The necessity to distinguish between conceptual problems and empirical problems (which will be discussed in the next section) of the caste theories arises for the following reason. As recent philosophers of sciences have argued, theories must solve two kinds of problems: empirical problems, which are substantive questions about the objects that constitute the domain of inquiry and conceptual problems, which are about internal inconsistencies, conceptual ambiguities, conflicts with other theories and the ‘research tradition’ of which the theory is a part and so on. The progress of a theory depends on or is constituted by the successful solutions to these two kinds of problems: elimination of conceptual problems and increasing the empirical support of a theory.
Let us begin with one important logical problem in the current theories of the caste system. When one talks about the caste system and its problems, one invariably talks about stories of discriminations that range from restrictions (on the use of public wells to entry into the temples) to physical torture and untouchability. The literature on the caste system do not tell us whether these narratives of restrictions, torture and untouchability and so on are the empirical properties of ‘the caste system’ or whether they are the causal consequences of ‘the caste system.’ If they are empirical properties, we need to ascertain whether they are the constitutive properties of the system or not. If they are constitutive properties, then the condemnation of ‘the caste system’ based on these properties could be justified. If they are, by contrast, secondary (or not necessary) properties, then the discussion will have to take an entirely different route.
However, if they are the consequences of ‘the caste system,’ then ‘the caste system’ is something other than and different from these consequences, which are the themes of moral indignation. If they are the consequences, we need to know whether they are necessary consequences of ‘the caste system.’ If it turns out that these are not the necessary consequences of ‘the caste system’ or that other things generate these consequences severally, again, the discussion has to take a different route. These analyses involve theoretical research into ‘the caste system,’ and into its theories. The ethnographic work (the field work) will provide us with the data that will help us in getting a handle on these questions.
The Problem of Petitio Principi in Caste Theories
Put differently, one of the questions raised in the previous two paragraphs is this: Is it possible to talk about the caste system without referring to, what are called, the incidents of ‘caste violence’? Two different strands of arguments have been confusedly (but apparently seamlessly) threaded into one narrative whole called the caste system. One strand distinguishes the caste system from its consequences. The caste system is a particular way of ordering a society. Such an order need not be oppressive in itself. This order becomes oppressive only because of the presence of some kind of unethical attitude of certain groups within this order towards other groups. We can call this attitude casteism. The other strand holds the very social ordering called the caste system as unethical.
The first strand, which distinguishes the caste ordering of society from its consequences, compels us to conclude that casteism can be found among all jatis, irrespective of their social status. This implication is unlikely to be acceptable to most of our contemporary anti-caste writers and activists. Such disagreements are expressed either by suggesting that the violence committed by the ‘lower caste’ people themselves are negligibly small or that it is in reaction to the violence committed by the ‘upper caste’ people. That would mean that there must be something deeply unethical about the very scheme of ordering called the caste system, which is the second strand. Therefore, I submit, when one talks about the evil system called the caste system, one wittingly or unwittingly holds that the caste ordering of Indian society (that is, the caste system) itself is unethical and is responsible for the caste violence.
We know that the violent incidents that the reports on the caste system in India refer to do exist, in some or other form. People who report these incidents will not be culling them out of their hallucinatory imaginations. However, it is distressing and strange that we have no clear understanding of the problems, nor the causes of these problems. One way to present this is to point out the circularity in the arguments about the caste system. The arguments about caste violence, whether scholarly or popular, begin by discussing the incidents of violence that they claim to be the manifestations of the caste system. Put differently, we are told that
atrocities are committed against Dalits simply because they are considered ‘untouchables’ and therefore, according to the caste rationale, have no rights. (Dalit Human Rights Monitor-2000 2000: pp. 7-8)
However, when they have to explain the caste system, they in turn invoke these incidents as an explanation of the immorality of the caste system. That is, the caste system is explained using the incidents of caste violence, and the incidents of caste violence are in turn explained by the caste system. This is a problem of petitio principi; a logical fallacy where the argument assumes what it has to prove, or is trying to prove.
Irrespective of the strand one takes, the following problem crops up and threatens the very logical integrity of the theories of the caste system: How do we account for the entity called the caste system independent of its manifestations – i.e., the incidents of caste violence? Considering the fact that our 150 years of work on the caste system does not answer this question, we can surmise two possibilities. One, we have failed to understand even the basics of the caste system. There might be two reasons for this: it might be a highly complex system unreachable to the present status of human knowledge or this system constantly changes its shape and nature and in the process evades all our repeated attempts to understand it. Two, it is quite possible that the system called caste does not exist. Our research holds the last possibility as true.
