concept of caste as an invention of colonial modernity

In On Decoloniality Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh explore the hidden forces of the colonial matrix of power, its origination, transformation, and current presence, while asking the crucial questions of decoloniality's how, what, why, with whom, and what for. Created through Indian religions, the caste system divides people into four Varna categories; Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (agriculturalists), and Shudras (servants). An important aspect of Hinduism to emphasize to garner legitimisation in Western circles was elements of monotheism. Despite considerable association and integration with Islamic traditions in some areas of India, Sanskrit was still used as the one liturgical language used to demonstrate sovereignty despite the prevalence of other religions in India, notably Islam. J.H, ‘Caste in India’, American Anthropologist, Vol. While doing so with good academic intentions, these Orientalists drew on the expansive materials of Indian culture in such a way that they were treated as connected parts of an overarching culture. 121, No.2, April 1977, Dalmia. Sir William Jones was an earlier prominent Orientalist who contributed to the invention of Hinduism. 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. It is noteworthy, however, that the colonial experience can not be seen as a unilateral, one-way movement. This is due to evangelical attempts to create a singular definable religious opponent. It is within Harappan culture that many origins of modern Hindu religion are found. 4, October 1995, P.701, [8] Wagoner. Journal of Historical Sociology, 24 (1): 27–44. 25, pp. 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. This unifying factor can be considered to be one of cultural as opposed to religious similarities for pre-colonial Hinduism. The main conclusions drawn on the ‘invention’ of Hinduism by Europeans are twofold. The early Orientalists, while doing so with honest intentions, were key contributors to the invention of Hinduism. In this form, construction and invention of Hinduism developed through attempts to understand and categorise Hinduism. 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. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. The Dalits (untouchables) is a group that does not exist within any of the four Varna categories. Here, secularism functions as the mirror twin of modern religion that welds together the two ends of modernity/coloniality. Examples from the first chapter alone demonstrate various attempts to show Hinduism in a light that would make it more difficult for Christians to define it as heathen. H. V, Representing Hinduism: The Construction of Religious Traditions and National Identity, Sage Publications, London, 1995, Dalrymple. The foremost of these Orientalists can be considered to be Edward Moor whose book The Hindu Pantheon is the preeminent early English-language collection of Hindu religion and culture. B.K, Was Hinduism invented?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, P.23, [26] Ludden. Caste is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the Vedas which are among the world’s oldest religious texts and the founding texts of many Indian religions: “The Brahman was his mouth, of both his arms was the Rājanya made. His thighs became the Vaiśya, from his feet the Śūdra was produced.”[30]. ian notion of caste cafhe to preside along-side religion as an irreducible essence of Indian civilisation, amidst colonial profes-sions of the institution of equality.6 Modernity became the rhetoric rather than the project of colonialism. Problems arose however in his attempts at interpretation and assumptions on facts of Indian culture, Dalrymple for example notes that Jones, “passionately believed that the Hindus were a lost tribe of Egypt.”[19] This shows an earlier example of attempts to connect Indian culture to recognised ‘Western’ civilisation in the pursuit of Orientalists to legitimise Indian culture in the eyes of Western Christianity. 38, No. book Firstly that British colonials contributed heavily to the categorisation of the religion of Hinduism or of Hinduism as a unified body and system of religious doctrine, texts, rituals and practices, which it had not previously been and secondly that the social and religious content of the Hindu group was not in any way invented but developed over thousands of years. 42-52 Nicholas B. Dirks. 8, No.1, January 1895, Rig Veda, Book 10, Hymn 90, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , Sugirtharajah. Notes on a Postcolonial Hermeneutics of Caste. This essay will establish the extent to which Hinduism and the caste system can be considered a European invention. It refers to the way in which the concepts (modernity and coloniality) are inseparable –two sides of the same coin. Written at: Swansea University  41, No.4, October 1999, [29] Macdonell. At first glance this may seem like British orientalists were aware of the difference between the different religions that use the Sanskrit language. As King states, “the predominant Christian perspective among the Europeans classified Indian religion under the all-inclusive rubric of Heathenism. These observations means that the content existed before British colonialism at was at some point during the period generalised into Hinduism. However it can be noted that while Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism contain many similarities, notably for example the belief in Karma, they also contain many differences. 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. You do not have access to this The reasons for Buddhism and Jainism therefore not being included within the British generalisation of Hinduism is because they were significantly larger than most Hindu denominations and, more importantly, largely self-determined as individual, separate religions. Macdonell states that Caste “has been the chief characteristic of the civilization of India for more than 2500 years, and has marked off Indian civilization from that of the rest of the world as unique.”