Social Change in Modern India

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Social Change in
Modern India

M. N. SRINIVAS
Social Change in Modern India

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 PREFACE

THE RABINDRANATH TAGORE MEMORIAL LECTURESHIP, which was inaugurated

at the University of Chicago in October, 1961, was continued at the
University of California, Berkeley, by lectures delivered in May, 1963. The
lectures formed the kernel of this volume.
Rabindranath Tagore is justly known as India’s greatest modern poet and
one of its greatest modern thinkers. In these aspects he is celebrated by
other holders of the Lectureship. He is less widely thought of as a traveller
to the West and an observer of the West which had already in his time made
so great an impact on his beloved country. His comments on his American
and European travels showed him intensely interested in the relationship of
India to the rest of the world and in the inter-influences that modern
contacts would produce. If such influences have taken forms that might
have surprised and perhaps even shocked him, it is unthinkable that he
would have failed to be interested in an analysis by an ethnologist, and an
Indian ethnologist at that, of what has happened and is happening.
This ethnologist,India’s leading social anthropologist,is Mysore
Narasimhachar Srinivas. In 1952 he first introduced the notion of
Sanskritization as an underlying process of Indian social change, in his
book Religions and Society Among the Coorgs. Since then there has been
no more influential concept in the discussions on change in Indian society.
In these lectures he has developed the idea both in itself and in its
contrapuntal relations with that much more conspicuous process of change,
Westernization. Both by training, as an Oxford social anthropologist, and by
background, as a South Indian Brahmin, he is eminently fitted to give a
sophisticated, yet intimate, expression to his themes, in a way that Tagore
might well have appreciated highly. Not the least important part of the
book, and an integral part of it by peculiarly intimate inner lines of
connection, is Professor Srinivas’ apologia for the anthropologist’s role in
the midst of the rapid change and “modern” development in his own
society.
M.N. Srinivas’ position since 1959 as Professor of Sociology in the Delhi
School of Economics of the University of Delhi only enhances the
reputation which he has earned by his notable series of writings in Indian
ethnology. His Coorg book followed the earlier Marriage and Family in
Mysore (1942), and was joined in 1962 by the collection of his articles,
Caste in Modern India, and Other Essays. Acknowledgement of his
outstanding position as an interpreter of India is to be seen in his Simon
Senior Research Fellowship, Manchester University (1953–1954), his
Rockefeller Fellowship in Great Britain and the United States (1956–1957),
and his Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences, Stanford (1964–1965). He was awarded the Rivers Memorial
Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in
1955, and the Sarat Chandra Roy Memorial Gold Medal of the Asiatic
Society (of Bengal) in 1958.
A great debt of gratitude must be acknowledged to the patrons who made
the Lectureship possible, especially to Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Breit of New
York and to the Asia Foundation. The administration of the Lectureship by
the Committee for the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lectureship of the
Association for Asian Studies has been immeasurably forwarded by the
efficient and loving labours of Dean Richard L. Park of the Division of the
Social Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. At the University of California,
Berkeley, help was provided in connection with the lectures by the
Committee for Arts and Lectures and, most especially, by the Center for
South Asia Studies, Institute of International Studies.

M.B. EMENEAU
University of California,
Berkeley
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO 1966 EDITION

THE COMMITTEE FOR THE RABINDRANATH TAGORE

MEMORIAL LECTURESHIP of the Association for Asian Studies did me
the honour of inviting me to give the Tagore Lectures for the academic year
1962–1963 at the University of California in Berkeley. I chose as my theme
“Social Change in modern India,” and I gave four lectures on it during May,
1963. I did not have an opportunity to revise them for publication until
September, 1964, when I came to the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, as a Fellow. I was very fortunate in that I
was able to carry out the arduous task of replanning and rewriting the
lectures in the āshram-like atmosphere of the Center. I take this opportunity
to express my profound thanks to the Director of the Center, Dr. Ralph
Tyler, and all members of the Center’s staff, for their uniform courtesy and
help to me during my stay there from September, 1964, to December, 1965.
In June, 1963, I was a Simon Visiting Professor in the Department of
Social Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Manchester, and
this appointment gave me an opportunity to hold a series of seminars with
Professor Max Gluckman’s class on the theme of the Tagore Lectures. I
benefited greatly from the stimulating discussions which followed the
reading of the papers, and I am thankful to Professor Gluckman and his
colleagues for their critical and friendly interest in my work. I am indebted
to my colleagues in the Department of Sociology in the University of Delhi,
Drs. M.S.A. Rao, André Beteille, and Arvind Shah, who criticized the
earlier drafts of the lectures and also provided me with information on
points which I raised in my letters to them. Professors R. Bellah, D.
Mandelbaum, and M. Singer have placed me in their debt by taking time
from their own work to read my manuscript and make several suggestions
for its improvement. I gratefully acknowledge the editorial advice and help
of Miss Miriam Gallaher, research assistant at the Center for Advanced
Study, and I am certain that the manuscript has gained in clarity as well as
readability as a result of her efforts. I am also grateful to Mrs. Joan Warm-
brunn for her patience and skill in typing the different drafts of the lectures
and for much other secretarial help as well.
When I accepted the invitation to give the Lectures, I thought that I should
choose an all-India theme though even then I had some idea of the risks I
was running in so doing. The vastness and diversity of India and the lack of
adequate data in many areas make generalization extremely hazardous. But
that does not obviate the need to see cultural and social processes in an all-
India perspective if only to locate some of the problems that need to be
given priority in future research, and the areas where information is either
totally lacking or very poor.
In the course of explicating my concepts regarding social change in
modern India I have had to delve into nineteenth century history, a task for
which I know only too well that I do not have the necessary qualifications.
But I have gone to the works of well-known historians for my facts and
interpretations, and it gives me pleasure to acknowledge the stimulus I have
received from the writing of Drs. Percival Spear, Bernard Cohn, Donald
Smith, Robert Frykenberg, and Arvind Shah. I have also benefited from
reading the unpublished material of Drs. Eugene Irschick, Burton Stein,
William Rowe and André Béteille. I thank them all, and many others to
whose writings I have referred in the book.
I must express my apologies to the Committee for the Rabindranath
Tagore Memorial Lectureship for making them wait for over two years for
the manuscript of my lectures. They have shown great patience with me.

Finally, I dedicate this book to Professor E.E. Evans-Pritchard, my former

teacher and colleague at Oxford, and friend, as a small acknowledgement of
the stimulus and kindnesses I have received from him over the years.

M.N. SRINIVAS
Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford
 AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO 1977 REISSUE

SOCIAL CHANGE IN MODERN INDIA, originally delivered in May, 1963 as the

Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lectures in Berkeley, was published in
1966 by the University of California Press. The book was favourably if not
generously reviewed in professional journals, and soon after publication,
became prescribed or recommended reading for graduate students in
sociology, anthropology and Indian studies.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I must make it clear that mine is only a
social anthropologist’s view of social change in modern India. An
economist, political scientist, educationalist, lawyer or historian would
certainly bring to bear a different perspective if not approach to the analysis
of change. However, multiple perspectives are essential to balance the
subjectivity inherent in an unidisciplinary approach. Indeed, the subject of
social change is so vast that any specialist finds that he is poaching
constantly on the preserves of others. Getting several specialists to write on
their respective fields is a popular way out of this problem but not a
satisfactory one: comprehensiveness is gained at the expense of a central
focus which helps to organize the data. If the choice is between a single
trained mind poring over a vast array of diverse facts and several scholars
each of whom writes on a special area, it is not always best to opt for the
latter. Inter-disciplinary research is advocated as a way out of the dilemma
but its advocates are not always certain about what they mean by it. They
refer to what they think has been achieved in the hard sciences and that too
in some foreign institution, and do not seem to entertain any doubts that it
can be replicated in the social sciences and anywhere. Instances of
successful inter-disciplinary research in the social sciences are not easy to
come by except when a scholar takes the trouble to learn two disciplines.
Such a man is like an ambidextrous tennis or cricket player, and provision
can be made in our academic system to train scholars who are specialists in
two disciplines with the full knowledge that over the years one of the
specialisms is likely to rust. But this is different from inter-disciplinary
research involving several specialists all of whom are engaged in tackling a
single problem and are continually engaged in a creative dialogue.
Since this book was first published radical changes have occurred in the
Indian polity, economy and society. The events which find place in the
newspapers seem to be too violent, anarchic and unpredictable to be
susceptible to analysis in terms of known and predictable patterns. I have
often asked myself whether my analysis does not err on the side of order,
regularity and predictability. In some sense, any analysis of processes gives
the impression of arresting their flow but that does not render the analysis
wrong. If I were analysing social change in India today, I would probably
restate the nature of the relation between such processes as Sanskritization,
Westernization and Secularization, and also emphasize the increasing
dominance of politicization in Indian social and cultural life. The
relationship of dominant caste to other castes is perhaps beginning to
change as also the role of the dominant caste in local, regional and state
politics. Finally, and most important of all, are the changes which are
occurring in the caste system such as to herald a systemic change?
A short reading list has been added at the end of the book for the benefit
of those interested.

M.N. SRINIVAS
Bangalore
18 May, 1977
 CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
1. SANSKRITIZATION
2. WESTERNIZATION
3. SOME EXPRESSIONS OF CASTE MOBILITY
4. SECULARIZATION
5. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE STUDY OF ONE’S OWN
SOCIETY
Appendix: CHANGING VALUES IN INDIA TODAY
READING LIST
FURTHER READING
 1

SANSKRITIZATION

the subject of social change in modern India is vast and complex, and an
adequate understanding of it will require the collaboration, for many years,
of a number of scholars in such diverse fields as economic, social and
cultural history, law, politics, education, religion, demography and
sociology. It will have to take account of regional, linguistic and other
differences. My aim, however, is much more limited: I shall try to consider
here, somewhat more systematically than before, two concepts—
Sanskritization and Westernization—which I put forward some years ago to
explain some features of religious, cultural and social change in India.1 Of
the two processes to which the concepts refer, Sanskritization seems to have
occurred throughout Indian history and still continues to occur.
Westernization, on the other hand, refers to changes introduced into Indian
society during British rule and which continue, in some cases with added
momentum, in independent India. Westernization, unlike Sanskritization, is
not confined to any particular section of the Indian population and its
importance, both in the number of people it affects and the ways in which it
affects them, is steadily increasing. The achievement of independence has
in some ways quickened the process of Westernization, and it is not
unlikely that independence was a necessary precondition of such
acceleration. The complex and intricate interrelation between
Sanskritization and Westernization, on a short-term as well as long-term
basis, offers a fertile field for analysis and speculation.
 When the concepts of Sanskritization and Westernization were first put
forward they aroused a certain amount of interest among sociologists and
anthropologists working in the Indian field.2 Sanskritization was found to
be a widespread cultural and social process among Hindus in different parts
of India. It is also reported to be occurring among some tribal groups such
as the Bhils and Oraons. The relation of these two processes to changes in
the caste system in different parts of the country also needs to be properly
understood.
The opportunity to find out for myself whether and how far these concepts
were still useful for the analysis of social changes, and whether any further
clarifications, refinements, elaborations and modifications were needed,
was presented to me when the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lectureship
Committee invited me to give the Tagore Lectures for 1963. I have
embarked on this task with some hesitation, nevertheless, as I am acutely
aware of the difficulties and hazards involved in making statements
claiming to hold good for Hindus all over India. I now appreciate the
advantages that I enjoyed in much of my previous work: the topics were
more specific, and they concerned a small region and particular sections of
the people in it, and I had myself collected a great deal of the data. I am
glad, however, that I chose the topic of social change in modern India, in as
much as it forced me out of my micro-shell. The limitations of micro-
studies are only too obvious in a country like India, which has great
regional diversity and whose people are divided into hundreds of castes. On
the other hand, macro-studies are apt to miss the nuances, refinements and
subtleties which can be reached only by detailed micro-studies. At the risk
of giving expression to a truism, I would say that the Indian sociologist has
to be temperamentally and methodologically ambidextrous, resorting to
either type of study as the occasion demands. Micro-studies provide
insights while macro-studies yield perspectives, and movement from one to
the other is essential.
Before discussing Sanskritization I shall examine briefly the manner in
which the influential concept of varna successfully obscured the dynamic
features of caste during the traditional or pre-British period.3 The fact that
the concept continues to be relevant for understanding some aspects of caste
has only helped to perpetuate the misconceptions and distortions implicit in
it. Let me briefly recount the main features of caste as embodied in varna:
(1) There is a single all-India hierarchy without any variations between one
region and another; (2) there are only four varnas or, if the Harijans, who
are literally “beyond the pale” of caste, are included, five; (3) the hierarchy
is clear; and (4) it is immutable.
Caste is undoubtedly an all-India phenomenon in the sense that there are
everywhere hereditary, endogamous groups which form a hierarchy, and
that each of these groups has a traditional association with one or two
occupations. Everywhere there are Brahmins, Untouchables, and peasant,
artisan, trading and service castes. Relations between castes are invariably
expressed in terms of pollution and purity. Certain Hindu theological ideas
such as samsāra, karma and dharma are woven into the caste system, but it
is not known whether awareness of these concepts is universal or confined
only to certain sections of the hierarchy. This depends on the degree to
which an area is Sanskritized.
But the existence of some universal features should not lead us to ignore
the significant regional differences. It is not merely that some castes—for
example, the bhārbujha or grain parcher, kahār or water carrier, and the
bārtos or genealogists—are to be found only in some parts of the country,
or that the position of a few occupational castes varies from one part of the
country to another, but that caste mainly exists and functions as a regional
system. In fact, all the Brahmins speaking the same regional language, let
alone all the Brahmins in India, do not form a single endogamous group.
There may be a dozen or more endogamous groups among them. Again,
even within a small region a caste normally interacts with only several other
castes and not with all. (However, a few castes are found spread over a wide
area, and this usually means that there are cultural differences between its
various sections.) To the average peasant, moreover, the names of castes in
other linguistic areas are pure abracadabra. They make sense only when
they are fitted into the Procrustean frame of varna.
There are hundreds of jātis or endogamous groups in each of the linguistic
areas of modern India. The four or five varnas represent only broad all-
India categories into which the innumerable jātis can be grouped for some
very limited purposes. According to the varna model, the Harijans or
Untouchables are outside the caste system and contact with Harijans
pollutes members of the other four varnas. But if economic, social and even
ritual relations between the castes of a region are taken into account,
Harijans are an integral part of the system. They perform certain essential
economic tasks in agriculture, they are often village servants, messengers
and sweepers, and they beat the drum at village festivals and remove the
leaves on which people have dined at community dinners.
In the varna model, there is no doubt whatever as to the place occupied by
each caste category. Certainty of position in the ranked order of castes is
not, however, a characteristic of caste at the existential level. Actually, even
the two ends of the caste system are not as firm as they are made out to be.
Some Brahmin groups are regarded as so low that even Harijans will not
accept cooked food from them.
It is clear that vagueness or doubt regarding mutual position is not
accidental or unimportant, but is an essential feature of caste as an ongoing
system. Two castes each of which claims superiority to the other should not
be regarded as exceptional in their behaviour but as the typical product of a
dynamic system in which there is some pushing and jostling in the attempt
to get ahead. In pre-British India, disputes regarding caste rank occasionally
reached the king, whose verdict was final.
Thus the position of castes in the hierarchy as it actually exists is liable to
change, whereas in the varna model the position of each varna is fixed for
all time. It is really a matter for wonder that, inspite of the distortions of the
reality implicit in the varna model, it has continued to survive.
Finally, the varna model of caste is really a hierarchy in the sense that the
priestly varna is placed at the top and the criterion of ranking is derived
from religious considerations. The ordering of different varnas is clearly
intended to support the theory of Brahminical supremacy and only partially
overlaps with the actualities of caste ranking in different parts of the
country. What is more noticeable, however, is the fact that the possession of
secular power by a caste is either reflected in its ritual ranking or leads,
sooner or later, to an improvement of its position.
The varna model of the caste system seems to have evolved gradually
during the Vedic period of Indian history, and the early Brahmin writers
seem to have accepted it as providing a rough description of caste system as
it existed then. These writers laid down the rights and duties of the first
three varnas, which were regarded as “twice-born” (dwija) on account of
their undergoing the ritual of donning the sacred thread (upanayana).
According to Ghurye, the “varna dharma” or code governing the conduct
of the different varnas seems to have received a high degree of elaboration
in the post-Vedic period (circa 600 B.C. – A.D. 300):

