concept of caste as an invention of colonial modernity

Mukerji and modernity: D.P. The early Orientalists, while doing so with honest intentions, were key contributors to the invention of Hinduism. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics. Some view it as an unchanged survival of Brahmanical traditions of India. In no way can Caste be considered to be a British colonial construct, it is often argued, as it is evident throughout Indian cultural history. Although the putative divide between Muslims and Hindus became the more dominant colonial charge, caste division had been used throughout colonial history to explain India’s “lack” of politics, and when that did not work, to trivialize its politics as localistic, particularistic, and inherently divisive. on JSTOR. B, ‘Inventing Caste History: Dalit mobilisation and nationalist past’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. N.B, The Invention of Caste: Civil Society in Colonial India, CSST Working Paters, The University of Michigan, October 1988, P.30, [35] Vaidyanathan. D. N, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to Dirks, for example states that, “Caste achieved its critical colonial position because the British state was successful in separating caste as a social form from its dependence on pre-colonial political processes.” While Indian education was certainly Puranic[17], their teaching was not under a unified code of Hinduism, especially considering that Puranical texts exist additionally in both Buddhism and Jainism. In 1862, a proposal that each district have a manual of its own was revived by the Government of Madras, which subsequently charged Mr. Carmichael, collector of Vizagapatam, and Mr. Nelson, collector of Madura, to compile model works for their respective districts. D, Making India Hindu, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, Macdonell. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. British colonial rulers would have self-imposed themselves as Brahmin during this evolution of the Caste system. colonial discourse as the defining structural feature of Indian society. The reason for looking at Hinduism before British involvement will be to demonstrate that before British colonialism there was not a cohesive, self-determined, large-scale ‘Hindu’ religious group. You do not have access to this Edition 1st Edition . Missionaries would attempt to distinguish between the ‘real’ religion of Christianity and the allegedly mystical fallacies of Indian religion. It is noteworthy, however, that the colonial experience can not be seen as a unilateral, one-way movement. On this view there were four major religious groups [in India], Jews, Christians, Mahometans (i.e. Additionally to the orientalists, however, there were other factors that contributed to the construction of Hinduism. This essay will establish the extent to which Hinduism and the caste system can be considered a European invention. Colonialism lives on in the massive disparities of wealth and control over capital between north and south, in the contradictory institutional legacies that inhabit political, juridical, educational,... JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Date written: May/2012, All content on the website is published under the following Creative Commons License, Copyright © — E-International Relations. Cannon states that Jones was attempting to change “Europeans’ minds about the Indians.”[20] This approach inevitably leads to generalisations and misconstructions of facts especially given the huge subject area being dealt with. Colonial conquest made possible (even as it was made possible by) the marking of new territories with the dimensions and coordinates of colonial interest. Try logging in through your institution for access. Due to the naturally Western approach taken by these academics, Indian religion was misconstrued, albeit unintentionally. 8, No.1, January 1895, P.26, [34] Dirks. This suggests that the popular uprising was Indian as opposed to Hindu. The history of intensive western cognitive as well as political engagements in matters of caste had started in the early 19th century, with earlier antecedents. No. The Harappan civilisation was centred around the relatively advanced cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.  With an estimated population of 40,000 in each city, which were both described by Fitzsimons as a “utilitarian city-planner’s delight,”[2] the sophisticated base for cultural and religious growth is evident. 39, No. King states that “describing religions of the East as ‘mystical’ is a way of differentiating the essential historical truth of Christianity from its inferior rivals.”[23] This attack contributed to the mass generalisation of many ‘mystical’ Indian religions into Hinduism. 38, No. 4, No. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books. The Indian colonial uprising of 1957-1958 was part of the common pattern of reactive nationalism. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. By Debjani Ganguly. Savarkar wrote of the need for India to attain historical consciousness of itself as a nation, and of the importance of the rebellion for constituting a foundational moment in the emergence of a national history. Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below. Lorenzen states that there is a tendency among the academia, “to adopt a postcolonialist perspective that privileges the British colonial period as the period in which almost all the major institutions of Indian society and politics were invented or constructed.”[27] The predisposition to refer to Indian issues as “precolonial, colonial, or postcolonial”[28] means that there is often an over emphasis placed on the importance of the British in the construction of Indian culture. In comparative sociology and in common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, indexing it as fundamentally different from other places as well as expressing its essence. Talbot states that endowments and the like were “recorded in Sanskrit on copper plates, a traditionally kingly type of gift and inscriptional medium.”[6] This indicates that the language had potential to be utilised for political as opposed to religious means. 41, No.4, October 1999, Ludden. That included not only the use of the all-India literary language of Sanskrit, the patronage of Brahmins, and the memory of the previous Kakatiya dynasty but also the rich symbolism of the age-old fight against demons and disorder.”[7] This use of Sanskrit and use of various other, what would now be considered, Hindu traditions demonstrates that there was not a pre-determined Hindu religion that could be viewed as being altered and added to. A study into the existence of Hinduism before British intervention presents three conclusions with regard to whether Europeans invented Hinduism. The nature in which Hinduism was invented then needs to be established in order to understand how the vast content was generalised into one religion by the British. After all, history is constructed to suit the colonisers and victors.”[35] Vaidyanathan is indirectly supporting the notion that caste most certainly existed within Indian societal history and that its utilisation by the British was normal practice for the ruling classes in India. Created through Indian religions, the caste system divides people into four Varna categories; Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (agriculturalists), and Shudras (servants). When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. 