[29] This uniqueness could not be significantly constructed or altered during the relatively short period of British colonialism. By Debjani Ganguly. When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. 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. 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. This suggests how the people of the ‘Indus’ could come to be identifiable as ‘Hindus’ even after the end of the Harappan civilisation. He wrote that there were “three classes of Heathen, each one of which has a very distinct rule... By the second half of the nineteenth century, the colonial state in India was about to undergo several major transformations. This suggests that the popular uprising was Indian as opposed to Hindu. Edition 1st Edition . Abdullah, Taufik has written in this respect an exemplary study on the Minangkabau. The Great Rebellion had made it clear to the British that they knew far too little about the colonized populations of India. There is certainly a degree of arrogance involved in suggestions that British colonial rule invented a system which first appears between 1700-1100 BCE and is consistently prevalent in Indian texts up to the era of British colonialism. 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. 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. 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. Further attempts at legitimisation and inadvertent construction are exemplified by Moor when he states, “Although the Hindus are taught to address their vows to idols and saints, these are still but types and personifications of the Deity, who is too awful to be contemplated, and too incomprehensible to be described.”[16] By stating that Hindus are taught, Moor is implying that a Hindu education structure exists in which a coherent religion is taught, which was not the case. The impact of colonial social and religious traditions on the invention of Hinduism was very significant. 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. languages. E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , P.5, [19] William Dalrymple, ‘Gods and Monsters’, in The Guardian, 25th August 2007, online, accessed on 4th March 2012, , [20] Cannon. The unifying role of the Sanskrit language will also be observed. (2011). 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. eBook Published 7 … The lack of religious coherence within the Hindu group is demonstrated by the fact that they did not view Islam in religious terms. The first conclusion to be drawn is that the social group of the Indus river valley from where the name Hindu derives did not exist as a recognisably Hindu social group. on JSTOR. As Kind demonstrates, “the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act, section 2(1) defines a ‘Hindu’ as a category including not only all Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs but also anyone who is not a Muslim, a Christian, a Parsee or a Jew.” This categorises Hinduism as an “all-inclusive rubric for the non-Judaeo-Christian ‘Other’.”[22] This negative appellation demonstrates the invention of Hinduism as a religion (having been) defined by the ruling British, not by being but by not being an already existing unified religion. The archive, that primary site of state monumentality, is the very institution that canonizes, crystallizes, and classifies the knowledge required by the state even as it makes this knowledge available to subsequent generations in the cultural form of a neutral repository of the past. The second means through which Hinduism was invented was through India’s clash with British social and religious traditions. Aspects of ‘Hinduism’ before British colonialism to be observed will be its development from the Indus Valley, Hinduism’s tentative existence alongside Islam, and whether Hinduism existed in a religious form. Due to the naturally Western approach taken by these academics, Indian religion was misconstrued, albeit unintentionally. A, ‘The Early History of Caste’, The American Historical Review, Vol.19, No.2, January 1914, Moor. Jones made immense contributions to Sanskrit translation and introducing Indian culture to the West. DOI link for Caste, Colonialism and Counter-Modernity. Buddhism and Jainism are two religions whose liturgical texts are also in the Sanskrit language however they were not considered by the British to be Hindu. D, Making India Hindu, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, P.271, [27] Lorenzen. E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , Narayan. All Rights Reserved | Site by Rootsy. It can be considered however, that the British did not ‘invent’ the majority of Hinduism, but merely categorised it as Hinduism. The concept of caste as it found entrance into the social sciences is the result of a process of discursive inter- In conclusion, while Hinduism as an appellation can be considered to be a colonial invention all of its content is the result of millennia of social and religious development. B, ‘Inventing Caste History: Dalit mobilisation and nationalist past’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. When thinking of India it is hard not to think of caste. alleges that the western concept of modernity is erroneous. For example, while Mahatma Ghandi was a “nationalist and pious Hindu,”[26] he was not a Hindu nationalist but an Indian nationalist. When these works were completed several... Risley was by no means the only observer to suggest that caste opposed nationality. C, ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self:  Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. B, ‘Inventing Caste History: Dalit mobilisation and nationalist past’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. As of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 'Aryan' caste Hindus were widely said by both Indian and British … E, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, online, accessed  on 1st March 2012, , P.1, [17] Dalmia. 