This period sees a great consolidation of the position of the Brahmin

class, while the degradation of the Shūdras comes out in marked
contrast to the growing superiority of the Brahmins. The discomfiture of
the Kshatriyas is complete, and the Vaishyas, at least the general mass,
have progressively approximated to the Shūdras…. The three lower
castes are ordered to live according to the teaching of the Brahmin, who
shall declare their duties, while the king is exhorted to regulate their
conduct accordingly.4

The Brahmin writers on law propounded a model of the caste system

which placed them at the top and gave them the privilege of declaring the
duties of the other castes, including the King’s. The claims which the
Brahmins made for themselves and their view of the caste hierarchy are
understandable, but not so the fact that many scholars, Indian as well as
foreign, have regarded them as representations of the historical reality. One
wonders how many dominant peasant castes in rural India had even heard
of the rules governing different varnas or, having heard of them, paid heed
to them. One is also at a loss to understand how people living in villages
were made to obey the rules or punished for violating them. Even today,
with all the facilities and resources at the disposal of the Government of
India, it has been found very difficult to ensure that the rights which the
Indian Constitution confers on the Harijans are actually translated into
practice in India’s 560,000 villages. The situation in ancient or medieval
India can be left to the reader’s own inferences.
There is no doubt, however, that the varna model has been regarded by
urban and educated Indians as providing a more or less true picture of caste
as an ongoing system. It is my hunch that the varna model became more
popular during the British period as a result of a variety of forces: the
institution, which prevailed till 1864, of attaching Brahmin Pandits to
British-established law courts, the presence in every town of a body of
Western-educated lawyers who tried to apply Brahminical law to all
Hindus,5 the translation of a vast mass of sacred literature from Sanskrit
into English, the rise everywhere of caste sabhas who tried to introduce
reforms by Sanskritizing the way of life of their respective castes, and the
growth of a vigorous anti-Brahmin movement which attempted to displace
Brahmins from the positions of power and influence which they occupied in
some parts of the country. The list is obviously incomplete and tentative,
and a full explanation of the popularity of the varna model can only be
arrived at after study.

Sanskritization is the process by which a “low” Hindu caste, or tribal or

other group, changes its customs, ritual, ideology and way of life in the
direction of a high, and frequently, “twice-born” caste. Generally such
changes are followed by a claim to a higher position in the caste hierarchy
than that traditionally conceded to the claimant caste by the local
community. The claim is usually made over a period of time, in fact, a
generation or two, before the “arrival” is conceded. Occasionally a caste
claims a position which its neighbours are not willing to concede. This type
of disagreement between claimed and conceded status may be not only in
the realm of opinion but also in the more important realm of
institutionalized practice. Thus Harijan castes in Mysore will not accept
cooked food and drinking water from the Smiths who are certainly one of
the touchable castes and therefore superior to Harijans even if their claim to
be Vishwakarma Brahmins is not accepted. Similarly peasants (Okkaligas)
and others such as shepherds (Kurubas) do not accept cooked food and
water from Mārka Brahmins, who are certainly included among Brahmins. I
remember talking to a Lingāyat in north Coorg who referred to the Coorgs
as “jungle people [kādu jana],” and this contrasted with the Coorg claim to
be true Kshatriyas and even “Aryans”. The above instances are all from
Mysore State, but parallels can be cited from every part of India.
 Sanskritization is generally accompanied by, and often results in, upward
mobility for the caste in question; but mobility may also occur without
Sanskritization and vice versa. However, the mobility associated with
Sanskritization results only in positional changes in the system and does not
lead to any structural change. That is, a caste moves up above its
neighbours and another comes down, but all this takes place in an
essentially stable hierarchical order. The system itself does not change.
As I have already stated, Sanskritization is not confined to Hindu castes
but also occurs among tribal and semitribal groups such as the Bhils of
Western India, the Gonds and Oraons of Central India and the Pahādis of
the Himalayas. This usually results in the tribe undergoing Sanskritization
claiming to be a caste, and therefore, Hindu. In the traditional system the
only way to become a Hindu was to belong to a caste, and the unit of
mobility was usually a group, not an individual or a family.
 I now realize that in both my book on Coorg religion and my “Note on
Sanskritization and Westernization”, I emphasized unduly the Brahminical
model of Sanskritization and ignored the other models—Kshatriya, Vaishya
and Shūdra. Even the Brahminical model was derived from the Kannada,
Tamil and Telugu Brahmins, and not from Brahmin castes in other regions.
D.F. Pocock has pointed to the existence of a Kshatriya model in addition to
a Brahminical model:

Just as the Kshatriya or King stands with the Brahmin as superior to the
Vaishya and Shūdra varna, so we may also speak of the Kingly model in
Hindu society which is complementary to, though dependent in certain
respects upon, the Brahminic. At any given time or place the Kingly
model is represented by the dominant political power in any area, and is
mediated by the local dominant non-Brahmin caste or castes of that
area. Thus in secular matters the Moghuls and the British at various
times have provided a standard by which secular prestige is gauged.6

I would like to add here that not only the kingly model but also the other
models are mediated by the locally dominant caste, and the concept of the
dominant caste supplements in some ways the concept of Sanskritization.
Milton Singer has also drawn attention to the fact that there exist not one
or two models of Sanskritization but three if not four:7

The local version [of Sanskritic Hinduism] may use the four varna
labels—Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shūdra—but the defining
content of these labels varies with locality and needs to be empirically
determined for any particular locality. It has also been discovered that
the relative prestige and rank of these different varnas tend to vary with
locality, time and group. In many areas, e.g., the kingly or martial, life-
style has a rank equal with or sometimes higher than that of the
Brahmin. Groups in these areas who wish to improve their status do so
by adopting some of the stigmata of the Rājpūt life-style, i.e., by
“Rājpūtizing” their way of life (Sinha). Even the life-style of the
merchant and peasant have been taken as models in localities where
these groups are dominant.8
 The first three varnas are called dwija or “twice-born” as only they are
entitled to don the sacred thread at the ceremony of upanayana which is
interpreted as a second birth. Only members of the first three varnas are
entitled to the performance of Vedic ritual at which hymns (mantras) from
one or other of the Vedas (excluding the Atharva Veda) are chanted. Among
the “twice- born” varnas the Brahmins are the most particular about the
performance of these rites, and they may therefore be regarded as “better”
models of Sanskritization than the others. The cultural content of each
varna, however, varies from one area to another and from one period of
time to another; and the diversity is generally far greater at the lower levels
of the varna hierarchy than at the highest.
Let me begin with a brief consideration of the diversity in the Brahmin
varna.9 In the first place, some elements of the local culture would be
common to all the castes living in a region, from the highest to the lowest.
Thus the Brahmin and Harijan (Untouchable) of a region would speak the
same language, observe some common festivals and share certain local
deities and beliefs. I have called this “vertical solidarity”, and it contrasts
with “horizontal solidarity” which members of a single caste or varna have.
Some Brahmin groups such as the Kāshmiri, Bengāli and Sāraswat are
non-vegetarians, while Brahmins elsewhere are traditionally vegetarians.
Some Brahmin groups are more Sanskritized in their style of life than
others, and this is quite apart from the differences between vaidika (priestly)
and loukika (secular) Brahmins. There is also considerable occupational
diversity between different Brahmin groups.10 Brahmins in some areas such
as the Punjab and parts of Western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have a low
secular status,11 and several Brahmin groups in Gujarat (for example,
Tapodhan), Bengal and Mysore (Mārka) are regarded as ritually low.12
By and large it would be true to say that Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shūdra
varnas would draw more of their culture from the local area than the
Brahmins, and it follows from this that profound cultural differences exist
between castes claiming to be Kshatriya and Vaishya in different parts of
the country. In fact, while there seems to be some agreement in each area in
India as to who are Brahmins and who Untouchables, such consensus is
absent with regard to Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. Kshatriya and Vaishya status
seems to be claimed by groups who have traditions of soldiering and trade
respectively. Neither Kshatriyas nor Shūdras in different parts of the
country have a common body of ritual. Many of them do not undergo the
essential sacraments (samskāras) characteristic of the twice-born varnas.
 The historian K.M. Panikkar has maintained that there has been no such
caste as the Kshatriya during the last two thousand years of history. The
Nandas were the last “true” Kshatriyas, and they disappeared in the fifth
century B.C. Since then every known royal family has come from a non-
Kshatriya caste, including the famous Rājput dynasties of medieval India.13
Panikkar also points out that “the Shūdras seem to have produced an
unusually large number of royal families even in more recent times. The
Pālas of Bengal belonged undoubtedly to that caste. The great Marātha
Royal House, whatever their function today, could hardly sustain their
genealogical pretensions connecting them with Rājpūt descent.”14 (One of
the most important functions of genealogist and bardic castes was to
legitimize mobility from the ranks of lower castes to the Kshatriya by
providing suitable genealogical linkage and myth.)
That lack of “fit” between the varna model and the realities of the existing
local hierarchy is even more striking in the case of the Shūdra. Not only has
this category been a fertile source for the recruitment of local Kshatriya and
Vaishya castes, as Panikkar has pointed out, but it spans such a wide
cultural and structural arch as to be almost meaningless. There are at one
extreme the dominant, landowning, peasant castes which wield power and
authority over local Vaishyas and Brahmins, whereas at the other extreme
are the poor, near-Untouchable groups living just above the pollution line.
The category also includes the many artisan and servicing castes such as
goldsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, oil pressers, basket makers,
weavers, barbers, washermen, watermen, grain parchers, toddy tappers,
shepherds and swineherds.
Again, some castes in the omnibus category of Shūdra may have highly
Sanskritized style of life whereas others are only minimally Sanskritized.
But whether Sanskritized or not, the dominant peasant castes provide local
models for imitation; and, as Pocock and Singer have observed, Kshatriya
(and other) models are often mediated through them.
 3

