in areas where they might claim to ‘superiority’, it is difficult to establish hierarchies among the Brahmins in any one region. This, as I say, is my guess.
2. Further you notice that "there are more caste hierarchies among the so-called lower castes". This is the important element. It is my hypothesis that it is primarily (almost exclusively, I would like to think) among the so-called lower castes that there is a clear sense of caste hierarchy. In fact, the so-called ‘caste hierarchy’ is present only among them, I would like to speculate. It is these groups that got converted: into Islam, into Veersaivism (the lingayats), into Christianity and so on. Through conversion, they took their ‘caste hierarchies’ into these traditions and religions. The Europeans converted these so-called lower castes into Christianity and observed ‘caste hierarchies’ among these new Christians. They also ‘knew’ the existence of other Jatis, read verses about the purusha sukta, and also had Brahmins to assure them that they, the Brahmins, were the ‘best’ group. Thus there emerged the story about ‘the caste structure’ in India, which contained two elements: the story about the Varna system that has little or nothing to do with ‘the caste system’ and its alleged hierarchy, and the manifest ‘caste hierarchy’ among the newly inducted Christians. The varna system was a way of roughly describing the social stratification at a very high level of generality; the ‘caste system’ was an empirical description of the hierarchy that existed primarily (and, perhaps, exclusively) among the so-called lower castes. The Europeans generalized the latter as ‘the social structure’ of India but put it within the framework of the Varna system. Thus the hybrid beast of today that we call ‘the caste system’.
3. In other words, what we call ‘the caste system’ of today is a generalization of this caste hierarchy [that exists primarily (and only) among the so-called lower castes] as the dominant social structure of the Indian society. If this hypothesis can be shown to be true, then it can also be shown that ‘the caste system’ is NOT an invention of the ‘Brahmin Priests’ but the gift of the so-called Lower castes in India. That is, the ‘Scheduled Castes’ in India are the real progenitors of the ‘Indian caste system’ and not the upper castes. The Europeans, in their mixture of arrogance and ignorance, simply claimed that the Jati structure that exists mostly, if not only, among the ‘Dalits’ is identical to the ‘social structure’ in India. The Indian ‘intellectuals’ simply took over this story and repeat them endlessly.
4. This hypothesis is able to account for so many perceived facts about jatis and Varna that I believe that it is close to being true. But it is going to take a lot of research to show that this is also the case (Balu #5193).
5. Let me reconsider the hypothesis I propose: what we call ‘the caste system’ in India today is a hybrid beast. It is not a social structure but a linguistic entity (i.e., a set of sentences) which is an incoherent admixture to two unconnected descriptions (of the world): a generalization of the description of a structured set of interactions (let us leave aside the question of what kind of mathematical properties that this ‘structured set’ has: how it is ordered, whether the ordering is strong or weak and so on) among the so-called ‘lower castes’, while fitting this description within the framework of the varna system, which, I say, is a description of social stratification at a very high level of abstraction or generality. It is incoherent by virtue of its claim to being a ‘unified’ (and unifying) description of the social structure of Indian society: it collapses descriptions of different things at different levels (of descriptions) into a single alleged description of social reality. That is why these ‘theories’ of caste are either incoherent, nonsensical or, where neither, false.
6. A collection of individuals become a group when their interactions become structured. Such structured interactions give rise to organizations and institutions, which, in their turn, further structure individual interactions. We know of two basic types of organizations: hierarchical organizations and heterarchical organizations. These are descriptions of two ends of a spectrum: in the world, we come across organizations which are mixtures of both. In its simplest form, we can understand them through a spatial metaphor: vertical forms of interactions are hierarchical, whereas horizontal forms are heterarchical. An army with a central command-and-control centre is an example par excellence of a hierarchical organization; a human brain, according to most who work on this, is an example of a heterarchical organizations with multiple modules. Of course, in these examples, the emphasis lies on performing specialized functions: the infantry cannot do what commando units do; multiple areas in the brain can take over and perform ‘specialized’ functions. Keep this as a rough analogy to understand what I want to say.