3, May 1980, P.502, [14] Moor. ©2000-2020 ITHAKA. Moreover, what they did know was far too unsystematic.¹ During the 1860s, a number of efforts were made to generate the basis for systematic and statistical knowledge collection and compilation. These conclusions were reached by studying these issues before, during and after British colonialism. Savarkar’s narrative emphasized the heroic refusal of Indian heroes, ordinary soldiers as... Victoria’s proclamation had announced, unambiguously, that the British would no longer seek to impose their “convictions on any of our subjects,” and that she would “strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of any of our subjects on pain of our highest displeasure.” She had further declared that in the “framing and administration of law, due regard would henceforth be paid to the ancient rights, usages and customs of India.” But although it was clear that the British intended by this never... For much of the nineteenth century, missionaries continued to dominate the production of ethnographic accounts of India through the sheer volume of accounts and reports they prepared, often to document the trials and tribulations of their labors in the midst of barbarism. These statements demonstrate that British colonialism’s contribution to the ‘invention’ of Hinduism was largely one of generalisation and categorisation. With power over natural resources of three continents, namely Africa, … Theory, Culture, and Society, 26 (7-8): 1-23. 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. 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. A brief look at the situation after the period of British colonialism demonstrates further evidence of Hindu invention and also demonstrates the nature of this invention. All Rights Reserved. Narayan states that the Dalit are inventing their own caste histories and that “through these caste histories, political parties channelise the dalit sense of identity in their own favour while at the same time swaying them against their political rivals.”[36] This demonstrates the constant reinterpretation of the meaning of caste in a way not in any way exclusive to the colonial era. For example, beliefs range between monotheism and polytheism in different denominations. However these similarities do not do enough to demonstrate that the Hindu religion has a complete and direct lineage from the Indus Valley Civilisation. The quote demonstrates attempts at legitimisation through Moor’s attempts to show Hinduism as monotheistic. 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. An assessment of the origins of the caste system demonstrates not only that caste certainly existed before British colonialism, but it existed beyond religious contexts in a very tangible social manner. 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. D. N, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. D.P. talked about modernity in an elaborate way. A. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Date written: May/2012, All content on the website is published under the following Creative Commons License, Copyright © — E-International Relations. 1, November 1970, Lorenzen. 8, No.1, January 1895, P.26, [34] Dirks. Talbot states that the “assertion that the fourteenth-century epigraphical meaning of Hindu was not primarily a religious one comes from the negative evidence that the terms Islam and Muslim (in its Persian variant, Musalman) never figure in Andhra inscriptions of the fourteenth through mid-seventeenth centuries.”[5] This suggests that by not defining others in religious terms, Hindus cannot be seen to have defined themselves as one religious group. Although that struggle has been successful, it has not only been drenched in violence but it has also led to the general recognition that the effects of imperialism have by no means disappeared with the demise of formal colonial regimes of rule. 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. B.K, Was Hinduism invented?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, Porter. 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. The nature of this manifestation needs to be explored in order to investigate whether Hinduism was invented by British colonials, as opposed to Indians themselves. He states that “The colonizers were part of the Abrahamic tradition, which believes in homogenization, and the heterogeneous and non-conflicting Indian society would not have suited their design. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. Try logging in through your institution for access. Culture: - distinguishes human beings from animals - refers to music, dance, literature, architecture and other creative activities - suggests tradition and heritage - denotes civilization - indicates the commonly shared ideas and practices of a group of people - suggests diversity We also think of a variety of activities as ‘cultural’. While this demonstrates an affection for Indian culture, it also leads to misconstruction of the reality of Hinduism. 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. These conclusions demonstrate that before British invention there did not exist a cohesive and self-determined Hindu religion. 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. Wagoner concludes that the assimilation of Islamic culture was not due to any aggression of Islam but “the result of conscious and deliberately calculated acts by creative individuals seeking to maximize their opportunities in an ever-widening world.”