A feature of rural life in many parts of India is the existence of dominant,

landowning castes.15 For a caste to be dominant, it should own a sizable
amount of the arable land locally available, have strength of numbers and
occupy a high place in the local hierarchy. When a caste has all the
attributes of dominance, it may be said to enjoy decisive dominance.
Occasionally there may be more than one dominant caste in a village and
over a period of time one dominant caste may give way to another.16 This
happened occasionally even in pre-British India,17 and has been an
important aspect of rural social change in the twentieth century.
New factors affecting dominance have emerged in the last eighty years or
so. Western education, jobs in the administration and urban sources of
income are all significant in contributing to the prestige and power of
particular caste groups in the village. The introduction of adult franchise
and panchāyati rāj (local self-government at village, tehsil and district
levels) since independence has resulted in giving a new sense of self-respect
and power to “low” castes, particularly Harijans, who enjoy reservation of
seats in all elected bodies from the village to Union Parliament. The long-
term implications of these changes are probably even more important,
especially in those villages where there are enough Harijans to sway the
local balance of power one way or the other. In the traditional system it was
possible for a small number of people belonging to a high caste to wield
authority over the entire village when they owned a large quantity of arable
land and also had a high ritual position. Now, however, in many parts of
rural India power has passed into the hands of numerically large,
landowning peasant castes; it is likely to remain there for some time, except
in villages where Harijans are numerically strong and are also taking
advantage of the new educational and other opportunities available to them.
Endemic factionalism in the dominant caste is also another threat to its
continued enjoyment of power.
 No longer is dominance a purely local matter in rural India. A caste group
which has only a family or two in a particular village but which enjoys
decisive dominance in the wider region will still count locally because of
the network of ties binding it to its dominant relatives. What is equally
important is that others in the village will be aware of the existence of this
network. Contrariwise, a caste which enjoys dominance in only one village
will find that it has to reckon with the caste which enjoys regional
dominance.
The vast improvement in communications during the last fifty years has
contributed to the decline in prestige of purely local styles of living. Rural
leaders, or at least their sons, now tend to borrow items from prestigious,
urban ways of living, and the longterm effects of this process are a decrease
in cultural diversity and an increase in uniformity.
Landownership is a crucial factor in establishing dominance. Generally,
the pattern of landownership in rural India is such that the bulk of the arable
land is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of big owners
as against a large number who either own very little land or no land at all.18
The small number of big owners wield a considerable amount of power
over the rest of the village population, and this situation is only made worse
by rapid population growth. The big landowners are patrons of the bulk of
the poor villagers. Each household from artisan and servicing castes
provides goods and services to a certain number of landowning households;
traditionally these ties have been stable, continuing from generation to
generation. The former are paid in grain and straw during harvests. Ties
between landlord and tenant or agricultural servant are also of an enduring
kind, though in recent years they have become weaker. Tenants, labourers,
artisans, and members of servicing castes stand in a relation of clientship to
the landowning patron, and clientship involves a variety of duties.19
Similar disparities in the pattern of landownership perhaps exist in other
developing countries, but what is unique to the Indian situation is that
owners, tenants, landless labourers, artisans, and those who provide services
form permanent and hereditary caste groups. Landowners generally come
from the higher castes while 35 per cent of Harijans are landless labourers,
and the bulk of those who own land “have such small holdings that
condition is hardly better than that of agricultural labourers.”20
 Landownership confers not only power but prestige, so much so that
individuals who have made good in any walk of life tend to invest in land.21
If landownership is not always an indispensable passport to high rank, it
certainly facilitates upward mobility. The existence of a congruence
between landownership and high rank in the caste hierarchy has been
widely observed, but it is important to remember that it is only of a general
kind and admits of exceptions in every area.
The power and prestige which landowning castes command affect their
relations with all castes, including those ritually higher. This is true of parts
of the Punjab where the landowning Jāts look upon the Brahmins as their
servants, and of Madhopur village in eastern Uttar Pradesh where formerly
the dominant Thākurs refused cooked food from all Brahmins except their
gurus or religious teachers.22 In Rampura village in Mysore State, the
Brahmin priest of the Rāma temple was a figure of fun; when, at a temple
festival, he tried to distribute prasāda (food consecrated by being offered to
the deity) to the congregation, the peasant youths gathered there teased him
by asking for more, and tugged at his dhoti when he did not comply. The
priest complained to the headman, and the latter arranged for a
representative from one of the dominant peasant lineages to be present in
the temple whenever the priest distributed prasāda. On one occasion, a
young peasant boy who was walking with the priest and me criticized the
priest’s over-attentiveness to agriculture and his “indifference” to temple
ritual. The embarrassed priest only made a few unsuccessful efforts to
change the subject.
But important as secular criteria are, ritual superiority has an independent
existence and power of its own. Beidelman remarks rightly:

At the risk of inconsistency I must emphasize that there are many areas
in which ritual rank seems to operate independently of economic
determinants. In Senapur and Rampur the Brahmins were not the
powerful or economically superior caste, but were subordinate to the
Jāts and Thākurs. But by consensus the village would probably agree
that these same Brahmins are ritually supreme. The village would not
even find it paradoxical that Brahmins may refuse certain cooked foods
and sometimes other social gestures from other castes, even from the
economically powerful ones. They would recognize that these castes are
all ritually impure to Brahmins.23
The inconsistency stressed by Beidelman, of which the people themselves
are aware, is an important aspect of caste ranking in which there is
occasionally a hiatus between secular and ritual rank. On secular criteria
alone a Brahmin may occupy a very low position, but he is still a Brahmin
and as such entitled to respect in ritual and pollution contexts. A millionaire
Gujarati Bania will not enter the kitchen where his Brahmin cook works, for
such entry would defile the Brahmin and the cooking utensils. Not only is
there contextual distinction, but Brahmins are also distinguished from the
religion with which they are so closely bound up, a fact which has helped in
the modern reinterpretation of Hinduism. This has enabled Hinduism to
survive the powerful anti-Brahmin movement of South India. It is true that
rationalism and atheism are a part of the ideology of the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (Dravidian Progressive Federation), but it is doubtful how far
the Tamil non-Brahmin castes subscribe to it.
The mediation of the various models of Sanskritization through the local
dominant caste stresses the importance of the latter in the process of
cultural transmission. Thus if the locally dominant caste is Brahmin or
Lingāyat, it will tend to transmit a Brahminical model of Sanskritization,
whereas if it is Rājput or Bania, it will transmit Kshatriya or Vaishya
models. Of course, each locally dominant caste has its own conception of
Brahmin, Kshatriya or Vaishya models.
Two distinct tendencies are implicit in the caste system. The first is an
acceptance of the existence of multiple cultures, including moral and
religious norms, in any local society. Such acceptance is accompanied by a
feeling that some institutions, ideas, beliefs and practices are relevant to
one’s group while others are not. A peasant takes a great deal of pride in his
agriculture, and talks about its importance and difficulty and the skill and
patience required. An artisan or a member of a servicing caste has a similar
attitude toward his hereditary occupation. Occasionally, a man is heard
making slighting remarks about the hereditary occupations of other castes.
The other tendency inherent in the caste system is the imitation of the
ways of higher castes. Not any particular caste is imitated, or even the
highest caste. Pocock is essentially right when he observes:
 A non-Brahmin caste of relatively low status does not (or did not before
the advent of books) imitate an idea of Brahminism nor did it have
general notions of secular prestige. For it the models of conduct are the
castes higher than itself with which it is in the closest proximity.
Properly speaking, we may not even speak of one caste imitating
another but rather one local section of a caste imitating another local
section (Italics mine).24

It is necessary, however, to caution against treating the local, village system

as completely independent from the wider, all-India system. Ideals of
behaviour may be derived from sources of Great Tradition such as
pilgrimages, harikathas and religious plays. The Sanskritization of the
Pātidārs, for instance, owes much to these sources and to the influence of
Vallabhachāri and Swāminārāyan sects.
The elders of the dominant caste in a village were the watchdogs of a
pluralistic culture and value system. Traditionally, they prevented the
members of a caste from taking over the hereditary occupation of another
caste whose interests would have been hurt by an inroad made into their
monopoly, the only exceptions being agriculture and trade in some
commodities. The dominant caste probably ignored minor changes in the
ritual and style of life of a low caste, but when the latter refused to perform
the services, economic or ritual, which it traditionally performed, or when it
appropriated an important high-caste symbol, then punishment followed
swiftly.25 Pocock narrates an incident from his field area in Kaira district in
Gujarat State in Western India:

A story is told in Mōtāgām which relates events only thirty years old. At
that time a Bāriā from Nānugām was seen walking through Mōtāgām
wearing his dhoti in the distinctive Pātidār style, sporting a large handle-
bar moustache which Pātidār of the period cultivated, and smoking a
portable hookah. A leading Pātidār had him caught and forcibly shaved
and he was ordered, under pain of a beating, never to try to look like a
Pātidār again and to carry his hookah behind his back whenever he
walked through a Pātidār village. Today the lack of power to enforce
such distinctions has made for a greater uniformity of dress, but
distinctive dress is no longer stressed by the Pātidār. This indifference to
a once valued custom is the equivalent of repudiating it, and today the
middle-class Bāriā models his formal or ceremonial appearance upon
the old Pātidār style of some thirty years ago.26
Similar incidents have been reported from other parts of rural India during
the last fifty years or so. William Rowe mentions that when, in 1936, the
Noniyas (“low” caste of salt-makers now employed in digging wells, tanks
and roads, and in making tiles and bricks) of Senāpur village in eastern
Uttar Pradesh donned en masse the sacred thread,

the affronted Kshatriya landlords beat the Noniyas, tore off the sacred
threads and imposed a collective fine on the caste. Some years later the
Noniyas again began to wear the sacred thread but were unopposed.
Their first attempt had been a direct, public challenge, but on the second
occasion the Noniyas assumed the sacred thread quietly and on an
individual basis.27

We learn from Census of India Report for 1921 that when the Ahīrs
(cowherds) of North India decided to call themselves Kshatriyas and
donned the sacred thread, their action roused the wrath of the dominant
higher castes. In North Bihar, for instance, the high-caste Rājpūts and
Bhumihār Brahmins tried to prevent the Ahīrs from assuming the symbols
of twice-born status, this resulted in violence and resort to the law courts.28
Hutton has described a similar conflict between the Kallar, a dominant caste
in Rāmnād district in the extreme south of India, and Harijans:

In December 1930 the Kallar in Rāmnād propounded eight prohibitions

the disregard of which led to the use of violence by the Kallar against
the exterior Harijan castes, whose huts were fired, whose granaries and
property were destroyed, and whose livestock was looted. The eight
prohibitions were as follows:

1. that the Ādi-Drāvidas shall not wear ornaments of gold and silver;
2. that the males should not be allowed to wear their clothes abdve the
hips;
3. that their males should not wear coats or shirts or baniyans;
 4. no Ādi-Drāvida shall be allowed to have his hair cropped;
5. that the Ādi-Drāvidas should not use other than earthenware
vessels in their houses;
6. their women shall not be allowed to cover the upper portion of their
bodies by clothes or ravukais [blouses] or thāvanis [upper cloths worn
like togas];
7. their women shall not be allowed to use flowers or saffron paste;
8. the men shall not use umbrellas for protection against sun and rain,
nor shall they wear sandals.29

The dominant castes, then, maintained the structural distance between the
different castes living within their jurisdiction. Many of the rules they
upheld and enforced were local rules while a few—such as the ban on the
donning of the sacred thread by a low caste—were the rules of the Great
Tradition. However, it was likely that in those areas where the peasant
castes enjoyed decisive dominance they had only a perfunctory knowledge
of the Great Tradition. Since, in the traditional system, only the Brahmin
priest was the repository of knowledge of the Great Tradition, the dominant
caste was able to prevent cultural trespass by ensuring that the priest served
only the high castes. Understandably enough, the priest had a healthy
respect for the susceptibilities of the dominant caste and of his own caste-
fellows.30
The role of the dominant caste was not, however, restricted to being the
guardian of a pluralistic culture. It also stimulated in lower castes a desire to
imitate the dominant caste’s own prestigious style of life. The lower castes
had to go about this task with circumspection—any attempt to rush things
was likely to meet with swift reprisal. They had to avoid imitating in
matters likely to upset the dominant caste too much, and their chances of
success were much better if they slowly inched their way to their goal.
D.R. Chanana has discussed the spread of Sanskritization and
Westernization in an area which, until the Partition of 1947, was markedly
influenced by Islam and by certain West Asian cultural forms.31 Sikhism,
itself the result of the fusion of Hindu and Islamic religions, enjoyed a
secondary dominance while the Hindus in the area revealed the impact of
both Islam and Sikhism. Among Hindus, the trading castes of Khatri, Arora
and Agarwāl were important whereas the Brahmin was economically
backward and not distinguished for learning.
 The first thing to note is the historic fact of the relative weakness of the
Brahmin influence in this region. Ever since the large-scale conversions
of the artisans, craftsmen and peasants to Islam, the Hindus living in
these areas have been relatively few in number, and instead of
exercising dominating influence on the Muslims, they have themselves
been influenced by the latter. As proof thereof may be noted the relative
scarcity of temples in these parts, the nonexistence of Brahmins well-
versed in the shāstras (except in Jammu and other Hindu-ruled hill
states), the total absence of any Sanskrit schools till very recently, and
the relative laxity in the enforcement of prohibitions regarding eating,
etc.32