7. We can map hierarchy into multiple axes: power, authority, specializations. and so on. In the hypothesis I am proposing, I am simply mapping them to ‘madi’ (in Kannada, which roughly translates as ‘purity’). This word includes many things in its scope: commensality, marriage, entry into the house, bathing. and so on. ‘Madi’ would represent the result of such a multi-dimensional graph, where each of these elements themselves represent the many different axes. What my hypothesis suggests is this: if we map the so-called lower castes along the axis of ‘Madi’ (which, as I say, is multi-dimensional), then we will get a vertical line of these Jatis. This is all I mean, for the time being, when I speak of ‘hierarchy’: these jatis can be vertically ordered in a graph. As against this, if we map, say the Brahmins along the same axes, then we get a more or less horizontal graph. If we map these two groups on the same graph, the so-called ‘higher castes’ will be spread over the horizontal axis, whereas the so-called ‘lower castes’ will be spread along the vertical axis. Showing this to be the case in India will require years of field work in multiple parts of India.
8. Assuming, hypothetically, this to be the case, how do we understand this phenomenon? At the moment, I see this as the difference between Jatis and Sampradaayas: the former names a hierarchical organization whereas the latter names a heterarchical organization. In India, both forms of interactions emerged and spread the way the institutions spread: through discovery, imitation and so on. The Indian society, as a whole, evolved mechanisms that could sustain and reproduce both Jatis and Sampradaayas. Through mutual interaction between these two groups, there were borrowing of terminologies across them, imitation of group formation and the emergence of ‘ethnic’ groups in the Indian society. Understanding the Indian social structure requires an insight into this complex process. (This requires serious historical and theoretical study over a number of years.)
9. In other words, I am assuming that when people develop structured sets of interactions, the resulting organization is either hierarchical or heterarchical in some respect or another. Though the ‘why’ is a very important question, I do not answer it: I just presuppose the answer as true. Consequently, that such structures develop among human groups (even when they are isolated from each other) is not an issue I am concerned with. ‘madi’ itself gets split into multiple dimensions and mapped to jatis (and to Sampradaayas), there will be observable variations with respect to the ‘weights’ given to these different dimensions. But, that is not a problem, but the result of the absence of a centralized organization in India.
10. Now, to your other concerns. You are talking about the role of the Varna system in the Indian culture. Whatever might or might not have been the case, the point is how it has been transmitted to us. We now need to add a new twist to the story about the colonial consciousness: while, in one sense, this notion suggests that the transmission of our tradition has been arrested and damaged it also suggests that some aspects of these traditions have been transmitted to us, but by the Europeans. That is to say, our understanding of the European understanding of India ‘defines’ us non-trivially as well. It is true, I think, that Varna ‘system’ was a set of action-heuristics in India of yesteryears, but it is not (primarily) that to us anymore. Some of us sense this difference, thanks to the fact that our traditions are still transmitted to us. But, today, Varna plays the primary role of a very abstract description of social stratification (this is how we understand the British transmission of the Indian traditions to us).
11. To understand better what I mean by the last sentence, consider this: the only way you or I can formulate ‘varna’ as a set of heuristics is to formulate the question in terms of: what does it mean to be, say, a Brahmin today? Notice the perfect analogy between this question and ‘what does it mean to be a Christian?’ (Quid sit Christianum esse?) Until we have developed a very rich theory, we cannot even formulate the notion of Varna as a set of action heuristics. At best, it becomes a question about the Christian; at worst, it is a straightforward moral code.
Much more requires saying than what I have said just now. Trust that this suffices for the moment (Balu #5200).
Several members of the board raised many questions in their response to these two posts. Balu responded to some of them directly and to some indirectly. Before we continue with Balu’s posts here is a response to Balu from Vivek Dhareshwar.
“Dear Balu, Thanks for that thought-provoking post. It would be most helpful to many of us if you can clarify (even speculatively): (1) how to make sense of "hierarchy" in the new restricted caste-system you talk about (2) how to understand this as a "system," if the groups that one finds in the schedule are highly localized and without contact or transaction between them.
The "hierarchy" in the old, generalized "caste-system" was obscure in part because it was a textual justification produced through a normed reading of Purushasukta (hence acquiring the status some vague metaphysical, cosmological principle). Making sense of it empirically was hard and gave rise to dubious anthropological theories (e.g., sanskritization). In the new system you hypothesize, "hierarchy" is obviously a social phenomenon, but it’s not clear how to understand it.
