You ask questions in the comments section below and we will answer them here...
1. Don’t we see manifestations of the caste system in everyday life? Most people understand the caste system to have something to do with marrying within a group. They also associate it with having similar food habits and there is a certain bond within the community. So when you claim that there is no caste system it begins to sound very flimsy or, at best, theoretical because many people actually live along these lines, i.e., marry within a community, eat similar food and share a bond of sorts with members of the community. Or are you simply saying that the western descriptions of caste are not a true description?
(a) Short answer
Questioning the veracity of the notion of the caste system does not imply that those facts (beliefs, practices, texts, etc.) that went into the construction of the ‘caste system’ do not exist. What one is denying is that these (taken together) constitute a phenomenon called the ‘caste system’. In other words, we suggest that the West not merely described the Indian ‘caste system’ wrongly, but that, because of their specific cultural experience, the Western descriptions tied together a series of facts and made it into one distinct and unified phenomenon. If the caste system had been described wrongly, our task would merely be to give a better description of the caste system, of the facts that constitute the caste system and of the relation between those facts. However, all attempts to give a better description of the caste system have failed to answer some of the most fundamental questions, which are both empirical and conceptual in nature: Why do Indians not know the caste laws? How can the caste system exist if no central authority exists to ensure its survival? How come no one can empirically show the existence of a clear cut caste hierarchy? Given the situation, we need to develop an alternative way of understanding Indian culture and society that does not presuppose the existence of the caste system. A first important question that we need to answer then is what theoretical framework has structured this Western cultural experience.
(b) Longer answer (see the answer for the next question).
2. Does denying the existence of the caste system also deny the existence of the facts that this unity (caste) explains? Does it deny the existence of marriage customs, food customs, distinct groups in society or even the existence of poverty that is handed down from generation to generation?
It does not. What is being denied is that there is an organic relationship between these phenomena, explained in terms of ‘caste’. Let me try to explain this by means of an analogy: Take the theory of gravitation. 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 to 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 are related to each other and shows the pattern between these phenomena.
The same happened to ‘the caste system’. It brought together such a wide variety of phenomena as the manner in which people bathe, get up, walk, sit, sleep; their occupation; their marriage customs; their food habits; customs related to travelling; poverty that is handed down from generation to generation; some groups that do not take water from another group’s well; some texts that were translated in the 19th century; the answers to some census questionnaires that were distributed; some groups of people who perform some rituals for other groups, etc. However, contrary to the theory of gravitation, no scientific theory exists that explains how these different phenomena are related to each other; which one is the cause and which one the effect of the caste system; etc. ‘The caste system’ looks like an ad hoc explanation for all the evils in India.
The conglomerate entity called the caste system, then, has to be broken into its constituent parts to understand it in a better way. Consider some of the important entities that constitute the caste system: Hinduism; various traditions, such as Buddhism to bhakti traditions; varied rituals related to temples to food eating; inhuman practices like owning bonded labors, and the vague and unclear entities like the Hindu form of ‘Oriental despotism’, the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ etc. Once we break the caste system into its constituent parts we can begin to investigate whether a given part refers to some object in the world or not. Some of them may pass the test and some may not. These are questions for further research.
3. If ‘caste’ or ‘jati’ has the same status as alumni associations and similar social groups, with their varying practices, it seems we are prepared to say that ‘jati’ has no special place in the Indian society in the same way that my alumni association has no special status in Indian society. Based on my personal experiences, I expect ‘jati’ to be more central to a description of Indian society than an alumni association.
This sentence is the problematic one. Firstly, it does not follow (either empirically or logically) that if jati is a social group much like alumni associations, trades unions, etc. it has no special status in Indian society. That depends upon the role, function and the nature of such social groups and these are issues for empirical investigation. For instance, the Old Boys’ Network in Britain (comprising of alumni associations from public schools and Oxbridge students) apparently plays a very important role in the British society. In certain circles of power in India, alumni associations from private schools (like the Doon school, Lawrence school) and colleges like St. Stephens have built sophisticated networks that function like service clubs. In this sense, one cannot claim that alumni networks, by virtue of their composition, do not have a special status in a society. This is an empirical question. Your alumni association might indeed have no special place; that does not preclude some other alumni association from having an important place. (Similarly, by virtue of the fact that some particular trade union does not have a special status in Indian society, it is not possible to make claims about whether trades unions have a special status or not.)
Secondly, all of us routinely distinguish between a domain of study and several approaches or theories used to study the domain. (If ‘gravitational force’ is the domain of study, we have had a number of theories that have studied this domain.) In our case too, we need to keep this in mind: jati is the domain of study and there are theories in the market place that claim that the ‘system of caste’ is synonymous with the social structure of India. Denying this set of theories does not entail denying either the existence of jatis or the presence of a social structure in India.
Thirdly, just because people deny the Aristotelian theory about falling bodies, they are not committed to deny the experience that unsupported bodies (on earth) fall downwards. By denying one set of theories about the caste system (or even all of them), I am not committed to deny any experience, whether they are stories of oppression or whatever else. Furthermore, I am not even denying that jati practices cover many things: from commensality to marriages. These are issues for further empirical (which are these practices and where) and theoretical (what role do these practices play in sustaining and reproducing a social structure) investigation.
All I am committed to is the following claim: the dominant western story about ‘the caste system’ is false, if taken as an explanation of the Indian society.