Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present, by Sumit Guha (IJFM 35:4, Winter 2018, pp. 197-200). —Reviewed by H. L. Richard
In over thirty years of study related to Hindu traditions the subject of caste has repeatedly arisen and I finally came to a settled conclusion that there is neither a clear understanding of how caste developed historically nor agreement on how it should be understood in its complex practical expressions at the current time. Sumit Guha in his study Beyond Caste has changed my position. It seems to me that Guha has presented a case for understanding caste that compels consent. It does not solve the ancient history problems (it does not even address this) and it is neither simplistic nor simple. This review will outline Guha’s case, hopefully convincing some and moving others to study the book.
Guha is a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, but his study shows a deep grasp of the sociological literature related to caste and also adequate familiarity with the influence of treatments from Hindu texts. But it needs to be recognized that Guha has goals beyond just describing caste, as he states clearly in his Introduction:
The book has two goals. Its central aim is to present a new, historically informed understanding of the working of South Asian state and society through the past millennium; the secondary one is to provide the basis for a comparative understanding of the long-run processes of ethnic politics in this area as it came to modernity and experienced modern forms of state power. By attaining these goals I hope to enable us to drastically rethink the “caste system”–that central trope in the popular and scholarly understandings of the Indian subcontinent through the centuries. (1—2)
Guha goes on in his Introduction to make clear that there is no one caste system that explains Indian society, rather there are complex change mechanisms that produced and transform caste:
I will explain caste as an institution, as a very stable feature of human interaction, which is nonetheless maintained and reproduced by belief and behaviour. These can and do change over time. I therefore argue that the effort to find a single, unified rationale for the internal workings and external relations of each of thousands of caste corporations is ultimately futile. We should begin by thinking of this society as being, like any complex civilization, multi-stranded or polyadic. (2, italics original)
Not only is there no simple explanation for caste, the modern development of caste is not really unique compared to other societies:
I will show that the bounded, status-ranked ethnic community or “caste” is a social form that frequently appears in multiethnic societies. But in South Asia it became a highly involuted, politicized form of ethnic ranking shaped by the constant exercise of socio-economic power. (2—3)
This gets to the heart of caste; “bounded, status-ranked ethnic communities” where occupation, kinship, and purity and pollution (the latter pair being the “religious” element) are all in play. Guha suggests that purity has taken too large a role in most attempts to understand caste (Dumont’s landmark study being a case in point) and wants a focus not just on the markers of caste but also the powers that enforce caste (4), because the political element played and continues to play a major role in the development of ethnic boundaries and the ranking of ethnic communities.
Guha objects to making too large a distinction between “traditional” (precolonial) Indian society and modern India, particularly objecting to suggestions that caste as we know it today is a product of the colonial period. He outlines a compelling case for continuity in the last thousand years of Indian history while recognizing unique elements related to the colonial era.
In arguing his case Guha first (Chapter One) looks at how caste came to be central to the current understanding of India. The term caste is an oddity as there were many English and Sanskrit terms that could have been used, yet the Portuguese casta came to prominence (23). Europeans put a focus on “purity of blood” which was not central to Indian thought, in the process creating the odd idea (impossible to Indic understanding) of a “half-caste.” Initially caste was seen as “a functional ordering of civil society” (38), but the development of Orientalist textual studies supported by missionary cynicism towards “Hinduism” led to the perception of Brahmanical dominance as the key to caste:
The valorization of textual knowledge foregrounded the Brahmans who had composed the oldest parts of it, and this fitted well with the missionary current in Oriental studies, which had a natural propensity to see caste as a product of malign Brahman dominance, if not fraud and conspiracy. This went back to St. Francis Xavier, who wrote in 1544 that there was a perverse “breed” (engeance) among the Hindus (Gentils) known as Brahmans who controlled all the other Gentils. (39)
Guha provides a data-rich history of the development of discussions about caste up to the present time. He is cynical towards Western sociology (“the world of Western anthropology was enamoured of grand models and armchair theorists” [52]) while appreciating the work of Hocart and Susan Bayly among others who recognized the dynamics of caste and its manipulation politically (49). Bayly documented how “Christian” rulers manipulated converts (the Tamil Paravas) similarly to other political powers (37, etc.). Sri Lankan case studies further show that the dynamics of caste transcend religious identities and India itself.