You say that we can take Varna as social stratification. But since it’s always (invariably?) varnaashrama, isn’t it better to take our cue from the latter and see the whole thing more like a practical guideline to orient oneself? If you are or want to see yourself as grihasta you have to assume certain obligations (you may not want to, either preferring to stay in the previous stage or head straight to the last!). Similarly if you are and want to see yourself as a warrior… (Vivek #5197).
A certain Ramesh Murthy (#5209) made the following comment that elicited a longish reply from Balu subsequently. “Can you tell me what it means to organize a set of groups hierarchically? If you are saying that the rules regarding inter-dining, entering a house etc. are empirical illustrations of a social hierarchy among Madiga-s, Holeya-s, etc then there are various kinds of rules within Brahmin communities also. For example, among the Brahmins of Mithila there are/were some 8-10 hierarchical divisions and there used to be a convention (not followed these days) that a male from a "lower" group cannot marry a female from a "higher" group. There was a similar division among the Nambuthiri Brahmins of Kerala as well where Vedic study was restricted to males from the upper groups. This led to some peculiarities in their interaction with the immigrant Saraswat Brahmins, Tamil Smarta Brahmins (Iyers), etc. The Nambuthiri-s claimed superior ritual status to the immigrant Brahmins by virtue of being locals, and were given some kind of preferential treatment by the local rulers in Kerala. However, Vedic study was pretty much universal among the Saraswats and Iyers, whereas some of the Nambuthiri-s were not allowed to do so due to their own internal hierarchy.”
In reply to Ramesh Murthy’s post, Balu wrote the following. “Dear Ramesh, Thank you for the information about some Brahmins from elsewhere in India. I was not aware of that. I presume you give these examples to show that their existence is a problem to my hypothesis. You are right that it forms a problem but we need to become clear about what kind of a problem it is.
1. As I have said before, my hypothesis is meant to guide the research and, as such, suggests that we find that the Brahmins will exhibit more of a heterarchical organization than a hierarchical one. Let us assume that what you say is true. In that case, this anomaly (or these anomalies) will become the problem(s) that my hypothesis has to solve. That is, the hypothesis will force one to look for an explanation in multiple directions: for instance, have these hierarchies emerged due to induction of new groups and individuals in the course of history? (That means, this hypothesis forces one to probe the truth of the statement that once one is born into a jati, there is no way of moving to another Jati. The Madhva conversion in South India has disproved it but no one I know has taken this fact into consideration.) Who were the majority jatis in the area and what was the nature of interaction between these Brahmin groups and other Jatis? and so on. In other words, each anomaly we confront forces further research. There is always the possibility that my research hypothesis will crumble under the weight of accumulated anomalies but that is not the case yet. At the moment, they merely call for further research.
2. Second, my hypothesis suggests that both hierarchical and heterarchical organizations flourished in India and that ‘the social structure’ consisted of mechanisms that allowed both organizations to interact with each other, reproduce themselves and expand. In the course of interactions between two groups, as I have already mentioned in my reply to Vivek, groups will borrow many things from one another, including forms of organization. This means that my hypothesis does not forbid the existence of some hierarchical upper caste groups in certain regions and sub-regions in India. But it does predict some kind of visible uniformity. Only research can tell us whether this uniformity is there or not. Anecdotes help, to be sure, but they do not decide the case.
3. The above point stands to reason because no central authority ‘imposed’ a specific form of social organization in India. This means that groups organized themselves ‘spontaneously’: many discovering the same forms of organizations on their own, others borrowing from others, others through modification of what emerged, and so on. In other words, we would expect to find multiple empirical combinations throughout India. This too, says the hypothesis, is something that is to be expected. Consequently, this hypothesis becomes sensitive to the historical, changing and dynamic nature of the structure of group organizations. There will be no changeless, static ‘caste system’ to be found in India. Yet, some general trends will emerge and the hypothesis also directs one’s attention towards them.