If the last option holds true, it raises some important questions. What is the caste system constructed out of or how is it constructed? Even though it is not a description of our social reality, what provides ‘the caste system’ with such plausibility that it has become almost self-evident? The following sub-section, constructed out of some of Balu’s posts, explains one of his most interesting and popular illustrations/thought experiments (Hipkapi). This tackles the what and how questions about the construction of the caste system from a conceptual point of view.
About the HIPKAPI
Let us provide an imaginary example and draw an analogy. Imagine an alien coming to earth and noticing the following phenomena: grass is green, milk turns sour, birds fly, and some flowers put out a fragrant smell. He is convinced that these are organically related to each other and sees ‘hipkapi’ in them. The presence of ‘hipkapi’ not only explains the above phenomena but also how they are related to each other. To those who doubt the existence of ‘hipkapi,’ he draws their attention to its visible manifestations: the tigers eating the gazelle, dogs chasing the cats, and the massive size of the elephants. Each of these is a fact, as everyone can see it. But, of course, neither severally nor individually do they tell us anything about ‘hipkapi’. When more like him come to earth and reiterate the presence of ‘hipkapi,’ other conditions permitting, ‘hipkapi’ not only becomes a synonym for these (which?) phenomena but also turns out to be their explanation. Thereafter, to ask what ‘hipkapi’ is, or even how it explains, is an expression of one’s idiocy: does not everyone see ‘hipkapi,’ this self-explanatory thing?
This is also what the Europeans did. The Laws of Manu, certain marriage customs and food habits, certain rituals of bathing, getting up, dress, poverty and starvation, Brahmins and their sandhyavandanam and , the Sahasranamams, etc. were singled out as instances of or as organic parts of ‘the caste system’. The Brahmins and the Indian religion were thought to form the cause of the caste system; poverty, marriage customs, untouchability etc. became its outward manifestations and results. Purushasukta was the cosmogenic explanation of the caste system and the Manusmriti became the evidence for the wicked thinking of the priestly class called the Brahmins. The Europeans had a theory in place that ‘naturally’ related, priests to duplicity and deprivation of the masses, a people to a religion and its degradation, a corrupt religion to bondage to the rituals. Dharma and adharma were the Sanskrit names for ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the Indian deities were much like their Greek counterparts. To the missionaries, we were the idolaters; to the emasculated liberal, we are mere polytheists. This lent a structure to how they experienced Indian culture and society. Very soon the caste system became an ‘experiential entity’. In the analogy stated above, the visitor ‘constructs’ the hipkapi. To him, it becomes an experiential entity. He talks about this experiential entity, as his fellow-beings do, in a systematic way. The facts exist; does the hipkapi exist? This is the issue. Puja in the temples, the sandhyavandanam of the Brahmins, the Sahasranamams, the Purushasukta, our notions of dharma and adharma, etc. all exist. Does their existence tell us that ‘the caste system’ also exists? Are they organic parts of a phenomenon called ‘the caste system’, even if that phenomenon is not a social system?
Even today, almost every traveller and even many Indians who see specific marriage customs, food habits, who encounters a Brahmin or reads one of the many translations of the ‘Laws of Manu,’ see in them a manifestation of the caste system. He or she will argue, just as the aliens would about their ‘hipkapi’, that one must be blind or a fool (or an oppressor, or an elitist, etc.) not to see the caste system: “Can you not see the poverty that has been handed down from generation to generation?” “What... don’t you see that fathers marry their daughters off into this or that group only?”
The Hipkapi and the caste system both are behaving here as a theory that connects the various ‘facts’ together, which is one of the functions of a theory. Take the theory of gravitation. What did it do? Apart from describing the fall of bodies on earth, it also tied the motion of planets and the ebb and tide in the sea to each other. This theory allowed us to predict the motion of the planets and helped us discover a new planet in the solar system. In other words, it provided a theory that unified phenomena. Until that stage, we did not know that these three phenomena were linked together, and we had independent explanations for each of them. This is one of the things that a theory does: it identifies the phenomena that belong together.
The issue before us is this: when the west (let us stick to the west for the time being) unified some phenomena into something they thought was a religion and called it ‘Hinduism’, were they guided here by a theory (i.e. a theology) as well? If yes, the first question is this: did this theory tie certain practices and beliefs together into a phenomenon (called ‘the caste system’) that do not belong together, or did they merely describe a unitary phenomenon in a wrong way? That is to say, is the ‘the caste system’ that we know through a standard textbook story made into a something (a unified phenomenon) using theology? Or, did the west merely describe ‘the caste system’ wrongly, namely, as an unethical ordering of society that exists in India?
Notice though that by suggesting that the caste system does not exist, one is not saying that those beliefs and practices that went into constructing this unity do not exist. What one is denying is that these beliefs and practices (taken together) constitute a phenomenon called ‘the caste system’.