The second chapter looks at “Territorial Power: The Spatial Dimension of Social Organization.” There is again far too much data to attempt a proper summary. Guha demolishes the idea of autonomous unchanging villages, in this chapter particularly attacking Karl Marx’s presentation of this idea. Village clusters (janapada, but nādu in south India) are rather the key locations where political power developed. Guha’s opposition to neat theorizing is clear in this comment:
Hence, rather than thinking of social and economic institutions in terms of authentic regions and ancient traditions, it is more useful to view them as continually reproduced and inherently unstable. (62)
This unstable continuous reproduction means that what is called caste today would have had many different manifestations in different parts of India in different historical eras. Ethnic boundaries are the key reality:
So territorial bounding and internal stratification had to proceed alongside each other. In other words, the caste hierarchy and the village cluster or janapada grew up together: the one created a social boundary, the other a spatial one. (63)
This chapter contains stimulating analysis of the ancient Arthashastra, the concept and place of the tribe, fighting units for warfare in the village clusters and developed kingdoms, and introduces some of the changes that developed in the colonial era. Strong states and kingdoms developed by weakening and limiting other power networks (janapada, fighting units, etc.)
Chapter Three is on “The Political Economy of Village Life” and opens with a romantic statement of Jawaharlal Nehru (“The old Indian social structure was based on . . . the autonomous village community; caste and the joint family system”) which Guha then systematically destroys. Once again Guha marshals data to show the varieties of villages that developed across India, with western India having the most developed structures. The balutā system of western India involved hereditary functions with fixed entitlements; the jajmāni system of parts of the north involved a patron household overseeing servants and other vassals. Guha comments:
For whatever reason, balutā–an institution well known to colonial administrators and Indian historians–was never recognized by the few Western anthropologists who, if they considered the rural division of labour at all, focused on the cultural rationale of jajmāni. It is a classic example of the Orientalist producing the Orient. (115)
Readers with interest in this topic need to read Guha’s fascinating documentation supporting his position that “The evidence suggests that both patron-client pairs and village servant systems have existed or been altogether absent at various times in different regions” (135). The harsh realities of poverty and oppression are also highlighted in this chapter which shows the centrality of political power in all developments related to caste and village life.
Chapter Four focuses on the household as the central political unit. The household was more than biological kin, and established state power used the terms and practices of kinship in its developed power relations. Case studies of state power related to kinship, strategies of division, and income generation show how rulers could initiate change into social and economic structures. British colonial power is shown to demonstrate all the same issues that are documented in pre-colonial periods. But British efforts to prevent the rise of alternate power structures are also documented.
Chapter Five comes to the colonial era, the chapter title aptly indicating the contents: “Ruling, Identifying, and Counting: Knowledge and Power in Eighteenth Century India.” The role of the census is a large part of this story; Guha’s dismissive swipe at census errors is worth quoting:
It is not difficult to enlarge upon the fallacies and inconsistencies, tropes and clichés of the censuses province by province through the decades, but I will not lengthen this book with such exercises in post-colonial preening. (204)
While “The pursuit of information was an integral part of the maintenance of power and control well before the colonial state” (178), it is also true that “there can be little doubt that the colonial regime pursued its aim of collecting such information with unmatched persistence, tenacity and success” (173–4).
Central to the story of the development of state power both in precolonial and colonial times is taxation and income generation. Data about peoples and populations was to this end despite different approaches of different rulers. Guha documents this reality and shows continuity rather than discontinuity as the colonial era emerges. A good summary of his case:
We see, then, that in managing both high politics and military manpower resources, knowledge and use of community identities were essential components of political management and military administration; stable governance required both. (188)
Ethnic communities or castes were part of the core data, easily manipulated by the new colonial powers, as illustrated by British classification of Marathas as Shudra while Rajputs, due to their political significance offsetting Marathas and Muslims, were elevated beyond the place assigned by Brahmanical orthodoxy and were defined as Kshatriya (201).
The final chapter is “Empires, Nations, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity, c. 1800–2010.” Guha’s opening statement gives an excellent summary:
We have seen how local political organizations were adapted and modified through recent centuries as intensive political competition, enhanced information flows, and the strengthening of markets (including those for military force) changed their internal structures and external relations. The once-solid frame of the village cluster was sapped by military-fiscal regimes through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and largely dissolved in the nineteenth. (210)
The foibles of British power and the maneuverings of locals to adjust to new realities is presented with compelling case studies. The British managed to “achieve a degree of penetration and control over South Asia that no previous government had ever achieved” (227).