4. At the moment, you must remember, I am simply suggesting that we map hierarchy and heterarchy onto one single axis, namely, ‘Madi’ or ‘purity’. We also need to define further axes: perhaps, power, authority, lineage etc should also be used to define hierarchy and heterarchy. At this moment, I am merely proposing the next step of research along one axis. Only after a few years of sustained field work in multiple parts of India would we be able to say something more concrete about it. This is not the only kind of research that requires doing: we need to dig into the historical archives, read about the nature of human organizations, study archaeological records, and so on. All that my hypothesis can do at the moment is to propose a course of enquiry that none is following (Balu #5211).
Shanmukha A. expressed his difficulties in understanding the claim that only lower castes structure themselves hierarchically, whereas upper castes do not. Following is the reply from Balu to this query.
Dear Shanmukha, Two small points before I respond to your questions. One: all I have is a hypothesis that can guide research. In itself, it is not a theory and I cannot hope to convince anyone (at this stage) that this hypothesis is true. It requires years of research (of different kinds) before it can be made compelling. Therefore, please know that I understand your skepticism and find it only natural. Two: However, I will give you some indications about why I find the hypothesis interesting and worthy of further research. I will choose some examples at random to indicate the kind of problems that this hypothesis promises to solve.
1. Of course, you are right about the fact that many Brahmin groups either fight for superiority or merely believe in the superiority of their own ‘jatis’. While there is nothing wrong about it, I do not consider either of them as an indication of hierarchy. For instance, the Smartha’s, the Saivas and the Vaisnavites also fight each other and proclaim their own superiority over the other groups. But that does not mean that we can organize them hierarchically. Nor can they do so themselves. The same applies, for instance, to the followers of Jnana, Karma, Bhakti and Yoga paths to enlightenment. While each fights the other and proclaims its own superiority, it is not possible to organize them hierarchically, even though there are some sporadic attempts by the followers of these traditions to do precisely that. In this sense, while the Havyaka’s might think they are the ‘superior’ Brahmins, there is no way to rank them vertically with respect to other Brahmin groups.
2. This stands in contrast to the hierarchy that seems to exist among the so-called lower castes. Here, there seems to a hierarchy in the pecking order: for instance, the fight between Madiga and Holeya groups in Karnataka does not resemble the fight between, say, Madhva and Smartha groups or between the ‘Babburkamme’ and ‘Havyaka’ jatis. In the former case, there are stricter ‘rules’ about inter-dining, marriage, entering the house and so on. I have this in mind when I speak about the hierarchical organization among the so-called Lower castes. Let me illustrate this by using the CSLC research. They tried to ascertain ‘social hierarchy’ that might or might not exist between different jatis from the Brahmins at one end of the spectrum to, say, Kuruba’s at the other end. Here, they were unable to find any (or many) indications of a hierarchy. This research suggests that it might be foolish to look for a ‘caste hierarchy’ (that tracks the Varna system in some way or another) in the Indian society. Now comes the next stage of research, about which we need to think more carefully. Are there jati distinctions, say, within and among the Madiga’s in different parts of Karnataka? Do they have ‘rules’ about marriage, dining, entering houses, rituals and festivals and so on and so forth with respect to intra-Madiga intercourse? This internal differentiation is what I am talking about now. It is my hypothesis that, if and when field work is conducted by using many dimensions (and assigning weights to them is some form or another), we will see a hierarchy emerging within the Madiga communities. The next step is to plot this hierarchy within the Madiga community against a similar investigation into the Holeya’s. At that stage, we will begin to see whether or not my hypothesis about a hierarchy among the so-called lower caste groups will require changes.
3. This hierarchy among the so-called lower caste groups DOES NOT constitute ‘the social structure’ of India or Karnataka. At best, the research into the structure of these so-called lower castes will tell us whether their jati organization is hierarchical or not. What the Europeans did was to generalize the organizational structure of the different caste groups as though this constituted the social structure of the Indian society. Having thus (falsely) believed that, say, the structure of the Madiga’s and the nature of their interaction with the Hoelya’s constituted the social structure of the society, they looked for a ‘theoretical framework’ to accommodate this ‘fact’. And they found that in, say, the Purusha Sukta and Manu. Then they looked for ‘culprits’ who were responsible for thrusting such a social structure on the throats of all people. They found them in the ‘Brahmin Priests’. [Of course, the ‘Brahmins’ also told the British (and other Europeans) that they were ‘superior’ to all other groups in society as well. But that is not the focus of my story now.]