While Hindu women did not take to the veil (burka) as did Muslim women,
they did not appear in public in overwhelmingly Muslim areas. The Hindus
did not recite any Sanskrit mantras, and they sent their children to
madrasas (Muslim schools) run by maulvis (Muslim divines). They donned
the sacred thread only at the time of marriage. The wedding rites included
the essential Vedic sacraments with a Brahmin officiating as priest. Very
little of the Great Tradition of Hinduism was known. Chanana states that in
the sphere of religion Hindus were “deeply influenced by Islam, especially
by the teachings of Sufi saints.”33
The picture that emerges from Chanana’s description is that throughout
the former Punjab and North-West Frontier Provinces, Muslims enjoyed
primary dominance while Sikhs exercised a secondary dominance in certain
selected areas of this region. Among Hindus, the trading castes were
important while the Brahmins had neither wealth nor learning. They were
also influenced by Sikhism and “therefore the very group which could have
helped Brahminize, Sanskritize the Hindu masses was in no position to do
so.”34
The minimal Sanskritization of nineteenth-century Punjab reveals how the
style of life of a dominant group is impressed on the local region. Only the
complex forces brought into existence by British rule were responsible for
the increased Sanskritization of Punjabi Hindus. The Ārya Samāj and its
rival, the Sanātan Dharma Sabha, along with the educational institutions,
both traditional (gurukuls and rishikuls) and modern (Dayānand, Anglo-
Vedic and Sanātan Dharma Sabha schools and colleges), started by them,
spread traditional as well as modern learning among the Hindus of the
Punjab.
 The influence of the dominant caste seems to extend to all areas of social
life, including so fundamental a matter as the principle of descent and
affiliation. Thus the two patrilineal Tamil trading castes, the Tarakans (of
Angadipuram) and Mannadiyārs (of Pālghāt tāluk), gradually changed, in
about 120 to 150 years, from patriliny to matriliny. Tarakan women had
husbands from Nambūdri Brahmin or Sāmanthan families while Tarakan
men married Kiriyam Nāyar women. Some Tarakan women had connubial
relations with men of the royal Vellāttiri lineage, and this was a source of
wealth for the lucky Tarakan lineages. The immigrant, weaving caste of
Chāliyan follow matriliny in parts of Ponnāni tāluk, and patriliny
elsewhere. Some Chāliyans in Ponnāni tāluk assumed the caste name of
Nāyar (dominant, matrilineal caste of Kerala) in the 1940s.35 Patrilineal
Kurukkals working in temples in Travancore became matrilineal toward the
end of the eighteenth century, and after that Kurukkal women began to have
hypergamous relations with Nambudri men while Kurukkal men married
women from the matrilineal Marans. The Kurukkal seem to have been
forced to switch over to patriliny by the powerful Pottis. 36
S.L. Kalia has described the process of “tribalization” occurring in
Jaunsar-Bawar in Uttar Pradesh and in the Bastar region of Madhya
Pradesh, according to which high-caste Hindus temporarily resident among
tribal people take over the latter’s mores, ritual and beliefs, which are in
many respects antithetical to their own. Kalia’s examples illustrate the
radical changes which may come about in the style of life and values of
people when they move away from their reference groups. The ease with
which the high-caste Hindus took over the new culture was perhaps due to
the temporary nature of their stay, and some of them at least were aware of
this. Thus Uttar Pradesh Brahmins who ate meat, drank liquor and
consorted with hill women in the Jaunsar-Bawar area told Kalia, “We have
to do it because of the climate. There is nothing available here except meat.
We will purify ourselves the day we cross the Jumna and return to our
homes in Dehradun.”37 Such a situation is, however, different from that in a
multi-caste village dominated by a single caste. Each caste in the village
knows the rules it has to obey and the punishment that follows violation.
The elders of the concerned or dominant caste punish violation with fine,
infliction of physical pain, or outcasting. But even the threat of punishment
does not seem to deter the non-dominant castes from developing an
admiration for the style of life of the dominant caste and gradually trying to
imitate it. Thus small numbers of Brahmins or other high castes may
gradually assimilate elements from the culture of a locally dominant caste.
They may “go native,” and instead of being agents of Sanskritization
become themselves the imitators of local Rājpūt, Jāt, Ahīr, Reddi, Kamma,
Marātha or Okkaliga culture. This is especially likely to happen when
communications are poor, and there is no regular contact with towns,
centers of pilgrimage and monasteries. The representatives of the Great
Tradition may, in short, succumb to the Little Traditions, and this seems to
have happened occasionally.
 It is not correct, however, to assume that the culture of the Brahmin is
always highly Sanskritized. The style of life of the Sanādh Brahmins of
Western Uttar Pradesh, for instance, is only minimally Sanskritized. In
1951–1952, when Marriott made a study of Kishan Garhi, a village in
Western Uttar Pradesh, about a hundred miles southeast of Delhi, they were
the locally dominant caste. Marriott writes:

The relatively slight Sanskritization of the Brahmins in this area

contains a clue to the general slowness of Sanskritization and to the
relatively small proportion of great-traditional contents in the religion
of the rest of the castes in Kishan Garhi. Brahmins are, by their position
in the caste hierarchy, and by their association with priesthood, the best
potential local agents of the great tradition. Since their religious forms
are in large part little-traditional, what filters down from the Brahmins
to lower castes in Kishan Garhi must also be in large part little-
traditional. Thus the festival Pitcher Fourth, whose lack of Sanskritic
reference is described above, is explicitly identified in Kishan Garhi as a
festival of Brahmin wives, who may not remarry if they are widowed;
this festival is said to have been taken up in recent generations by the
lower castes of Kishan Garhi. So, too, the priesthood of the village site,
which descends in the most influential Brahmin lineage of Kishan
Garhi, is the priesthood of the non-Sanskritic mother-godling called by
the untranslatable name of “Cāmer.” When persons of lower caste would
propitiate this powerful mother-godling of the Brahmins, they must take
their offerings, not to any temple of the great tradition, but to Cāmeṛ’s
rude mound of stones and mud.38 (Italics mine)

In most parts of rural India there exist landowning peasant castes which
either enjoy decisive dominance, or share dominance with another caste
drawn from the categories of Shūdra, Kshatriya or Brahmin. The changes
that have occurred in independent India have been generally such as to
increase the power and prestige of the peasant castes, and usually at the
expense of the higher castes such as Rājpūts and Brahmins.
It is possible to prepare a map of rural India showing the castes dominant
in each village, but it would require a great investment of labour. In the
absence of a systematic map, the names of some of the more prominent
dominant castes may be mentioned here. Villagers in North India speak of
the Ajgar, which literally means “python” and testifies to the fear which the
dominant castes rouse in the oppressed minority castes. “Ajgar” is an
acronym in Hindi standing for the Ahīr (cattle herder), Jāt (peasant), Gujar
(peasant) and Rājpūt (warrior). The Sadgop is a dominant caste in parts of
West Bengal; Pātidār and Rājpūt in Gujarat; Marātha in Maharāshtra;
Kamma and Reddi in Andhra; Okkaliga and Lingāyat in Mysore; Vellāla,
Goundar, Padaiyāchi and Kallar in Madras; and finally, Nāyar, Syrian
Christian and Izhavan in Kerala.
Dominant castes set the model for the majority of people living in rural
areas including, occasionally, Brahmins. Where their way of life has
undergone a degree of Sanskritization— as it has, for instance, among the
Pātidārs, Lingāyats and some Vellalās—the culture of the area over which
their dominance extends experiences a change. The Pātidārs have become
more Sanskritized in the last hundred years or so, and this has had effects
on the culture of all other groups in Kaira district in Gujarat including the
Bāriās. The Lingāyats and the Vellālas of South India also have a
Sanskritized style of life, and from a much older period than the Pātidārs.
The Lingāyats have been a potent source of cultural and social change in
Mysore State, especially in the region to the north of the Tungabhadra river.
They have been able to do this because of their use of the popular language
of Kannada instead of Sanskrit for the spread of their ideas, and the
existence of a network of wealthy and prestigious monasteries. The
monasteries have converted—and are still converting—people from
different castes to the Lingāyat sect.
 The Marāthas and Reddis, and in more recent years the Padaiyāchis (who
have changed their name to Vanniya Kula Kshatriyas), have laid claim to
Kshatriya status. In pre-British times a claim to Kshatriya status was
generally preceded by the possession of political power at the village if not
higher levels, and a borrowing of the life-style of the Kshatriyas. This set
off a chain reaction among the low castes, each of which imitated what it
considered to be the Kshatriya style of life. Thus present-day Bāriās in
Kaira district don the red turban and sword in imitation of Pātidārs of thirty
years ago.39 The Pātidārs themselves seem to have wanted to be classed as
Kshatriyas until recently, when they changed their preference to Vaishya
status.40 A variety of castes in modern Gujarat seek to be recognized as
Kshatriyas. According to Pocock, “almost every caste in Charōttār,
including the Untouchable Dedh, has in its caste stories and legends a
history of warrior and kingly origin; these claims can only become effective
when supported by wealth suitably invested in Brahminic and secular
prestige.”41
Brahmins, like Kshatriyas, have exercised dominance in rural as well as
urban India. In strength of numbers they have rarely been able to compete
with the peasant castes, but they have enjoyed ritual pre-eminence, and that
in a society in which religious beliefs were particularly strong. In pre-
British and princely India, a popular mode of expiating sins and acquiring
religious merit was to give gifts of land, house, gold and other goods to
Brahmins. The gifts were given on such occasions as the birth of a prince,
his marriage, coronation and death. In their roles as officials, scholars,
temple priests (pujāris,) family priests (purohits,) and in some parts of the
country, village record-keepers (shānbhog, kulkarni, karnam) also, they
came to own land. Ownership of land further increased the great prestige
Brahmins already commanded as members of the highest caste.
Centers of pilgrimage and monasteries were also sources of
Sanskritization. Each pilgrimage center had its own hinterland, the most
famous of them attracting pilgrims from all over India, while the smallest
relied on a few neighbouring villages. Even when a pilgrim center had an
all-India following, it probably attracted more pilgrims from one or a few
areas than uniformly from every part of India. In the case of centers
drawing from a small region, however, there were perhaps more pilgrims
from particular castes or villages than from others. In spite of such limiting
factors, a pilgrim center as well as a monastery managed to influence the
way of life of everyone in its hinterland. When a section of a dominant
caste came under the influence of a center or monastery, Sanskritization
spread vertically to nondominant castes in the area and horizontally to
members living elsewhere. Such spreading has been greatly facilitated in
recent years by a variety of forces, technological, institutional and
ideological.
 Sanskritization has been a major process of cultural change in Indian
history and it has occurred in every part of the Indian subcontinent. It may
have been more active at some periods than at others, and some parts of
India are more Sanskritized than others; but there is no doubt that the
process has been universal.

As I stated earlier, there has been not one model of Sanskritization but three
or four, and during the early period of Indian history there was some rivalry
between the different models. The later Vedic texts, for instance, record
instances of conflict between Brahmins and Kshatriyas:42 The Brāhmana
claim to supremacy was now and then contested by the Kshatriya, and we
have declarations to the effect that the Kshatriya had no superior and that
the priest was only a follower of the king.”43
Jainism and Buddhism also show traces of conflict between Kshatriyas
and Brahmins for supremacy. According to Ghurye:

Whatever be the express statements about caste in the original

preachings of Mahavira and Buddha, a close student of the early
literature of these religious movements will feel convinced that the chief
social aim of the writers was the assertion of the pre-eminence of the
Kshatriyas. It is a well-known fact that no Jain Tirthankara was ever
born in any but a Kshatriya family. In Buddhist literature there are
several examples where the enumeration of the four castes is headed by
the Kshatriya, the Brahmin coming next. Many a time the Kshatriyas
aggressively put forward claims for prior recognition over the
Brahmins.44
The new faiths also attracted large numbers of traders who, like the
Kshatriyas, resented Brahminical dominance, and sought a way out of the
disabilities imposed on them in the caste system.45
But, as seen earlier, in the varna model of the caste hierarchy there is no
doubt as to the place of each varna and, furthermore, the hierarchy is
immutable. The sacred literature of the Hindus, largely a creation of
Brahmins throughout the ages, naturally lent support to the idea of
Brahminical supremacy and the benefits that would flow to the king and
country if the Brahmins were kept happy and prosperous. But how far such
a picture corresponded to the existential situation at different periods of
Indian history and in different parts of the Indian subcontinent is another
question which can only be answered after we have detailed regional
histories—assuming, of course, that materials are available for the writing
of such histories. In the meanwhile it will be reasonable to postulate that the
wielders of secular power, political or economic, were everywhere
important and that the Brahmin was aware of their importance, and that
they, in turn, had use for the Brahmin, as a means of legitimizing their
mobility. In a word, there existed in Brahmins, along with a desire to
establish their supremacy, a lively appreciation of the power wielded by the
others. It should be stressed here that as recipients of gifts from rich
Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, Brahmins were more likely to be appreciative of
political and economic power than other groups. Moreover, not all
Brahmins were priests or unworldly ascetics.46 As Daniel Ingalls has
observed, “There were in the first place those Brahmins who sought wealth.
The pathway to wealth was education, a Sanskrit education, specifically the
education of what is now called a Sāstri. It is hard for us few Sanskritists
nowadays to realize what material pleasures could once be attained by our
discipline.”47
The early Brahminical way of life underwent important changes during
the Vedic period. Beef-eating came to be tabooed: “The use of animal food
was common, especially at the great feasts and family gatherings. The
slaying of the cow was, however, gradually looked upon with disfavour as
is apparent from the name aghnyā (not to be killed) applied to it in several
passages.”48 The consumption of liquor, a feature of Vedic ritual as well as
a part of Brahmin diet, also disappeared in post-Vedic India. Today liquor is
not traditionally consumed by any Brahmin group, and only a few Brahmin
groups are non-vegetarian.
 This change in the mode of life of the Brahmins is important, as the
Brahminical model followed by the other castes is that of the post-Vedic
Brahmins. The Kshatriya and Vaishya models are indeed important but not
as influential as the Brahminical, as a few Kshatriyas and almost all
Vaishyas follow the Brahminical model regarding diet, ritual and certain
important religious ideas. Only with the increasing impact of the Western
model in the last several decades has the Brahminical model begun to lose
ground among some sections of the Hindus.
Ingalls notes that toward the end of the Vedic period there appeared
“traces of ascetic orders recruiting members from the Brahmin class. There
is evidence that such orders had existed among the non-Brahmin indigenous
population from a much earlier period. The Brahmin ascetics become more
numerous as one passes into the Christian era.”49 It is more common,
however, to attribute the change which came over the life of the post-Vedic
Brahmins to the influence of Buddhism and Jainism.50
It would be fascinating to trace the gradual emergence over the centuries
of a puritanical style of life as a dominant feature of Hinduism, and the
association of that style of life with Brahmins and with certain sects such as
the Jains, Lingāyats and others, but that is not my task here. I shall rest
content with pointing out that the powerful Bhakti movement of medieval
India, an all-India movement involving the low castes and the poor,
deepened and extended the earlier puritanism by its insistence on love of
God as the most important thing in religion, rather than ritualism or caste.
The Bhakti saints “preached the fundamental equality of all religions and
the unity of Godhead, held that the dignity of man depended on his actions
and not on his birth, protested against excessive ritualism and formalities of
religion and domination of the priests, and emphasized simple devotion and
faith as the means of salvation for one and all.51 Thanks to the Bhakti
movement some individuals from low castes, including Harijans, became
religious leaders.52 The movement also ignored the distinction between the
sexes, and there were women saints such as Āndāl, Akkamahādevi and
Meera. It is indisputable that the net effect of the movement was to strike a
blow for equality and prepare the higher castes for the more massive assault
that came during British rule. Unfortunately, no history has yet been written
of the Indian attacks on the concept of hierarchy.
 The Bhakti cults are significant in yet another way. They employed
regional languages instead of Sanskrit for purveying to a vast and unlettered
populace the contents of Sanskritic Hinduism. V. Raghavan not only
confirms the occurrence of this process but also points out how there was
eventually a feedback into the Great Tradition from the literature in the
regional languages:

Where the local religious movement developed under Sanskrit

inspiration but the linguistic vehicle of consolidation was the regional
tongue, there was a second attempt at Sanskritization which produced
Sanskrit back-formations. … Sanskrit devotional literature was also
increased by reabsorbing into Sanskrit garb, material which was
originally given to the people in their own local tongues. In Tamil
Saivism, for instance, the story of the greatness of Madurai Hālāsya
Māhātmya and the hagiology of the sixty-three Saiva saints were done
into Sanskrit; and in Tamil Vaishnavism, Vedāntadeśika composed
Sanskrit resumés of the Tamil psalms of the Vaishnava Alvārs.53

The Brahminical and on the whole, puritanical, model of Sanskritization

has enjoyed an over-all dominance, and even meat- eating and liquor-
consuming Kshatriya and other groups have implicitly conceded the
superiority of this model to the others. Thus among non-vegetarians, fish-
eaters regard themselves as superior to the consumers of the flesh of sheep
and goats, while the latter look down upon the consumers of fowl and pig
who, in turn, regard beef-eaters with great contempt. Not all meat-eaters are
traditionally consumers of liquor. It is again, except in some areas such as
Rajasthan, a mark of the low castes.
In southern Mysore, for instance, the vessels in which meat is cooked are
usually kept separate and are not used for cooking rice or vegetables. In
villages meat is customarily cooked outside the main kitchen and on a
separate stove. No meat may be cooked on any festival day as it is sacred
for worshipping one or another deity, but only on the day following. Even at
weddings, a non-vegetarian dinner is cooked only on the day following the
completion of the wedding ritual.
 In the Delhi-Punjab area meat-eating is often characteristic of the male
members of the caste, women being restricted to a vegetarian diet. Again,
even in castes where both sexes consume meat, individuals who are priests
are often vegetarians. One of my neighbours in Rāmpura was a priest from
the meat-eating shepherd (Kuruba) caste, and he cooked his own vegetarian
food apart from the members of his family. This was also true of the
headman of the Harijan caste in Rāmpura, who was a hereditary priest at a
local temple belonging to his caste, and who was respected for his
vegetarianism and teetotalism.
 Even among Brahmins an orthodox person, as distinct from the Sanyasi
who has renounced the world, may decide to practise extreme exclusiveness
in personal life as part of his religion. Such exclusiveness cuts him off from
social contact with his fellow beings, from his kindred outside the nuclear
family and sometimes, even from his children. Among the Shri Vaishnava
Brahmins, for instance, a man may decide, under the advice of the religious
head of his sect, to eat food cooked only by his wife or himself. Such a man
is expected to spend a good deal of his time in prayer, fasting, meditation,
visiting temples and listening to the narration of religious stories
(harikatha). He is recognized by his castefolk to be leading a pure life (maḍi
āchāra) which endears him to God. These ideas have lost much of their
force in recent years among educated and urban Indians, but they have not
disappeared altogether. For instance, in the summer of 1964,I met in
Mysore City an elderly Shri Vaishnava Brahmin clerk who told me proudly
that he had taken sharaṇāgati (surrender) from the guru of his sect, and that
he would not accept even coffee from his relatives. This evoked from one of
those present the irreverent comment, “He will now ascend directly to
heaven.”

I have commented at some length on the ways in which the varna model of
the caste system distorts our understanding of traditional Indian society. I
have stressed the point that the traditional system did permit of a certain
amount of mobility, and I shall pursue this further in this section.
There is, first of all, the process of Sanskritization itself. One of its
functions was to bridge the gap between secular and ritual rank. When a
caste or section of a caste achieved secular power it usually also tried to
acquire the traditional symbols of high status, namely the customs, ritual,
ideas, beliefs and lifestyle of the locally highest castes. It also meant
obtaining the services of a Brahmin priest at various rites de passage,
performing Sanskritic calendrical festivals, visiting famous pilgrimage
centers and finally, attempting to obtain a better knowledge of the sacred
literature.
 Ambitious castes were aware of the legitimizing role of the Brahmin.
Even a poor Brahmin priest living in a village dominated by peasants had to
be treated differently from poor people of other castes. Burton Stein, a
student of medieval India, pointed out that even the powerful rulers of the
Vijayanagar kingdom (1336–1565) in South India had to acknowledge and
pay a price for the legitimizing role of the Brahmin:

These rulers identified and justified their own power in terms of the
protection of Hindu institutions from Islam. The maintenance of proper
caste duties and relationships (varnāshrama dharma) was frequently
cited as an objective of state policy in Vijayanagar inscriptions. The new
warriors, then, did come to terms with the Brahmin elite of South India.
On the basis of their continued support of Brahmin religious
prerogatives and high ritual rank—though not support of the earlier
almost complete socio-political autonomy of landed Brahmin
communities—they won recognition from the Brahmins for their own
ascendant military and political power.54 (Italics mine)

In the traditional setup, the desire to possess the symbols of high rank
assumed that the aspiring caste was aware of a wider social horizon than the
purely local one.55 This, in turn, implied contact with centers of pilgrimage
and urban capitals, or the presence locally of an influential body of
Brahmins. When, for instance, the dominance of a caste extended only to a
few neighbouring villages, there was frequently no opportunity for it to
seek to legitimize its position by resort to Sanskritization. But when that
power extended over a wider area, it was likely to come up against the
might of the Great Tradition of Hinduism.
All over North India the bardic castes were traditionally a fruitful source
of legitimization of the acquisition of political power. Thus Shah and Shroff
observe:

The Vahīvancā is important to the Rājpūt not only as genealogist but

also as mythographer. Anyone who wants to call himself a Rājpūt
should show that he is descended from an ancient Rājpūt dynasty, and it
is only the Vahīvancā who is believed to be able to show this
authoritatively. A Rājpūt’s existence as a member of his caste depends
upon the Vahīvancā. Moreover, some of the most vital social and
political institutions of the Rājpūts are based on the belief that these
have existed since time immemorial. The Vahīvancā’s records are, to the
Rājpūt, proof of the antiquity of the institutions.56
 The Vahīvancā provided the means of legitimization not only for the
Rājpūt but also for others, including the tribal Koḷīs. In Central Gujarat
Rājpūts marry girls from the lineages of the Koḷī chiefs, and this has
provided the latter with a rope to pull themselves up with. Building upon
the fact of the hypergamous marriage of Koḷīs with Rājpūts, the Vahīvancās
are able to provide a charter to Koḷī mobility.57
A caste group is generally endogamous, but occasionally endogamy is
found to coexist with hypergamy. The caste considered to be lower has a
one-sided relationship with the higher by which it gives its girls in marriage
to the latter. This results in a scarcity of girls in the lower group, and of
boys in the higher. Hypergamy occurs in several regions of India—Kerala,
Gujarat, Bengal and parts of Uttar Pradesh. And it provides evidence of the
upward mobility of castes. In Pocock’s terminology hypergamy corresponds
to the “inclusive” aspects of caste while endogamy corresponds to its
“exclusive” aspect. A caste would like to include itself with those it
considers superior, and the existence of hypergamy provides an institutional
basis for such inclusion. Similarly the practice of caste endogamy is an
implicit repudiation of the claims of lower castes to equality.
Hypergamy may occur among different sections of the same caste or jāti
when such sections are more or less clearly distinguishable. This type of
hypergamy occurs, for instance, among the Pātidārs of Kaira district in
Central Gujarat and the Anāvil Brahmins of coastal, South Gujarat. But
sometimes, as in the Koḷī-Rājpūt case, hypergamy may cross wide
structural gulfs. In Bengal, hypergamy occurs among ranked Brahmin
castes among whom the Kulins are the highest.
The giving of girls in marriage to boys from a higher caste or higher
section of the same caste added to the prestige of the wife-giving lineage
and caste. In some cases it also enabled the lower group to claim,
eventually, equality with the higher group.
 Hypergamy was significant for mobility in yet another way. A caste or
section of a caste would Sanskritize its way of life and then claim to be
superior to its structural neighbours or to the parent section. Amma Coorgs,
a section of the main body of the Coorgs, came under strong Brahminical
influence in the first half of the nineteenth century and became vegetarians
and teetotalers and donned the sacred thread. In course of time they became
a distinct endogamous group even though they numbered only 666
individuals at the 1941 census. It may be presumed that throughout the
history of caste new caste groups arose as a result of such fission from the
parent body.

It is necessary to stress that the mobility characteristic of caste in the

traditional period resulted only in positional changes for particular castes or
sections of castes and did not lead to a structural change. That is, while
individual castes moved up or down, the structure remained the same. It
was only in the literature of the medieval Bhakti (literally, devotion to a
personal god) movement that the idea of inequality was challenged. A few
sects even recruited followers from several castes in their early, evangelical
phase, but gradually either the sect became an endogamous unit, or
endogamy continued to be an attribute of each caste within the sect.
It is not my aim in this section to marshal systematically evidence to
support the view that there was social mobility in every period of Indian
history. I shall cite a few instances of mobility from ancient and medieval
India while paying more attention to the period immediately prior to the
establishment of British rule.
The institution of varna evolved gradually during the Vedic period (circa
1500–500 B.C.), the earliest period for which any literary evidence is
available. The Purusha Sūkta, one of the later hymns of the earliest of the
four Vedas, Rig Veda, gives a mythical account of the origin of the four
varnas, Brāhmana, Rājanya (that is, Kshatriya), Vaishya and Shūdra, and
this is the first mention of the varna hierarchy as we know it today. The
Brahmin’s position began to strengthen during the latter part of the Vedic
period, and this was linked up with the increasing importance and
elaboration of the institution of sacrifice. By the end of the Vedic period the
Brahmin’s position had become impregnable, and his rival from an earlier
period, the Kshatriya, had been pushed to a secondary place. Ghurye has
stated that Jainism and Buddhism were both started by “Kshatriyas of
exceptional ability preaching a new philosophy which was utilized by their
immediate followers for asserting the social superiority of the Kshatriyas
over the Brahmins. The Brahmin has a fresh cause for grudge. He comes
forward as the saviour of the Vedic Brahminic culture.”58
 The Vaishya occupied a low place in the hierarchy during the Rig Vedic
period and indeed, this varna figures singularly little in Vedic literature. The
term Vaishya, in its earliest usage, referred to ordinary people, and Basham
thinks that the caste “originated in the ordinary peasant tribesman of the Rig
Veda.”59 The conversion of Vaishyas to Buddhism and Jainism probably
resulted in an improvement in their position.