[9] This demonstrates that Hindus in Vijayanagara, by to not feeling threatened by Islam on religious grounds, cannot have viewed themselves as a single religious entity. This is due to the fact that, in order to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over Indian religion, generalisation was necessary simply due to the huge number of belief systems that were being challenged. This further supports the conclusion that the ‘actual’ content of Hinduism was not invented. Despite elements of invention within Moor’s work he also makes observations that are useful when noting western interpretations of Indian religion and these interpretations contributions to the invention of Hinduism. V, Stietencron. Log in to your personal account or through your institution. While aspects of their religious beliefs exist within modern day Hinduism, there is not a coherent religion that survived between then and now. What follows is a recap of the work I have since done in collaboration with members of the collective modernity/coloniality.2 The basic thesis is the following: ‘modernity’ is a European narrative that hides its darker side, ‘coloniality’. This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. Second, concentrating on the local articulations and dissemination of modernity means paying less attention to the grand designs of the colonial or modernizing state and more attention to the myriad local sites where the modern is produced, and transformed, in its encounter with, and production of, the non-modern. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to colonial discourse as the defining structural feature of Indian society. These photographs and the attendant press coverage would be used to draw dramatic media attention to the protests against caste reservations that had been mounting over the previous six weeks. Hatcher does not refer to the debates, initiated by Rao et al (2001), C.A. While beseeching the Mughal emperor to treat them as a privileged vassal, they... History had not always been unimportant to the British in India. revolution and nor was it a completely radical break with past tradition. No. Hinduism emerged in the encounter between modernity’s greatest colonial power, Great Britain, and the jewel of her imperial crown, India. 39, No. G, ‘Sir William Jones and the Association between East and West’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. These writers often engaged a growing body of assertion and argumentation about the fundamental nature of Indian society and its civil and political institutions, in the context of extensive debates about the colonial project of conquering and ruling India. To What Extent Were Hinduism and India’s Caste System Largely ‘Invented’ by Europeans? There is a considerable school of thought suggesting that Caste, as well as Hinduism, was a British invention. D. N, ‘Who Invented Hinduism?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. It is, however, inevitable that the modern Caste situation is a direct descendant of the relatively recent events of British colonialism. Colonial governmentality was not merely dependent on knowledge, it was also embedded in the forms of knowledge that provided the basis for the principal practices of the colonial state. Some view it as an unchanged survival of Brahmanical traditions of India. The only invention was the gathering of content under the definition of Hinduism. It is important to appreciate that British colonialism’s impact on Hinduism is only largely significant because of its relatively recent history. 41, No.4, October 1999, Ludden. We have traced parts of the process whereby India was consigned to an otherworldly and decidedly premodern position, and have pointed out moments when reactions to colonial and Orientalist characterizations led to other versions of Hinduism as the indigenous cultural repository of identity and value. British colonial rulers would have self-imposed themselves as Brahmin during this evolution of the Caste system. An example of generalisation demonstrated by Pennington is the missionary obsession with idol worship. The British mobilized military, diplomatic, and economic means to transform makeshift beachheads into the major imperial jewel of modern times. 4, No. 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). An assessment of British colonial interaction with the caste system will further demonstrate that caste is not a British invention. Moor states that Brahma, now viewed as one of the most important deities of Hinduism, was not prevalent in Indian teachings. The most significant substantive contribution to Hinduism’s creation exist long before any British influence, and Lorenzen’s argument demonstrates the reduced relevance that British colonialism will have once it is not an aspect of recent history. A study of the situation during British colonialism demonstrates that various factors contributed to the construction of Hinduism. The East India Company arrived in India to engage in trade for goods craved by Europe, only to find local political struggles irresistible, and opportunities for wealth—both private and public—incomparable. P.B, ‘”Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.55, No.4, November 1996, P.702, [10] Orientalism and religion, Richard King, Routledge, London, 2006, P.99, [11] Pennington. R, ‘Caste discrimination a British invention, bigger than steam engine’, in Daily News & Analysis, 26th February 2008, online, accessed on 5th March 2012, , [36] Narayan. 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’. Self-Imposed themselves as Brahmin during this evolution of the Sanskrit language coloniality ) are inseparable –two sides the. Four Varna categories not confer universal rights on all individuals 4, October 1999 [. British colonials welds together the two ends of Modernity/coloniality rulers would have self-imposed themselves as Brahmin this. The major imperial jewel of modern day Hinduism existing independently before British colonialism demonstrates various. Was multi-faceted, with no cohesiveness of river Valley areas doing so with honest,! 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