4. The social structure of India consists of those mechanisms that allow BOTH the hierarchical and heterarchical organizational structures to co-exist and interact with each other, and to reproduce themselves. These mechanisms themselves will be structured and these constitute ‘the social structure’ of India. Thus, unlike Europe, where primarily hierarchical organizations existed and reproduced themselves, in India, by contrast, a plurality of organizational structures flourished without problems. That is what I am talking about.
5. What can this hypothesis do? Some random facts. For instance, it explains why the followers of the Madhva tradition are so crazy about ‘madi’ or ‘purity’. They have a very strict sense of ‘hierarchy’ even though they are unable to identify the hierarchies among the Brahmin jatis. This hypothesis suggests that one should seek an explanation for this in the fact that Madhva’s were recruited (initially) from the so-called lower castes. On other dimensions, the Lingayat’s exhibit similar problems about ‘Jatis’ within them. Whenever one looks at a ‘Dalit’ rebel against the caste system, invariably, it transpires, that these Dalit heroes have been helped exclusively (and only) by Brahmins. Why? The hypothesis suggests that that is because the Brahmins are least ‘sensitive’ to hierarchies because they, as a social group, have the least experience of hierarchy. (This also explains why the most anti-caste initiators are from the so-called upper castes: they do not have much experience of the hierarchical structure. Not because they are at the ‘top’ of the hierarchy: a king or a prime minister is acutely aware of the hierarchy, not oblivious to it.) Even where they have hierarchies (at home, in society), there are multiple loci of authorities: for instance, if a ‘guru’ enjoins you to do something and your father enjoins you the opposite, who do you follow? Should you follow your grandfather or do what your father tells you to? Each such situation signals that the problem of power and authority is way too complicated to allow any hierarchical classification. Equally, consider the fact that the most well-known ‘rebels’ against ‘the caste system’ are also those who come from the so-called lower castes. There are many ways to explain this: they experienced oppression the most, they are against experienced injustice and so on. What does this mean except to say that they are obsessed by the caste system only because hierarchy was their daily experience? However, this daily experience was not with the Brahmin jatis but with their own.
6. If this hypothesis can be supported through further research, its impact on colonial consciousness is gigantic: it will blow a big hole in it, while weakening its structural integrity. Our discourse about politics, state, reservation, voting patterns, etc will have to be entirely rethought. If the Dalit and secular intellectuals discover that ‘the caste system’ was merely a generalization of the internal hierarchy among the so-called lower castes, they need to look deeper into themselves and identify the problems new. The extant descriptions about ‘social justice’, ‘affirmative action’ etc cannot be used any more. Our intellectuals will be forced to look at India afresh and rethink how they should describe India, her society and culture. All the books about ‘the caste system’ written by Europeans and regurgitated by the Indian intellectuals during the last 350 years will, all of a sudden, not be worth the paper they are printed on. The Constitution of India requires an overhaul the way descriptions of Hinduism and India will also be due for an overhaul.
7. In other words, the time is ripe to move the research one step forward. Until now, we have mainly argued that ‘the caste system’ does not exist in India. Now we have to take the next step: explain how and why (both through field work and through theoretical research) people say what they have said and say. In this process, hopefully, we will being the process of also saying what there is (Balu #5205).
In answer to a few questions raised by Santhosh (#5212) and Shankarappa N.S. (#5213), Balu wrote two more posts, elaborating his ideas. Let us take a look at those questions first:
a) Like Brahmans, Lingayat is also a tradition (Veerashaiva or Vachana tradition) or sampradaya. However, while we can notice a hierarchy among the Lingayats, it is difficult to notice the same among the Brahmans. Why is this so? If both of them are Sampradayas, according to your hypothesis, both should have heterarchical arrangement. Furthermore, both Brahman and Lingayat sampradayas are a confederation of different jati groups. Today we have no clue whether the different groups like Shivalli, Kota, Kandavara and so on belonged to the ‘lower’ rungs of the ‘caste hierarchy’ or higher before they joined the Brahman tradition. But, before these groups formed or joined the Brahman tradition they must have been some groups, whether jatis or kulas or whatever else. If so, two further questions: (i) Why is there an absence of a strong or a dominant notion of hierarchy among the groups that are today a part of the Brahman tradition, even though they were some or other (jati) groups before they joined the Brahman sampradaya? (ii) Why only groups that constitute Lingayat tradition have a hierarchy today? (Let me add here that this hierarchy has no uniformity.)
