I am in Rajasthan at the moment and have had some fascinating conversations with Indians that have clarified my understanding of caste. Prior to these conversations I thought that caste was a social system based on four main subdivisions: the Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (commerce) and Shudras (workmen) with a certain amount of sub-castes within each group, occupation being defined by caste and inter-marrying being banned outside of caste.
The Indians told me a slightly different tale. According to them the most important aspect of caste is the family. Families have hereditary occupations and are very extended. The extended nature of the families minimises inbreeding and it is possible to marry someone in the next village who is in your family but only very distantly related. Indeed, some extended families only permit intermarriage between those who are 10 generations apart (ie:only related through a shared great great great great grandfather). However, they do identify as being in the same family and family is identified with a division of sub-caste. The sub-caste is related to a particular form of employment. One of the sub-castes is potters (surname Kumhars) these are part of the Prajapati caste. The subcaste operates like a tribe, it is regulated by elders and people can be outcast from the tribe.
Somewhat bizarrely the moslems in Rajasthan are also members of moslem subcastes. I did not expect this and had never heard of it before. It probably dates from before the moslem invasions of India, the extended family converted to Islam en masse and preserved the old caste rules. A quick look at Wikipedia's article on the caste system amongst South Asian moslems would have enlightened me. Apparently the caste system applies to moslems across India and even in Pakistan.
The link between employment and caste is being decisively broken in India, the old crafts cannot compete with industrial production so Kumhars can be found working as accountants rather than as potters. This had actually always happened, even in villages, because potters almost always had small farms but were Kumhars rather than farming caste. The tribal roots of caste are not being broken so easily as the employment roots and division of subcaste (extended family) is still the basis for marriage.
The most important aspect of caste seems to be that they help each other to the detriment of people outside of their caste. Like tribes, they are also the basis for epic corruption, a corrupt official in Uttar Pradesh (UP) was recently found to have about 26 motor cars corruptly acquired from the UP government. These cars were not all for his own use but were used to help members of his "family". When tribes and caste are involved corruption spins totally out of control. Caste is also identical to nepotism, if Westerners think the Freemasons are bad, they should look at casteism. The reason that being cast out of your caste is so terrifying for Indians is that they lose all chance of nepotisitic employment.
I was told that the social structure of caste is policed by unofficial bodies called "caste councils" or "caste panchayats". My source told me that the village priests were usually powerful members of these councils and this is the principle social role of the Hindu priesthood. It is the caste councils that enforce endogamy or marriage within the extended family or sub-caste. The enforcement is frequently violent - see for instance: India: Price of Honour - Caste Panchayats as Instruments of Terror. The councils have been ruled as illegal in India in 2011 but my enquiries suggest that this is simply ignored. The caste councils occur wherever South Asians have migrated.
Western academics and politicians are incredibly patronising towards the Indians about caste and casteism. Typical statements are: "This system has worked well for Indian people and still has a major role in modern India." (Indian Caste Sytem, California State University). How cute, what sweet little folksy people the Indians are! The truth is very different, as The Human Rights Watch paper on Caste Discrimination: a global concern shows, caste prejudice, caste discrimination and casteist violence is as bad as anything that happened in South Africa under Apartheid. The worst aspect of casteism is that it is based on secret societies that run government so the Indian Government can say it has passed laws to stop casteism and then do nothing.
Incidentally, Western organisations should treat references and recommendations made by South Asian expatriates for fellow caste members as if they were being made by a member of the family (ie: they should be discounted). This warning applies to hindus and moslems.
Another aspect of caste in Rajasthani villages is that it discriminates horribly against women. Not only are marriages arranged but the women are entirely subordinate. Divorce is forbidden and when a woman's husband dies the woman is outcast. Her jewellery is ripped from her, sometimes ripping her nose and ear lobes, and she is expelled from the village. If she is lucky she ends up in a hut in the desert employed on Government road building schemes.
The nearest approximation to caste in the West is probably the extended family system in Southern Italy, especially crime families. South Asians like to obfuscate the caste system, declaring that it is very complicated but it is just intermarriage limited to a highly extended family (clan) and the alliances between clans. Primitive and nasty by Western standards because these tight family ties are destructive of wider society, repressive of their members and should probably be actively broken up, where they exist in the West, by enlightened governments. What happens in India and Pakistan is their concern.
More on Caste
The division of subcaste or caste that represents the family is known in India as the Jati. Here is an interesting quotation lifted from the Wikipedia article on Jatis:
Professor Madhav Gadgil (1983) has described the reality of self-governing, closed communities, which are called Jatis, in India, based on his research in rural Maharashtra: "The Indian society is even today an agglomeration of numerous castes, tribes and religious communities. The tribal and caste groups are endogamous, reproductively isolated populations traditionally distributed over a restricted geographical range. The different caste populations, unlike tribes, have extensive geographical overlap and members of several castes generally constitute the complex village society. In such a village society, each caste, traditionally self regulated by a caste council, used to lead a relatively autonomous existence. Each caste used to pursue a hereditarily prescribed occupation; this was particularly true of the artisan and service castes and the pastoral and nomadic castes. The several castes were linked to each other through a traditionally determined barter of services and produce (Ghurye 1961, Karve 1961). These caste groups retained their identity even after conversion to Islam or Christianity. Each of the caste groups was thus the unit within which cultural and perhaps genetic evolution occurred, at least for the last 1500 years when the system was fully crystallized and probably much longer. Over this period the various castes had come to exhibit striking differences in cultural traits like skills possessed, food habits, dress, language, religious observances as well as in a number of genetic traits."