The British were completely dependent on local knowledge and leadership, so various subaltern classes/castes rose with the increasing power of the colonial state. As Guha summarizes,
In a vast and diverse subcontinent there were, not surprisingly, major divergences in the composition of this subaltern class across regions. This reflected both long regional histories and the accidents of conquest. (228)
Guha defines five different regions and the distinctive of which locals emerged as powerful. He proceeds to outline some north and south India differences as the dynamic of Dravidianism also came into play (228–231). This is rich material for understanding modern India, and it is not suited for simple summation.
The Punjab becomes a central case study. The British, acting consistently with Indian history, used their power to manipulate people and events for the sake of their own longevity. They carefully segregated the army (Punjab being the center of the British military), creating Sikh, Brahman, Rajput, Muslim, etc. battalions to prevent any wider unity that might lead to revolt. The blatant politicization of their economic policies is acknowledged in a statement from 1901 when “agricultural tribes,” which included Hindu, Muslim and Sikh peoples, were being defined:
Our decision as to any particular tribe must turn largely on political considerations . . . it seems proper to consider whether its [any particular tribe/caste/group’s] numbers, position, etc., render it of sufficient political or social important to be considered an agricultural trip. )239-240, quoting British officer P.J. Fagan from The Punjab Alienation of Land Bill of 1900 by Norman G. Barrier, Raleigh” Duke University, 115; emphasis added by Guha)
In the end, “the new caste politics everywhere modified patterns of community boundaries and political action” (235). The rise, and more recently the decline, of the Congress political party is succinctly narrated:
The Congress system always rested on a tacit compromise with the locally dominant. The deepening of competitive politics in India gradually made this arrangement less and less viable. (249)
A brief Afterward (four pages) summarizes the core arguments of the book. At the end of the twentieth century, caste
has been delegitimized as ideology without its powerful presence as a political identity being undermined thereby . . . In other words, its religious strand has frayed away but the one binding it to the exercise of power is thicker than ever. (252)
Caste as ethnicity has also maintained itself across political and religious boundaries, encompassing all the major faiths and all the five countries of South Asia. More than ever, it can only be understood in terms of the ethnic boundary processes that I invoked in the Introduction. (253)
This book has argued that we need to abandon the futile search for a social essence, for the Indic avatar of Hegel’s absolute spirit. It has shown that social structures, old and new, have been politically ordered in ways that we cannot grasp unless we deploy the concept of caste as a bounded corporate body shaped by socio-political power throughout its long history. (255)
In the end, Guha does not have a neat theory or definition, but he has presented a picture of complexity and how various influences have lead to the development of what is often simplistically referred to as “the caste system.” It is rather multiple systems. The ancient Brahmanical efforts to define and control the complexities of social, economic, and political life succeeded no further than British colonial efforts to understand and control Indian society.
Embracing this paradigm of complexity enables one to wrestle with local dynamics, contextual specificities, rather than resting in “grand models and armchair theories” which inhibit an empathetic grasp of locally-experienced realities. This study leaves one resolved ot listen and observe more carefully and discern more wisely just what has been and is significant about “caste” in India today. It thus does a great service to all who want to understand any aspect of life in the archipelago of Indian peoples, where, despite the analogy, no people (or person, or village) is an island.
Article Pull Quotes
Guha provides a data-rich history of the development of discussions about caste, and he’s cynical towards Western sociology—“the world of Western anthropology was enamoured of grand models and armchair theorists.”
The harsh realities of poverty and oppression are highlighted in a chapter which shows the centrality of political power in all developments related to caste and village life.
Caste “has been delegitimized as ideology without its presence as a political identity being undermined. . . . its religious strand has frayed away but the one binding it to the exercise of power is thicker than ever.” — Guha
- H.L. Richard is an independent researcher focused on the Hindu-Christian encounter. He has published numerous books and articles including studies of key figures like Narayan Vaman Tilak (Following Jesus in the Hindu Context, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1998), Kalagara Subba Rao (Exploring the Depths of the Mystery of Christ, Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2005), and R. C. Das (R. C. Das: Evangelical Prophet for Contextual Christianity, Delhi: ISPCK, 1995).