b) I have never seen different unites and sub-unites in the Madiga community. What we see are different names to indicate Madiga community. In some places if they are called Adi Karnataka, (Tumkur and Chitradurga districts), they are called Adi dravida (Mysore, Mandya and Hasan) and Madar/Madiga/ Manigara elsewhere. If this observation holds true and there is only one Madiga community (known differently in different places) then what happens to your hypothesis that it is the so-called lower castes that are hierarchized and not the ‘upper castes’?
As Balu explained, the difficulty with these questions arises from a multitude of sources. The first, and the biggest problem, is the terminology itself: (a) I am using the word ‘Jati’ and ‘Sampradaaya’ to draw attention to two kinds of organizations in the Indian society; (b) to speak about ‘Madiga’, ‘Holeya’ and ‘Havyaka’ and ‘smartas’, Vaisnava’s, lingayats’ and so on. (c) ‘Jati’ also refers to how a sense of ‘oneness’ has emerged in a group and (d) at the same time to speak about what the Europeans did. This is creating a lot of confusion, I know, but for the time being this is inevitable. Until we become clear what ‘Jati’ refers to in the new kind of field work (which itself requires some reading, much discussion and even some field work), let us not lose sight of the basic issue: the research hypothesis is an attempt to carry the investigation to a higher level by postulating that the ‘caste hierarchy’ is something we see among the so-called Lower caste groups and not something identical to the social structure of India.
You may ask whether we can do research into ‘jati’, when we do not know what it refers to or without giving a clear definition first. My answer is ‘yes’: our research should tell us what ‘jati’ is; it is not a question of definition. Many scientists (and sciences) work in this fashion: for instance, Darwin wrote ‘The origin of species’ without having a clear understanding of what ‘species’ meant and without an unambiguous definition. Let us keep in mind that ‘jati’ is an unclear term as of now: it refers to multitude of things. And that is the reason why we need research in the first place.
Now, my answer to the questions you (Santhosh) raise are simple: these are the questions we need to answer through research. The hypothesis provides a direction to do further research; it is not a theory about ‘jati’. If you keep this very important qualification and the above points in mind, your question becomes: (a) why are there hierarchical and heterarchical organizations? (b) why is there a hierarchical organization and one where there is no ‘uniform’ hierarchy? I am not answering the first question because I begin with this fact: both kinds of organizations exist in India. The second question is what we have to do research into (Balu #5217).
In answer to Shankarappa’s question Balu wrote the following: As I already wrote to Santosh, the problem you have arises from multiple sources. Common to them is the point that it is unclear what ‘Jati’ refers to. Consider:
(a) That there is ‘one’ madiga caste is a result of characterizing jatis though occupational lines: they worked on leather. In this sense, this jati is spread across at least three different states: Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
(b) That there is ‘one’ madiga caste is also a result of some politician or the other saying (the way it happened with the Kuruba’s according the CSLC study) in a meeting that they are all ‘one’ jati.
(c) That there is ‘one’ madiga caste is also the result of identifying this caste as being structurally equivalent to (a) Brahmin as a varna (because of which the ‘panchama’ comes into existence) and (b) as a jati (like Hoysala Karnataka among the Brahmins).
(d) If we presuppose these, then one can say what you say: there are different ‘names’ for one and the same Jati. (The way hoysala Karnataka, havyaka, babburkamme etc are ‘names’ for Brahmins.) Hence your question: how can hierarchy exist within one and the same jati? It cannot.