In other words, suggestion here is not that the west provided a false description of the social and cultural reality in India. However, the unity they created by tying these things together is the problem: this unity is a unity for them; a unity in their experience of Indian culture. They had to create such a unified phenomenon because of their culture. They could not understand us otherwise. In discussions about ‘the caste system’, this is the problem. Is ‘hipkapi’ a unified phenomenon or an imaginary entity? Is ‘the caste system’ a unified phenomenon or an imaginary entity?
One of the growing consensuses in literature on caste is this: ‘The caste system’ exists, but it has not been accurately described. One might want to see it as a one single hierarchical system, the other might say that it is a web of discreet hierarchies... and so on. Some recent post-colonials are willing to concede the ‘construction’ of the caste system, but suggest that this construction ‘exists’ now. In the strict minority of one, what we are saying is that this unity is not a unity within the Indian culture. Is it our suggestion then that these phenomena are unrelated to each other? Or are we merely suggesting that they have a different relationship to each other? Irrespective of our answers to these questions, the claim holds: The caste system, the phenomenon constructed by the West, is an experiential entity only to the West and not to us. In this sense, the caste system is not a part of the Indian culture. It has no existence outside of the western experience of India.
Now comes the really interesting issue. Could we provide a different description of the Indian culture? Would such a description tell us what exists in India, and which of the above are related to each other and explain how they are related to each other? Yes, I believe, we can. But the absolute presupposition for that the current framework (which we have imbibed through the western scholarship) is completely left behind. Not only do I believe that a different description is possible but also that it will be cognitively superior to the majority view of today.[1]
Further on Hipkapi
Let us return the ‘hipkapi’ example. Even though most of the facts cited there are biological, one could say, the facts were unrelated to each other. Why say this? The argument was that ‘hipkapi’ is the common pattern unifying these facts. However, ‘hipkapi’ did not explain anything; it was merely a name. One may as well argue that that there could be a pattern behind the hipkapi facts, which no one has investigated hitherto. Why should one dismiss it so easily? The answer is obvious: names do not explain anything.
We confront the same situation with respect to the caste system or Hinduism. They are just a name at the moment. Our scholars have put together some facts (hipkapi facts), and insist that the pattern unifying them is the ‘caste system’ or ‘Hinduism’ (or hipkapi), and that no one has investigated whether or not there is a pattern behind them (hipkapi pattern).
However, the difference between Hipkapi and the caste system, in our present context, is this. The very facts that modern scholars use (such as untouchability, restriction on water use etc.) in describing various different phenomena are also used to suggest the existence of an evil practice called the ‘caste system’. Scholar after scholar appears to consent to one aspect of the argument: there is the caste system, and these facts are facts of the caste system. The only issue is what are these incidents if not an indication of the existence of the caste system? This question already presupposes the truth of what requires to be proved: that the facts of untouchability and oppressions are (some of the relevant) facts that settle the issue. Such an assumption points in the direction of a hypothesis. Those who make this kind of argument has to show that the structure of the cricket grounds in India (for instance) is less relevant to settling the issue of the existence of the caste system than, say, caste based mate selection or commensality. Why cannot one say that the proof that British constructed ‘the caste system’ is provided by the fact of Indians driving on the left-side of the road?
The point here is simple. In choosing some facts as relevant facts, one uses a hypothesis. Facts, to put it even more simply, are facts of a theory.[2] The existence question of the caste system can be solved only in the presence of a hypothesis (explicit or implicit) about what that entity is. If we are not careful, we merely take over the commonsense conception of social problems and social system to identify the caste system, even if we explicitly say that we have no clarity about its nature and structure.
Perhaps, one can come up with a positive argument why one thinks that there is an entity called the caste system. It is not sufficient to say that there could be pattern behind some arbitrary list of facts and that one would like to call that pattern the caste system. If one does that, all one says is that the caste system is hipkapi.
Assumptions and Ambiguous Postulations in Caste theories
One might ask: Ok, let me agree that it is not possible to prove that there exists a caste system in India. However, can we think of a caste system, or a caste system like social structure in India, at least hypothetically or logically?
The answer to such questions is simple. We are not even aware of the number of assumptions one has to make and the number of ambiguous entities that one has to postulate in order to talk about a caste system or to claim that caste is an Indian social structure. Let us try, in the rest of the section, to unearth some of those assumptions.
What is caste problem? At the least, caste problem refers to the following set of beliefs: Somebody who is born in caste X is lower in status because s/he is required to do does t1, t2 and t3, which are (socially, and not, say, economically, politically or ‘intellectually’) inferior. These seemingly simple set of beliefs turn into an incredible system called the caste system, when we add some of the following assumptions: (a) the person in question is required to do t1, t2 and t3 only because s/he belongs to a particular caste; (b) these beliefs have survived for centuries; (c) they have been rampant across India; (d) they are unethical and oppressive; (e) they structure life in India and so on.