Though the Brāhmaṇa literature gives Vaiśya few rights and humble
status, the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures, a few centuries later in date
and of more easterly provenance, show that he was not always
oppressed in practice. They mention many wealthy merchants living in
great luxury and powerfully organized in guilds. Here the ideal Vaiśya is
not the humble tax-paying cattle-breeder but the asītikoṭivibhava, the
man possessing eight million panas. Wealthy Vaiśyas were respected by
kings and enjoyed their favour and confidence.60

Apart from the rise and fall of particular varnas over the centuries, the
system seems to have enjoyed a degree of “openness.” This is pointedly
seen in the case of Kshatriyas who seem to have been recruited in ancient
times from several ethnic groups including Greeks (Yavana), Scythians
(Shaka) and Parthians (pahlava).61 Panikkar has been quoted earlier as
saying that in historical times there was no such caste as the Kshatriyas, and
ever since the fifth century B.C. ruling families have come from a wide
variety of castes.
Burton Stein considers the medieval period to be characterized by
“widespread and persistent examples of social mobility.” He emphasizes the
contrast between theory and practice:

When the rank of persons was in theory rigorously ascribed according to

the purity of the birth-group, the political units of India were probably
ruled most often by men of very low birth. This generalization applies to
South Indian warriors and may be equally applicable for many clans of
“Rajputs” in northern India. The capacity of both ancient and medieval
Indian society to ascribe to its actual rulers, frequently men of low
social origins, a “clean” or “Kshatriya” rank may afford one of the
explanations for the durability and longevity of the unique civilization of
India.62 (Italics mine)
 A potent source of social mobility in pre-British India was the fluidity of
the political system. Such fluidity was not limited to any particular part of
India, but characterized the system everywhere. It constituted an important,
though not the only, avenue to social mobility. In order to capture political
power, however, a caste or its local section had to have a martial tradition,
numerical strength, and preferably also ownership of a large quantity of
arable land. Once it had captured political power it had to Sanskritize its
ritual and style of life and lay claim to being Kshatriya. It had to patronize
(or even create) Brahmins who would minister to it on ritual occasions, and
produce an appropriate myth supporting the group’s claim to Kshatriya
status. The establishment of Pax Britannica resulted in freezing the political
system and blocked this avenue to mobility. That eventually British rule
opened other avenues to mobility does not concern us here.
We are able to have a clearer understanding than before of the process of
social mobility through the achievement of political power, thanks to the
excellent studies of pre-British India by Bernard Cohn and Arvind Shah.
Cohn has studied the Banaras region in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Shah,
the Central Gujarat region.
Cohn distinguishes four levels of the political system in eighteenth
century India—imperial, secondary, regional and local. The Mughals
occupied the “imperial” level, and incidental to their efforts at ruling the
entire subcontinent they had to have a loyal army and a bureaucracy. They
succeeded so completely in monopolizing the symbols of legitimacy that in
the eighteenth century even those groups “which were trying to free
themselves of actual imperial control nonetheless turned to the remnants of
the imperial authority for legitimizing their power …,”63 The “secondary”
level consisted of successor states such as Oudh which emerged after
dissolution of Mughal power, and which exercised suzerainty over a major
historical, cultural or linguistic region. Each “secondary” system was made
up of several “regional” systems, and at the head of the latter was an
individual or family which had the status of hereditary official or ruler, a
status conferred on it by the imperial or the secondary authority. “The
leaders [of regional systems] were loosely incorporated through rituals of
allegiance and financial obligation to the national power and were in
competition with potential regional leaders.64 At the bottom of the power
structure was the “local” system represented by lineages, an indigenous
chief, a tax official turned political leader or a successful adventurer. The
heads of the local system were subordinate to the regional leader although
they often derived their positions from the secondary authority. These heads
controlled the local peasants, artisans and traders, and offered them
protection from outside interference. They collected from their subjects
money or a share of the crop in return for their services.65
 In the Banaras region the Nawāb of Oudh was nominally the political
overlord and he derived his authority from the Mughal Emperor in Delhi.
The Nawāb ruled this area through his officials from 1720 to 1740, and
through his partially independent subordinate, the Raja of Banaras, from
1740 to 1775.

The Raja of Banaras in turn had to control, extract revenue or tribute

from, and on occasion get military help from a large number of localized
lineages, petty chiefs, and jāgīrdārs (holders of revènue-free lands from
the Nawab of Oudh or the Emperor of Delhi). Feuds within lineages,
warfare between lineages, or warfare between lineages and the Raja of
Banaras were frequent. Disputes often were settled by the direct use of
force.66

At the base of the social and political pyramid were the lower castes who
actually cultivated the land as tenants, sharecroppers, serfs and slaves.
Above them were the members of the dominant castes, either Rājpūt or
Bhumihār Brahmin, organized into corporate lineages controlling the land.
The founders of the lineages were either conquerors or recipients of royal or
other grants. By the end of the eighteenth century the lineages were large,
corporate bodies often including over a thousand families related to each
other by agnatic links. The corporate lineages realized from the actual tillers
of land a share of the produce, a part of which they were forced to surrender
to “superordinate political powers.”
 By the end of the eighteenth century still another interest had insinuated
itself into the situation. These were men who agreed with the
superordinate political power, the Raja of Banaras, to pay a fixed
amount of tax each year to the Raja’s treasury. They in turn extracted
what they could, on the basis of tradition and what force they had at
their disposal, from the lineages or in a few instances from local chiefs
and in even fewer instances directly from the cultivators.67

Cohn traces the rise of Mansa Rām, a member of the landholding,

dominant Bhumihār caste in a village in Jaunpur district, who worked for a
local āmil or tax collector, and eventually replaced the latter. His ability and
lack of scruples enabled him to obtain from Safdar Jang, who succeeded his
uncle to the Nawābship of Oudh, a royal grant making Mansa Rām’s son,
Balwant Singh, the Raja of Banaras and the Zamindār of the three districts
of Banaras, Jaunpur and Mirzapur.68
The Raja of Banaras had to pay tribute to the Nawāb of Oudh, and also
provide him with troops when necessary. The Raja had a dual role. He did
not have the necessary administrative machinery to collect revenue directly
from the people, by passing the local chiefs and lineages. He was also
dependent upon the latter for his troops without which he could not be
independent from the Nawāb of Oudh. In fact, he made a continuous effort
to be completely independent from the control of the Nawāb. He also
needed to keep in check lineages and local chiefs who wielded power
within his province. The more powerful of the chiefs posed a threat to his
existence.69
Cohn characterizes the political system of eighteenth century Banaras
region as one of “balanced oppositions, each element in competition with
the other, each dependent on the other, cultivator, corporate lineage, tax
farmer and Raja.”70 The conflicts between lineages and between them and
the local Raja or jāgīrdār, between the latter and the Raja of Banaras,
enabled leaders of dominant groups to acquire political power, and through
it a higher position in the hierarchy.71 In other words, the political system
favoured social mobility.
 Arvind Shah’s description of the political system of eighteenth century
Gujarat—or more correctly, central Gujarat—also emphasizes its fluidity.72
The central plains, the most fertile part of Gujarat, are inhabited by caste
Hindus such as Brahmins, Banias, Rājpūts, Pātidārs and Koḷīs. The
Pātidārs, originally called Kunbis, are the traditional peasant caste while the
Koḷīs are the largest single ethnic group, forming more than a quarter of the
Hindu population in Gujarat.
 Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries the Solanki kings in Pāṭaṇ
were the overlords of Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. Under them were the
Rājpūt princes and chiefs ruling over smaller areas. The rigid rule of clan
exogamy among Rājpūts resulted in the forging of affinal ties between
princes ruling in different areas. The rule of primogeniture was followed in
the matter of succession to office, the younger sons being granted land in
different parts of the princedom.
Rājpūt princes also ruled over the tribal areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan and
Madhya Pradesh; this meant the imposition of the Rājpūt political system
over the tribal, with the tribal chiefs acting as links between the two.
With the establishment of Muslim hegemony in Gujarat toward the end of
the thirteenth century, a movement to displace the Rājpūt princes and chiefs
in the central plains and bring the area under the effective control of the
Sultan of Delhi began. During the entire period of Muslim rule the Koḷīs
were referred to as marauders and dacoits, and they joined the irregular
armies of political adventurers who were a perennial source of trouble to
the rulers.
Like Cohn, Shah also discerns several levels in the political system of
eighteenth century Gujarat. There was the imperial level, occupied by the
Mughals until the beginning of the eighteenth century and by the Peshwas
of Poona after 1768. Below the imperial was the “regional” or “provincial”
level; here too the Marātha rulers, the Gāikwads of Baroda, replaced
Mughal governors by about 1730. At a still lower level was the territory
ruled by tribute-paying princes—Rājpūt, Muslim, Koḷī or Pātidār—as well
as the territory administered by the regional authority through either
officials called Kamāvisdārs, or grantee of land called jāgīrdārs. At the
bottom of the administrative system was the village, and it was by no means
a passive unit. There was a “continuum of power relations between the
various levels.”
The period between the death of the Mughal emperor Aurangazeb (1707)
and the establishment of Peshwa authority over Gujarat (1768) was one of
strife and confusion. There were three main contenders for power: high
Muslim officials and nobles who wanted to found independent
principalities; several conflicting cliques among the Marāthas; and finally,
Rājpūt chiefs in highland Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. There was a
shifting pattern of alliances among the different contenders. A few Muslim
officials and nobles in plains Gujarat succeeded in establishing petty
kingdoms such as Cambay, Balasinor, Palanpur and Radhanpur. They
maintained their position by playing one Marātha clique against the others,
and paying tribute to whoever troubled them the most. The Rājpūt princes
also did the same. A few Koḷi leaders took advantage of the prevalent
confusion and established small kingdoms. The bulk of plains Gujarat,
however, came directly under the authority of the Marāthas.73
A pargana, including between forty and seventy villages, was the basic
administrative entity; it was usually under a Kamāvisdār except for two
parganas, which were under the control of jāgīrdārs who were members of
the Gāikwād’s family. The jāgīrdār’s twin obligations to the Gāikwād were
to pay him an annual tribute and to provide him with troops when called
upon to do so. With his position in the local system, and with troops at his
disposal, he was always a potential source of trouble to the Gāikwād. This
was why a jāgīr was liable to be withdrawn or one jāgīr substituted for
another.
A Kamāvisdār was an official appointed by the Gāikwād for a specific
period of time; he was in charge of one, and occasionally more than one,
pargana. He had a body of troops to help him in his administrative tasks,
which included maintenance of law and order, collection of taxes, and
seeing that the Muslim, Rājpūt and Koḷī princes in his neighbourhood did
not make trouble. The Gāikwāds did not supervise administration at the
local level as they had neither the leisure nor the inclination to do so 74
Every pargana had one or more hereditary headmen called Desais. When
there was more than one Desai, the villages included in the pargana were
distributed among them. The Desais were local men from one of the high
castes, Brahmin, Bania or Pātidār. Each Desai had his own accountants
(majumdārs) clerks (mehtas) and servants (rāvaṇiyās).
There were three types of villages—the law-abiding (rāsti), the unruly
(mewāsi), and the mixed (rāsti-mewāsi). Either Rājputs or Koḷīs
predominated in the mewāsi villages. The Rājpūts in the mewāsi villages
were descendants of those princelings who had lost much of their land to
Muslim rulers, and who were now left with a village or two each. They
could not forget that they were Kshatriyas and continually tried to assert
their independence. The Koḷīs also claimed to be Rājpūts by virtue of their
marriage alliances with Rājpūt lineages. The rāsti-mewāsi villages
alternated between quite and turbulent periods.
 The mewāsi villages were generally situated near the deep ravines of
rivers or in the jungles bordering the plains. Some of them had forts built
around them. During the heyday of Mughal rule a network of village police
stations kept order in the mewāsi villages, but with the decline of Mughal
power, they began making trouble. They paid tax only when threatened with
force, and every year the Kamāvisdār or Desai had to go to them
accompanied by his troops. They also exacted payments from rāsti villages
and from highway travellers. Many rāsti villages bought peace from them
by permanent grants of land or annual cash payments.
The eighteenth century also saw the rise of the famous peasant caste of
Gujarat, the Pātidārs. In central Gujarat there were many rāsti villages
dominated by landowning Kunbi lineages. The latter were jointly
responsible for the payment of tax which was assessed in a lump sum. Each
lineage paid its share of tax to the village headman. Those Kunbis who paid
tax were called by the prestigious term of Pātidār. In course of time,
however, Pātidār became a caste name and Kunbi disappeared from use.
The Pātidārs grew cash crops such as indigo, cotton and tobacco for
export. They had become a wealthy caste by the end of the Mughal rule,
and their wealth enabled them to dominate over the others in the villages.
The declining importance of Rājpūts under the Mughals also favoured the
Pātidārs. The political importance of the Pātidārs seems to have been
acknowledged by both the Mughals and Marāthas. “Folklore refers to the
friendship between Pātidārs had taken to arms, and a couple of them had
established petty principalities. All this had led the Pātidārs to claim the
status of Kshatriya varna, and to adopt many ‘kingly’ customs and
manners.”75
The situation in the Banaras and Gujarat regions in the eighteenth century
may be summed up by saying that the political system favoured mobility
for the leaders of the dominant local groups such as the Bhumihār
Brahmins, Rājpūts, Pātidārs and Koḷīs. It also favoured a few officials (for
example, Mansa Rām in Banaras and Muslim officials in Gujarat) who
drew on their official authority to establish principalities. (I suspect,
however, that at some point their individual mobility became linked up with
that of their castes.) The fact that the Mughal power was on the wane in the
eighteenth century made the period particularly favourable to mobility, but
the difference between it and earlier periods was only one of degree.
Considering that pre-British India was characterized by primitive
technology and poor communications, peripheral areas of large kingdoms
were always likely to have considerable autonomy from the central power.
I shall now briefly consider my third and last example, Kerala in
Southwest India, several hundred miles away from both Gujarat and Uttar
Pradesh. Kerala has been studied in recent years by two British
anthropologists, Kathleen Gough and Eric Miller, and I shall be mainly
relying on their writings in my discussion of the region. Of Central Kerala
(an area comprising the former kingdoms of Calicut, Walluvanād, Pālghāt
and Cochin) Gough writes:

The traditional period was one of perpetual wars between adjacent

kingdoms, interrupted only in the rainy seasons. A royal lineage’s
strength lay in its monopoly of gunpowder, coinage and customs dues,
its ability to use foreign and Muslim ships for naval warfare and its
control of the royal domains both as a source of produce and of Nayar
retainers as soldiers. Through its superior wealth and military power a
royal lineage could force feudatory princes and vassal nobles to muster
soldiers throughout the kingdom in periods of large-scale war. Each
district and each village was classified according to the number of Nayar
soldiers it could customarily muster for war.76

In North Kerala (comprising the southern part of South Canara, and the
northern part of Malabar districts), ever since the sixteenth century, local
rulers sought the aid of rival foreign powers, European and Arab, in their
mutual struggles for supremacy. Gough comments that in the struggles of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some new Nāyar chiefs “arose
with mushroom rapidity on the basis of European support and gained
partially autonomous sway over small groups of villages. Political and
social mobility among Nāyar aristocrats was more marked in North Kerala
than in the more stable central kingdoms. Indeed, a North Kerala proverb
remarks that ‘When a high caste Nayar becomes ripe, he turns into a
king’.”77
In his paper, “Caste and Territory in Malabar,”78 Miller has discussed the
relationship between caste and territory in northern, and parts of central,
Kerala in the context of the pre-British political system. The dēsam or
village has always been a fundamental unit of Malayāli society, though its
importance was even greater in the pre-British period than subsequently.
The traditional dēsam was largely self-sufficient, and caste ranking bore a
relationship to differential rights in land. Pre-British Malabar society was
martially oriented, each unit in the system being defined by the number of
troops it could muster. Village were grouped into nāds or chiefdoms, and
the chieftain of the nād led his troops in war. The chiefdom was not only a
political unit but also a social, cultural and even religious unit.
Warfare was endemic between rival chieftains.