Postmodern authors and Indian Nationalists blame the British for the caste system and for partition, neither of which is true. The caste system and caste councils are at least a millennium old and partition was agreed between Jinna and Ghandi.
The Indians told me a slightly different tale. According to them the most important aspect of caste is the family. Families have hereditary occupations and are very extended. The extended nature of the families minimises inbreeding and it is possible to marry someone in the next village who is in your family but only very distantly related. Indeed, some extended families only permit intermarriage between those who are 10 generations apart (ie:only related through a shared great great great great grandfather). However, they do identify as being in the same family and family is identified with a division of sub-caste. The sub-caste is related to a particular form of employment. One of the sub-castes is potters (surname Kumhars) these are part of the Prajapati caste. The subcaste operates like a tribe, it is regulated by elders and people can be outcast from the tribe.
Somewhat bizarrely the moslems in Rajasthan are also members of moslem subcastes. I did not expect this and had never heard of it before. It probably dates from before the moslem invasions of India, the extended family converted to Islam en masse and preserved the old caste rules. A quick look at Wikipedia's article on the caste system amongst South Asian moslems would have enlightened me. Apparently the caste system applies to moslems across India and even in Pakistan.
The link between employment and caste is being decisively broken in India, the old crafts cannot compete with industrial production so Kumhars can be found working as accountants rather than as potters. This had actually always happened, even in villages, because potters almost always had small farms but were Kumhars rather than farming caste. The tribal roots of caste are not being broken so easily as the employment roots and division of subcaste (extended family) is still the basis for marriage.
The most important aspect of caste seems to be that they help each other to the detriment of people outside of their caste. Like tribes, they are also the basis for epic corruption, a corrupt official in Uttar Pradesh (UP) was recently found to have about 26 motor cars corruptly acquired from the UP government. These cars were not all for his own use but were used to help members of his "family". When tribes and caste are involved corruption spins totally out of control. Caste is also identical to nepotism, if Westerners think the Freemasons are bad, they should look at casteism. The reason that being cast out of your caste is so terrifying for Indians is that they lose all chance of nepotisitic employment.
I was told that the social structure of caste is policed by unofficial bodies called "caste councils" or "caste panchayats". My source told me that the village priests were usually powerful members of these councils and this is the principle social role of the Hindu priesthood. It is the caste councils that enforce endogamy or marriage within the extended family or sub-caste. The enforcement is frequently violent - see for instance: India: Price of Honour - Caste Panchayats as Instruments of Terror. The councils have been ruled as illegal in India in 2011 but my enquiries suggest that this is simply ignored. The caste councils occur wherever South Asians have migrated.
Western academics and politicians are incredibly patronising towards the Indians about caste and casteism. Typical statements are: "This system has worked well for Indian people and still has a major role in modern India." (Indian Caste Sytem, California State University). How cute, what sweet little folksy people the Indians are! The truth is very different, as The Human Rights Watch paper on Caste Discrimination: a global concern shows, caste prejudice, caste discrimination and casteist violence is as bad as anything that happened in South Africa under Apartheid. The worst aspect of casteism is that it is based on secret societies that run government so the Indian Government can say it has passed laws to stop casteism and then do nothing.
Incidentally, Western organisations should treat references and recommendations made by South Asian expatriates for fellow caste members as if they were being made by a member of the family (ie: they should be discounted). This warning applies to hindus and moslems.
Another aspect of caste in Rajasthani villages is that it discriminates horribly against women. Not only are marriages arranged but the women are entirely subordinate. Divorce is forbidden and when a woman's husband dies the woman is outcast. Her jewellery is ripped from her, sometimes ripping her nose and ear lobes, and she is expelled from the village. If she is lucky she ends up in a hut in the desert employed on Government road building schemes.
The nearest approximation to caste in the West is probably the extended family system in Southern Italy, especially crime families. South Asians like to obfuscate the caste system, declaring that it is very complicated but it is just intermarriage limited to a highly extended family (clan) and the alliances between clans. Primitive and nasty by Western standards because these tight family ties are destructive of wider society, repressive of their members and should probably be actively broken up, where they exist in the West, by enlightened governments. What happens in India and Pakistan is their concern.
More on Caste
The division of subcaste or caste that represents the family is known in India as the Jati. Here is an interesting quotation lifted from the Wikipedia article on Jatis:
Professor Madhav Gadgil (1983) has described the reality of self-governing, closed communities, which are called Jatis, in India, based on his research in rural Maharashtra: "The Indian society is even today an agglomeration of numerous castes, tribes and religious communities. The tribal and caste groups are endogamous, reproductively isolated populations traditionally distributed over a restricted geographical range. The different caste populations, unlike tribes, have extensive geographical overlap and members of several castes generally constitute the complex village society. In such a village society, each caste, traditionally self regulated by a caste council, used to lead a relatively autonomous existence. Each caste used to pursue a hereditarily prescribed occupation; this was particularly true of the artisan and service castes and the pastoral and nomadic castes. The several castes were linked to each other through a traditionally determined barter of services and produce (Ghurye 1961, Karve 1961). These caste groups retained their identity even after conversion to Islam or Christianity. Each of the caste groups was thus the unit within which cultural and perhaps genetic evolution occurred, at least for the last 1500 years when the system was fully crystallized and probably much longer. Over this period the various castes had come to exhibit striking differences in cultural traits like skills possessed, food habits, dress, language, religious observances as well as in a number of genetic traits."
Postmodern authors and Indian Nationalists blame the British for the caste system and for partition, neither of which is true. The caste system and caste councils are at least a millennium old and partition was agreed between Jinna and Ghandi.
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