Whether we accept it or not, to render such a notion of the caste system plausible one has to assume that there is and has been a centralised mechanism that is busy maintaining these set of beliefs persistently over the ages and across the geographical, linguistic, political, traditional, cultural and various such boundaries.
Such a thing is possible only if this system (the caste system) makes people either accept its logic blindly (in the name of religion or culture) or see a benefit in accepting its logic. That means, since the days of the Buddha, Indians are either ignorant, who never used their brains, or (put generously) they were cunning and selfish.
If we push this analysis further, we can see how the second option is not viable. When we talk about the caste system, we talk about the following types of incidents: (f) not allowing people of some castes inside one’s house, (g) not allowing them to draw water from a public well and so on. To call Indians cunning and selfish, one has to adequately answer the following question: What is the benefit in keeping some sections of the people out of one’s dining room or not allowing them to draw water from public well in the city? Can there be some political or intellectual benefits involved in these ‘exclusionary practices’. Until one shows them, in some unambiguous and conclusive way, one cannot accept this possibility. The answers we often hear in the academic literature talk about socio-cultural benefits, which take the following form: ‘people think that they will be socially or culturally superior if they maintain caste distinctions’. This means only one thing: some people in India oppress the rest and feel culturally superior because they have oppressed some people. Holding on to this possibility requires that we entertain one of the two propositions: (h) upper caste people in India of the last 3500 years are morally depraved idiots; (i) lower caste people of the last 3500 years are emasculated people who have neither back nor brains. (Otherwise, why do they -- remember the oppressed people are the majority in India -- accept this absurd claim of the upper caste people?). You may choose your answer. To me both look implausible, to say the least.
Surprisingly, the writings on the caste system, knowingly or unknowingly, entertain the second proposition. They defend this proposition by arguing that the Hindus are compelled by the logic of the caste and Hinduism.[3] If it is true, how do we prove or understand this?
Let us revert to the examples (f) and (g) given above. One draws no benefit by practicing (f) at all. And unless one builds a case scenario of scarcity of water one cannot see what the benefit is in practicing the latter either. Hence, one has to invariably conclude that there can be only one reason why the caste system exists in India: Indians are absolutely mindless idiots, and therefore they accept the logic of the caste system in the name of religion and so on. The problem in accepting this proposition is that we have to answer the following question: if every Indian was a cretin of this magnitude, who invented the evil called the caste system? There are, I think, only three possibilities: one, there were some intelligent people in the past in India, who created this incredible system and today we have no clue why they did so. Two, somehow these foolish beliefs originated in the brainless Indian minds and took a pan-Indian shape, precisely because nobody ever questioned it. Three, the Satan or God created it (for their respective reasons, which we the lesser mortals cannot understand). But why did they do it? To delude Indians out of the path of the true god, or to test their obedience to the God, as the case might be. Why else?
The question for now is: How do we choose between these three options and why?.
[1] See the article “How to speak for the Indian traditions?” (Balagangadhara 2005b). Balu wrote the following about this article in one of his posts: “This article begins to lay the groundwork for such an endeavour. See for yourself whether it is a more interesting attempt or not.”
[2] Today, among philosophers, it is a truism that facts are not some theory-neutral entities existing in either nature or culture and that the distinction between them is a relative distinction. That is, the facts are not just ‘there’. In most discussions today, one assumes the truth of this clam. All our facts are theory-dependent (or theory-ladden); in some contexts, we treat some of the claims of a background theory as facts. In another context, the same facts are discussed as theoretical claims.
For instance, in some contexts, one takes the Hindus worshipping Ganesha as a fact. (This fact, for instance, functions as evidence that Ganesha is a god and/or that Hinduism is a religion and so on.) In another context, the same fact becomes an issue of theoretical controversy: are the Hindus worshipping Ganesha or not? (I challenge
that nature of this fact, in my writings, and suggest that some kind of theology describes our actions in these terms.)
When we say ‘tigers are eating gazelles’ is an evidence for hipkapi, it is obvious how it is a theoretical claim in another context. One brings this as an evidence and not, for example, that the grass is semi-green when this event takes place, or that there is a sky and that whether it is overcast or clear is obviously irrelevant for this evidence. And so on. It is in this sense that I say that the distinction between theory and fact is not absolute but is context-dependent. However, I do not see is the relevance of these kinds of discussions to the issues at hand. [Hence, it is just a footnote in the book!]. My theory about India is independent of these philosophical meta-theses, even though I (as an individual) do entertain such ideas.
[3] See, for example, Ambedkar’s Annhilation of Caste (1936), section XXII.