Although the boundaries of the chiefdoms were relatively stable, the

history of Malabar is the rise and fall of individual chieftain families.
Neighbouring chieftains were defeated and became feudatories or allies.
During the last 500 years of the traditional period, three chieftain
families who secured wider realms in this manner were the Rajas of
Walluvanad (in the center of South Malabar), the Maharajas of Cochin,
and above all the Zamorins of Calicut. … There were thus several
centers of power. Nāds closest to these centers were absorbed into the
kingdoms and ruled directly. Those further away were feudatory.
Peripheral chiefdoms, as allies, were largely autonomous and transferred
their support from one king to another.79

The pre-British political system of Kerala was then very fluid, and as
Gough emphasizes, it was more fluid in the north than in the central, and
probably southern, regions. Political fluidity resulted in social mobility,
especially for the dominant castes. Some Nāyars “ripened” into Sāmanthans
and Kshatriyas. The royal matrilineages of Calicut, Walluvanād, Pālghāt
and Cochin, for instance, although of Nāyar origin, considered themselves
superior in ritual rank to their Nāyar subjects.

Between kingdoms, royal lineages disputed for rank and would not
intermarry. Although exogamous, therefore, each royal lineage
considered itself a separate caste. The Cochin lineage claimed descent
from the Perumals and ranked as Kshatriyas. … The Walluvanad,
Palghat and Calicut lineages, once vassals of the Perumals, were not
 strictly recognized as Kshatriyas in Brahmin theory and held the title of
Samanthans.80

Disputing for rank was not confined to the royal lineages but extended to
the lower chiefly lineages as well, each of which “tended to regard itself as
a separate caste acknowledging no peers.”81
It is not necessary to labour further the point that the political system of
pre-British India favoured mobility for some strategically situated
individuals and groups. I shall now turn briefly to a secondary source of
mobility in that system—the king or other acknowledged political head of
an area. The latter had the power to promote or demote castes inhabiting his
kingdom. The Maharaja of Cochin, for instance, had the power to raise the
rank of castes in his kingdom, and the final expulsion of anyone from caste
required his sanction. 82 He is, in fact, reputed to have raised some
“Charmas” [Cherumans?] to the status of Nāyars for helping him and his
allies, the Portuguese, against his traditional enemy, the Zamorin of
Calicut.83 The power to raise the rank of castes living within their
jurisdiction seems to have been enjoyed in South India by even some big
Zamindārs. During the British period, when their accounts were examined
for the purposes of revenue assessment, they were found to include receipts
on account of the privilege conferred by them on certain persons to wear the
sacred thread.84
The power to promote or demote castes stemmed from the fact that the
pre-British Indian king, Hindu or Muslim, stood at the apex of the caste
system. In the last analysis, the ranking of castes within the kingdom had
the king’s consent, and an individual who had been outcasted by his caste
council for an offense had always the right of appeal to the king. The latter
had the power to re-examine the evidence and confirm or alter the verdict.
H. J. Maynard, a British official who served in the old Punjab area at the
turn of the century, had the good fortune to witness the Rājpūt chief of a
large region actually exercising his authority in caste matters. According to
Maynard, “It appears that, even under the Mughal emperors, the Delhi
Court was the head of all the Caste Panchayats, and that questions affecting
a caste over a wide area could not be settled except at Delhi, and under the
guidance of the ruler for the time being.”85
 In settling disputes with regard to rank and in deciding the appropriate
punishment for an offense, learned Brahmins were consulted by the king.
But they only declared or expounded the law; it was the king who enforced
their decision.

So far I have considered only mobility arising from the political system and
ignored mobility resulting from the pre-British productive system. In this
connection it is necessary to emphasize that pre-British India did not suffer
from over population; Kingsley Davis, for instance, has argued that India’s
population was stationary between 1600 and 1800, and that it numbered
about 125 million in 1800.86 In many parts of the country there existed land
which, with some effort, could be rendered arable. This in turn meant that
tenants and agricultural labourers enjoyed an advantage in their relations
with their landowning masters. If the master was unusually oppressive and
cruel, the tenants could move to another area and start new farms or work
for another master. The fear of labourers and other dependents running
away was a real one, and it served to restrain masters somewhat.87 It is
relevant to point out here that all agriculture, especially agriculture
involving irrigation, requires large and concentrated inputs of labour at
certain points in the agricultural cycle such as sowing, transplanting,
weeding, harvesting and threshing. The greater the quantity of land owned
by a family, the greater the input of labour required; and the labour
resources available within the family will not be enough to meet the
demand even during normal times—and this on the highly unlikely
assumption that all members of the family work on the land. It is a mark of
low status to do physical work on land, and the bigger the landowner the
greater is the force of this prohibition. Besides, the existence of a certain
amount of congruence between caste rank and the agricultural hierarchy
would mean that generally landowners belonged to high castes while
tenants, and more especially, landless labourers, belonged to low castes.
Considerations of prestige as well as caste would, therefore, prevent
landownersfrom actually working on their land, thus greatly increasing the
demand for labour. In my field village of Rāmpura, in many ways
favourably with regard to the availability of agricultural labour, even the
wealthiest and most prestigious families had difficulty assuring themselves
of necessary labour, and had to use all their power, contacts and ingenuity
to see that their farming did not suffer.88
If during 1948-1952, in a relatively favoured area such as Rāmpura,
wealthy landowners were experiencing difficulties in finding enough
labour, the situation must have much worse in pre-British India when there
was a scarcity of labour. It is well known that the number of agricultural
labourers has been rapidly increasing since the beginning of this century.
Thus while 12 per cent of the agricultural population were landless
labourers in 1900, in 1956 they comprised 24 per cent of the total rural
households.89
Burton Stein has argued cogently that the availability of “marginally
settled lands suitable for cultivation which permitted the establishment of
new settlements and even new regional societies” imposed limitations
on the amount of tribute in the form of agricultural surplus, which local
warriors could extract from peasant villages under their control, as well
as on other forms of arbitrariness. … Different branches of the Vellāla
community of Tamilspeaking South India, a respected and powerful
cultivating caste, seem to have developed in this manner. This
“looseness” in the agrarian order of medieval South India has been
noted by historians, but there has been no systematic study of it. If a
developing social system, characterized by such “openness” is seen as
typical in many parts of South India during the medieval period, then the
model of the contemporary competition of ethnic units for enhanced
rank within a narrow, localized ranking system appears inappropriate for
understanding the process of mobility in an earlier period. Much of the
evidence we have on the nature of the medieval social order indicates
that there was considerable opportunity for individual mobility in an
earlier period.90
According to Stein, then, social mobility in medieval India was closely
bound up with spatial mobility; and the availability of potentially arable
land along with other factors such as floods, droughts, epidemics and
excessive tribute demands stimulated migration. There were also obstacles
to movement, but they were not insuperable. His mention of the existence
of subdivisions among the agrarian Vellālas is peculiarly apt, and
subdivisions have similarly proliferated among other peasant castes such as
Nāyar, Kamma, Reddi, Okkaliga and Marātha. A section which moved out
became a separate endogamous jāti after the lapse of several years, and true
to caste tradition, each such jāti claimed to be superior to the others. One
division may change its occupation ever so slightly, or adopt a new custom,
or become more or less Sanskritized in its style of life than the others. The
forces released during British rule, and subsequently, have led to these jātis
coming together to form large castes. The process is still active, and
different sections of a jāti are differently affected by it. I have called this an
increase in “horizontal solidarity,” but the jatis subsumed in the emergent
entity are not, strictly speaking, equal.
Stein’s other point—that “the model of the contemporary competition of
ethnic units for enhanced rank within a narrow, local ranking system is
inappropriate” for understanding social mobility in pre-British India—is
also important in that it helps to account for cultural variations between
sections of the same caste living in different areas. A family or group of
families would have greater freedom to adopt the Sanskritic style of life in a
new area where they were unknown than in their natal area where the
locally dominant caste knew them. In other words, migration made
“passing” possible, and the mobile group was able to assume new and
prestigious cultural robes. But even within a narrow region the dominant
caste of political chief did not have unlimited power, and this allowed low
castes a certain amount of elbowroom. This is not to deny, however, that
mobility within a localized ranking system, such as that described by
Pocock, is the result of British rule.
Stein thinks that opportunities for “individual family mobility were great”
in medieval India; also there was little need then for corporate mobility.
Facilities such as the printing press which modern “corporate mobility”
movements appear to require, as well as the political need for them, came
into existence only recently.91 I presume that Stein is using “corporate” in
the sense of . “collective,” and if I am right in so thinking, it is certainly true
that collective movements are characteristic of modern times while
“individual family movements” were characteristic of the medieval period.
But the latter have to be translated at some point into collective movements,
and this necessity is forced on them by caste. Where will the mobile family
find brides for sons and grooms for daughters? Even in South India where
the marriage of cross cousins and cross uncle and niece are preferred, a few
families would be essential for the recruitment of spouses. Hypergamy also
would enable a small group to be mobile, but that group must be much
larger than an individual family.

NOTES
1 See my Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of Southern India, Oxford, 1952; and “A Note on

Sanskritization and Westernization,” in Far Eastern Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4, August 1956, pp. 481-
496. The latter essay has been included in my book, Caste in modern India, Bombay, 1962, pp. 42–
62.
2 See section I of the Reading List for papers and books in which the concepts of Sanskritization

and/or Westernization are discussed.

3 See my essay “Varna and Caste” in Caste in modern India, pp. 63–69; and also D.C. Mandelbaum’s

“Social Perception and Scriptural Theory in Indian Caste”, in S. Diamond (ed.), Culture in History,
Essays in Honour of Paul Radin, New York, 1960, pp. 437–448.
4 G.S. Ghurye, Caste and Class in India, Bombay, 1950, p. 57.

5 Marc Galanter has recently stated that “the British period may be seen as one in which the legal

system rationalized the intricacies of local customary caste relationships in terms of classical Hindu
legal concepts like varna and pollution. To borrow and slightly distort Srinivas’ terms, we can think
of the British period as a period of ‘Sanskritization’ in legal notions of caste. In independent India, as
varna and pollution gave way to the notion of groups characterized by economic, educational,
political and religious characteristics, we may think of this not as the abolition of caste, but as the
‘Westernization’ of notions of caste.” (“Law and Caste in Modern India”, in Asian Survey, vol. III,
no. 11, November, 1963, p. 558.) In this connection, see also William McCormack’s paper,
“Lingayats as a Sect” (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 93, Part I, January–June,
1963, pp. 57–59), in which he discusses the effects of the application of British law and
Westernization generally on Lingayatism in the twentieth century.
6 D.F. Pocock, “The Movement of Castes”, Man, May, 1955, pp. 71–72.
7 M. Singer, “The Social Organization of Indian Civilization”, Diogenes, vol. 45, Winter, 1964, pp.

84–119.
8 Ibid., p. 101.

9 According to Sir Athelstane Baines the Brahmins are “perhaps the most heterogeneous collection

of minute and independent subdivisions that ever bore a common designation.” (Ethnography,
Strassburg, 1912, p. 26.)
10 Ibid., p. 26–29.

11 See P. Tandon, Punjabi Century, London, 1961, pp. 76–77; M. Darling, Wisdom and Waste in a

Punjab Village, London, 1934, p. 264; T.O. Beidelman, A Comparative Analysis of the Jajmani
System, New York, 1959, p. 19; and Baines, op. cit., p. 28.
12 “In every linguistic group, moreover, there are certain classes which though called Brahmans by

the public, and enlisted to perform some of the ceremonial functions of the Brahman, are either not
recognized by other Brahmans, or are relegated by them to a degraded position, inferior, in reality, to
that to which many of the non-Brahman castes are admitted.” (Baines, op. cit., p. 26.)
13 K.M. Panikkar, Hindu Society at Crossroads, Bombay, 1955, p. 8.

14 Ibid., p. 9.

15 For an analysis of the kind of roles played by a dominant caste in rural society and culture see my

essay, “The Dominant Caste in Rāmpura”, American Anthropologist, vol. 61, February, 1959, pp. 1–
16.
16 In my field village Rāmpura, for instance, Brahmin dominance had given way to Okkaliga

(peasant caste) dominance. This seems to be part of a peninsula-wide phenomenon.