At the moment, we have to investigate whether Adi Karnataka, adi dravida, Manigara etc are names and, if so, what kinds of names they are. If relationships among them are rare, then we have to investigate into the relationship between different ‘jatis’ (between the holeya and the madiga, for instance) in a given region. In other words, you seem to think that my hypothesis is an explanation of the ‘caste system’: it is not. It is a way of directing coming research. In the course of research, we will answer your question. Keep the global hypothesis before your mind by simplifying it, if necessary: there are hierarchical jatis among the ‘panchamas’, whereas there seems to be horizontal division among the Brahmins. The task of research is to see whether it makes sense to speak this way and how to elaborate it further (Balu#5218).
Let us conclude this section with a longish post of Vivek Dhareshwar, which he wrote in appreciation of Balu’s posts in this thread and the new hypothesis presented therein.
It will certainly take me a while to absorb all the points Balu has made (all in the in the course of a day!). I want to pursue here a theme that Balu brought up in his inspirational post on the two different knowledges. There is a sense in which the current thread on caste-discrimination and caste-system—initiated by Arun and nursed along, among others, by Geetanjali, Mathew, Divya, Sufiya and Dunkin—has already compelled us to practice both or bring them together (that’s awkward, but let it be for now). Here is a simple way to understand what I am trying to get at.
Where reflection on experience has disappeared, there normativity finds it easy to take root. For us (i.e., Indians) what we make of the "caste-system" will show if we are still capable of reflection on experience. What do I mean by that phrase? To start with, I mean nothing more than our ability to think about the interactions, the incidents, the stories, that we have grown up with, whether at home, in school, with relatives or with friends, and doing so without moralizing any of those elements. What do I mean by "without moralizing"? Well, think of the unease that surfaced the moment "discrimination" entered the thread. Instances that are more specific are available in the examples discussed.
The social space gets a corrosive moral coating even before the discussion has started. Thus an act of deference, for example, is made to look something sinister; any attempt to show that such deference can be found or was pervasive elsewhere, begins to look like rationalization. Thus Arun writes at the end of his post on the Pariah and the Nayar: "Sure, until we understand it, let’s not call it casteism, discrimination or racism, or any such thing, or even lunatic asylum. Does that make the situation any happier?" Here the understanding has already taken place, the coating has already been applied. No consideration really counts because we know that nothing can make the "situation any happier," which I presume means, we cannot get rid of this evil that we have, we are, that we produce? Not calling it "caste-system" does not change the situation. Although I use Arun’s words for convenience, we know we all have been gripped by this picture or attitude and it keeps resurfacing. We are mesmerized by a description: the Pariah whose shadow shouldn’t fall on the Nayar or the Brahmin, the molten lead that will be poured into the ear of the Shudra who listens to the Veda, and then the acid bath covers over everything, acts fair and unfair, cruel or kind, deference that is desirable, deference that is obsequious and so on. The acid of normativity comes in different bottles and brands: human rights violation, domination effect, feudal practices etc.
Any attempt to loosen the grip of this mesmerizing picture and resist the corrosive effect—by giving examples of deference or untouchability from say Europe or the US or Japan—begins to seem like an effort to rationalize. Reflection gets evacuated. That is the real danger we are faced with. Once reflection is evacuated this way, normativity will find it easy to take root. Of the many damaging consequences of normativity blocking out experience let me just list two: we will no longer know how are related to one another; we will not even be able to realize that our social world needs understanding and theorization. So the task of doing social science in a novel practical way that Balu was straining to formulate is in an essential sense a necessity for us. The discovery of what is amenable for theorization, of what it is to recognize the need for a theory of something, is simultaneously a fresh discovery of what it is to theorize. Balu was trying to convey both the necessity and the excitement.
But let there be no doubt: resisting "caste-system" from taking root will encounter great hostility both from Indian institutions, especially academic and political institutions and the western intellectual world (the dissolution of "the caste-system" will have shattering effect on the western world). So the stakes are very high, indeed. All the more reason for us to deepen our practice of reflecting on experience. In fact, we need to reclaim many domains for such reflection -- ethics, politics, education -- and for theorization, so that we will not leave any space for normativity to anchor itself. To reiterate a point I made in the earlier post, the reflection has to be sustained by all of us, and not only by academics.
I hope it is clear from my post that I am not criticizing any post on this thread but actually appreciating the significance of what is being attempted here.