5.4 CASTE AS THE INVENTION OF COLONIAL MODERNITY OR A LEGACY OF BRAHMANICAL TRADITIONS As we hinted above, two opposing viewpoints see caste differently. British colonial construction of Hinduism occurred through categorising institutions such as censuses, and Christian Scholars utilised the generalisation of Hinduism in order to create a common religious antagonist due to their missionary nature. The second observation is that what would now be considered the Hindu group did not define themselves as a singular religious group, even in the face of Islam, both militarily and culturally. The European viewpoint of religion in India was that all non-Abrahamic religions were considered Heathen. This conclusion was reached through an assessment of the origins of the caste system which showed that caste existed in not just a religious context but was also socially implemented. C, ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self:  Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. Arguments for the ‘invention’ of caste centre more around the way it was utilised within British colonialism. This in turn suggests the invention of Hinduism, due to the fact that, if it was not a British construct, the popular uprising would have been of Hindu nationalists, as opposed to Indian nationalists such as Ghandi. ‘Modernity/coloniality’ is a concept first used by Aníbal Quijano and later developed by Walter Mignolo. Observing the situation before British colonialism demonstrated that the content of Hinduism developed from its roots in the Indus Valley, although a consistent religious group did not exist between then and modern day Hinduism. 4, No. When these works were completed several... Risley was by no means the only observer to suggest that caste opposed nationality. Madan in his work Pathways (1994). [14] Through assessment of this work, the desire to define Hinduism in the same way as Western religions becomes particularly obvious. The third conclusion is that the Sanskrit language, which British scholars would use to generalise Hindus, is the liturgical language for many religious denominations where the majority have been generalised into Hinduism regardless of huge diversity between them. S, Imagining Hinduism: A postcolonial perspective, Routledge, London, 2003, Talbot. The two forms of invention that took place due to orientalists were invention through legitimisation and through generalisation. All Rights Reserved. H. V, Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, Sage Publications, London, 1995, P.23, [18] Moor. According to some accounts, Rajeev Goswami had initially only intended to stage a mock self-immolation; as soon as he struck a match his friends were supposed to have doused him with water, waiting only for a few photographs to be snapped. British religion contributed to Hinduism’s invention by creating a coherent religious ‘other’ in relation to which Christianity could be viewed as superior. The modern term ‘Hindu’ more than likely derives from the name given to the people who lived in the areas surrounding the Indus River, located in what is now Pakistan. B.K, Was Hinduism invented?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, P.3, [12] William Dalrymple, ‘Gods and Monsters’, in The Guardian, 25th August 2007, online, accessed on 4th March 2012, , [13] David Kopf, ‘Hermeneutics versus History’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. Bayly (2004), and Dipesh Chakravarty (2011), among many others; but his preferred term “early colonial modernity” does partake of and extend the notion of early modernity, with his stress on the distinctiveness of the ‘early-colonial’. Colonial social structures contributed by generalisations of Hinduism through bureaucratic means, and indigenous religious traditions contributed through their construction of Hinduism as a competitor to Christianity. A long history of writing—from the grand treatise of the Abbé Dubois to the general anthropology of Louis Dumont; from the piles of statistical and descriptive volumes of British colonial censuses starting in 1872 to the eye-catching headlines of theNew York Times—has identified caste as the basic form of Indian society. Sanskrit was a useful political tool as it demonstrated a connection to the ancient religions of local populations. 41, No.4, October 1999, Fitzsimmons. 4 Milner, Compare Anthony, The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya: Contesting Nationalism and the Expansion of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). These conclusions were reached by studying these issues before, during and after British colonialism. W, ‘Gods and Monsters’, in The Guardian, 25th August 2007, online, accessed on 4th March 2012, , David Kopf, ‘Hermeneutics versus History’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. This section will demonstrate that this caste system is part of the ancient content of Hinduism and therefore should not be considered as a British colonial construct and that British involvement and contributions with regards to the caste system are typical of ruling classes in Indian history. This further demonstrates the fact that Hinduism was not generally viewed as a cohesive religion as Islam was not treated as aggressive on religious grounds. These statements demonstrate that British colonialism’s contribution to the ‘invention’ of Hinduism was largely one of generalisation and categorisation. M.A, ‘The Indus Valley Civilisation’, The History Teacher, Vol. 37, No. E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , P.1, [17] Dalmia. The Orientalists generalised various Indian religious traditions into a coherent Hindu religion. Hinduism should be considered Indian in every sense, regardless of the general label given to it by colonialists, Arthashastra, Book 3, Chapter XIX, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , Cannon. Pennington states that, “Alongside evangelical Christianity emerged the concept of a unitary Indian religion later known as Hinduism.”[24] Without the evangelical drive to spread the teachings of Christianity, the religious requirement for the construction of Hinduism would not exist. God, thus adored, is called BRAHM: the One External Mind; the self-existing, incomprehensible Spirit.”[15] Considering that this statement is referring to the whole of Hindu culture, it can be considered an unreasonable generalisation. Whereas the nineteenth century was the great century of imperial power, the most astonishing accomplishment of the twentieth century has been the struggle to consign colonial rule to the past tense. R.M, Reimagining Otherness: A Post-mortem for the Postmodern in India, 1998 Unpublished Essay quoted from, Lorenzen. Wagoner states that “adaptation of Islamicate dress at Vijayanagara was a fundamental part of a broader, far-reaching process of Islamicization, through which selected Indic cultural forms and practices were replaced in key “public” contexts with analogues drawn from a more universal, Islamicate culture.” [8] This suggests a lack of any strict Hindu coherence despite the fact that Vijayanagara and its culture would be largely defined as Hindu by British colonialists. Histories Implicated in Colonialism. A primary theme seems to be that of the legitimisation of Hinduism in an attempt to demonstrate it as a genuine religion comparable to Christianity. 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