17 See Bernard S. Cohn, “Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India: the Benares Region”,

Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 3, July–September, 1962, p. 314; and A.M.
Shah, “Political System in Eighteenth Century Gujarat”, Enquiry, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring, 1964, pp. 83–
95.
18 “According to a study conducted by the National Sample Survey in 1953–54,’… of the 66 million

rural households in the country, nearly 15 million or 22 per cent, do not own any land at all, another
25 per cent hold less than one acre each, while at the other end, 13 per cent of the total households
exercise permanent ownership rights over 65 per cent of the total area.’ “ Quoted by R. Benedix in
Nation-Building and Citizenship, New York, 1964, p. 254.
19 See McKim Marriott (ed.), Village India, Chicago, 1955, pp. 26–31, 56, 121, 154, 165 and 225.

20 V.K.R.V. Rao. “Employment of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”, Tribal Research

Institute Bulletin, Udaipur, vol. 1, no. 1, October, 1964, p. 10.

21 This was also true, until recently, of urban Indians. Recent land reform legislation has made land

unattractive as a form of investment for absentee landowners, and for very big resident owners.
22 M. Darling, op. cit., p. 264, and T.O. Beidelman op. cit., p. 19.

23 Beidelman, op. cit., pp. 18–19.

24 D.F. Pocock “Inclusion and Exclusion: A Process in the Caste System of Gujarat”, Southwestern

Journal of Anthropology, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring, 1957, pp. 24–25.

25 M.N. Srinivas, see supra note 15, pp. 3–4.

26 Pocock, op. cit., p. 26.

27 W.L. Rowe, “The New Chauhans: A Caste Mobility Movement in North India”, in J. Silverberg

(ed.), Social Mobility in Caste in India, special issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History
(to be published).
28 Census of India Report for 1921, pp. 231–232.

29 J.H. Hutton, Caste in India, Oxford, 1961, pp. 205–206.

30 See in this connection L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal Census Report, 1911, p. 441.

31 D.R. Chanana, “Sanskritization, Westernization and India’s North-West”, Economic Weekly, vol.

XIII, no. 9, March 4, 1961, pp. 409–414.

32 Ibid., p. 409.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., p. 410.

35 Information kindly given by Dr. K. Raman Unni, Reader in Sociology in the School of Planning

and Architecture, New Delhi.

36 Travancore Census Report, vol. I, 1901, p. 269.
37 S.L. Kalia, “Sanskritization and Tribalization”, Bulletin of the Tribal Research Institute,

Chindwara (M.P.), vol. 2, no. 4, April 1959, pp. 33–43.

38 M. Marriott, “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization”, in Village India, p. 211.

39 Pocock, see supra note 24, p. 26.

40 A.M. Shah and R. G. Shroff, “The Vahivancā Bārots of Gujarat: A Caste of Genealogists and

Mythographers”, in Milton Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change, American Folklore
Society, Philadelphia, 1959, pp. 62–63.
41 Pocock, see supra note 24, p. 24.

42 R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhari and K. Datta, An Advanced History of India, London, 1963,

p. 44.
43 Ibid., p. 46.

44 Ghurye, see supra note 4, p. 71.

45 D.D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay, 1956, pp. 156–162.

46 Ghurye, op. cit., pp. 16–17, 84–85,103 and 109.

47 D. Ingalls, “The Brahman Tradition”, in M. Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change,

p. 7.
48 R.C. Majumdar et al., op. cit., pp. 31–32. Professor Hutton writes, ‘The first prohibition of cow-

killing seems to be found in the comparatively late Atharvaveda and to be applied specially, if not
exclusively, to Brahmans, while elsewhere we learn that the cow, although a fit offering for Mitra and
Varuna, should not be sacrificed because such sacrifice is opposed to public feeling. …” (Caste in
India, Oxford, 1963, p. 228).
49 Ingalls, op. cit., p. 7.

50 Majumdar et al., op. cit., p. 8.

51 Ibid., pp. 403–404.

52 V. Raghavan has stated recently, “As extensive as the regional spread of the devotional movement,

was the spread of the social standing of its leaders. If Meera was a princess of Rajasthan and
Manikkavācaka was a minister of the Tamil court of Madurai, Nāmadeva was a tailor, Tukārām was a
shopkeeper, Akho of Gujarat was a goldsmith, and Sādhana, a butcher. Dadoo was a cotton-ginner,
and Sena, a barber. Deriving the brotherhood of man from the fatherhood of God, these saint-singers
could recognize no differences in social status. Rāidās, a cobbler, and Kabīr, a Muslim weaver, were
accepted by the great Brahmin teacher and philosopher, Ramānand. Throughout the centuries the
devotional movement has been a great solvent for the exclusive and separatist feelings stemming
from the consciousness of social status.” (From the summary of Professor Raghavan’s Patel Lectures,
“Vision of the World Family—Message of Saint Singers of India” in Indian and Foreign Review,
January 1, 1965, pp. 14–15).
53 V. Raghavan, “Variety and Integration in the Pattern of Indian Culture”, Far Eastern Quarterly,

vol. XV, no. 4, August, 1956, pp. 500–501. See also his “Methods of Popular Religious Instruction in
South India”, in M. Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change, p. 136. It is only fair to
add, however, that another Sanskrit scholar, J.F. Staal, is very critical of identifying material in
regional languages as “Sanskritic”: “Both the Hindi and the Tamil Ramayana are based upon the
Sanskrit Ramayana, but both contain numerous new elements. Do these belong to Sanskrit culture?
What about further transformations of the Ramayana, e.g., in Kathakali? The Alvars composed Tamil
hymns which are in many respects similar to Sanskrit devotional literature, but are they based upon
it? The Sanskrit sources in other cases are based upon vernacular sources, while serving themselves
again as a source for vernacular literature: Buddhism offers examples of this. Is Buddhism to be
called part of Sanskrit culture only where a Sanskrit intermediary had been found? An attempt at
analysis of the expression ‘material content’ would encounter similar difficulties. We can accept the
term Sanskritization only if it is made clear that its relation to the term Sanskrit is extremely
complex.” (“Sanskrit and Sanskritization”, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. XXII, no. 3, p. 265). Staal
will find a reference not only to the “complexity7’ of Sanskritization but also to its “looseness” in my
“Note on Sanskritization and Westernization”, Far Eastern Quarterly, vol. XV, no. 4, August, 1956,
p. 482. I have also envisaged the spread of Sanskritic ideas through the use of regional language in
my references to Lingayatism and harikathas (p. 482 and p. 486). There is also a clear recognition in
my essay of the weaving of local elements into Sanskritic Hinduism (p. 494).
54 B. Stein, “Social Mobility and Medieval South Indian Hindu Sects”, in J. Silverberg (ed.), Social

Mobility in Caste in India, special issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History. See supra
note 27.
55 See McKim Marriott, “Changing Channels of Cultural Transmission in Indian Civilization”, in

V.F. Ray (ed.), Intermediate Societies, Seattle, Wash., 1959, p. 71.

56 Shah and Shroff, see supra note 40, p. 57.

57 Ibid., p. 60.
58 Ghurye, op. cit., pp. 70–71. Ghurye has also made the point that the movements started by

Kshatriyas also made an appeal to Vaishyas. A.L. Basham, however, thinks that it was Vaishyas
rather than Kshatriyas who chiefly favoured the unorthodox religions of Buddhism and Jainism. See
The Wonder That Was India, New York,1959, p. 143.
59 Basham, op. cit., p. 142.

60 Ibid., pp. 142–143.

61 Ibid., p. 142.

62 Stein, see supra note 54.

63 B.S. Cohn, “Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India: The Banaras Region”, Journal of the

American Oriental Society, vol. 82, no. 3, July–September, 1962, p. 313.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., pp. 313–314.

66 B.S. Cohn, “From Indian Status to British Contract”, Journal of Economic History, December,

1961, p. 616.
67 Ibid., p. 619.

68 Cohn, see supra note 63, p. 314.

69 B.S. Cohn, “The Initial British Impact on India: A Case Study of the Benares Region”, Journal of

Asian Studies, vol. XIX, no. 4, August, 1960, p. 422.

70 Cohn, see supra note 66, p. 619.

71 For a description of the conflict between the lineages, chiefs and jāgīrdārs on the one hand and

the Raja of Banaras on the other, see Cohn, supra note 63, pp. 313–318.
72 A. M. Shah, “Political System in Eighteenth Century Gujarat”, in Enquiry, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring

1964, pp. 83–95.

73 Ibid., p. 87.

74 Ibid., p. 88.

75 Ibid., p. 94.
76 K. Gough, “Nayar: Central Kerala”, in D.M. Schneider and K. Gough (eds.), Matrilineal Kinship,

Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961, pp. 317–318.

77 K. Gough, “Nayar: North Kerala”, in supra note 76, 386–387.

78 E. Miller, American Anthropologist, vol. 56, no. 3, June 1954, pp. 410–420.

79 Ibid., pp. 414–415.

80 Gough in supra note 76, pp. 306–307.

81 Ibid., p. 307.

82 Hutton, Caste in India, p. 94.

83 H. J. Maynard, “Influence of the Indian King upon the Growth of Caste”, journal of the Punjab

Historical Society, vol. 6, p. 93.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid., pp. 98–99.

86 K. Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan, Princeton, 1951, pp. 23–26.

87 See in this connection my Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India, pp. 20–23.

88 See my “The Social System of a Mysore Village”, in M. Marriott (ed.), Village India, Chicago,

1955, pp. 1–36; and A. Baines, op. cit., pp. 72–73.

89 Mrs. D. Kumar, “Caste and Landlessness in South India”, in Comparative Studies in Society and

History, vol. IV, no. 3, April 1962, p. 337. Mrs Kumar says, “Differences in definition may
exaggerate the growth of landless labour, but the fact of this growth is undeniable” (p. 337, n. 2).
90 Stein, see supra note 54.

91 Ibid.
 2

WESTERNIZATION

BRITISH rule produced radical and lasting changes in Indian society and
culture. It was unlike any previous period in Indian history as the British
brought with them new technology, institutions, knowledge, beliefs and
values. The new technology, and the revolution in communications which
this brought about, enabled the British to integrate the country as never
before in its history. I have pointed out how the establishment of Pax
Britannica put an end once and for all to local wars which were endemic in
pre-British India and which were a most important source of social mobility
for individuals as well as groups.
During the ninèteenth century the British slowly laid the foundations of a
modern state by surveying land, settling the revenue, creating a modern
bureaucracy, army and police, instituting law courts, codifying the law,
developing communications—railways, post and telegraph, roads and
canals—establishing schools and colleges, and so on. The British also
brought with them the printing press, and the profound and many-sided
changes this brought about in Indian life and thought deserve a volume in
itself. One obvious result was that books and journals, along with schools,
made possible the transmission of modern as well as traditional knowledge
to large numbers of Indians—knowledge which could no longer be the
privilege of a few, hereditary groups—while the newspapers made people in
different parts of the far-flung country realize they had common bonds, and
that events happening in the world outside influenced their lives for good or
ill.
 Christian missionaries from Europe knew India long before the British
arrived there. However, during the early days of the East India Company
the entry of European missionaries into India was banned; this ban was
lifted in 1813 when the British Parliament permitted them to enter the
country under a new system of licensing. This eventually threw the entire
subcontinent open to missionary activity.
In the first half of the nineteenth century the British, often with the
support of enlightened Indian opinion, abolished such institutions as suttee
(1829), female infanticide, human sacrifice and slavery (1833). It is not my
aim, however, to list all the changes introduced by the British; in a word,
the Indo-British impact was profound, many-sided and fruitful. I have used
elsewhere the term “Westernization” to characterize the changes brought
about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British
rule, and the term subsumes changes occurring at different levels—
technology, institutions, ideology, values.1 I shall discuss later the
appropriateness of the term, but meanwhile I would like to state that I am
using it deliberately in spite of its vagueness and omnibus character. There
is need for such a term when analyzing changes that a non-Western country
undergoes as a result of prolonged contact with a Western one. When the
entities involved, as well as the emergent processes, are extremely complex,
it is hardly realistic to expect that a simple, unidimensional and crystal-clear
concept will explain them fully.
It is necessary to distinguish conceptually between Westernization and
two other processes usually concomitant with it—industrialization and
urbanization. On the one hand, there were cities in the preindustrial world,
though they differed significantly from the cities of the Industrial
Revolution in the West. For one thing, they needed large rural populations
for their support, so that ancient and medieval countries remained
dominantly agricultural in spite of a few great cities. Again, while the
Industrial Revolution resulted in an increase in the rate of urbanization and
“highly urbanized areas are generally highly industrialized areas,
urbanization is not a simple function of industrialization.”2 Finally, while
the most Westernized groups are generally found in the big cities, a caution
must be uttered against equating Westernization with urbanization. Even in
a country such as India, it is possible to come across groups inhabiting rural
areas which are more Westernized in their style of life than many urban
groups. The former are to be found in areas where plantation or commercial
crops are grown, or which have a tradition of supplying recruits to the
Indian army.
 Westernization results not only in the introduction of new institutions (for
example, newspapers, elections, Christian missions) but also in fundamental
changes in the old institutions. Thus while India had schools long before the
arrival of the British, they were different from British-introduced schools in
that they had been restricted to upper-caste children, and transmitted mostly
traditional knowledge—to mention only two of the most important
differences.3 Other institutions such as the army, civil service and law
courts were also similarly affected.
Implicit in Westernization are certain value preferences. A most important
value, which in turn subsumes several other values, is what may be broadly
characterized as humanitarianism, by which is meant an active concern for
the welfare of all human beings irrespective of caste, economic position,
religion, age and sex. Equalitarianism and secularization are both included
in humanitarianism. (I am aware that expression of concern for the welfare
not only of all mankind but also of all sentient creatures occurs, and occurs
frequently, in Sanskritic ritual and thought, but I am now thinking only of
the embodiment of such concern in legal, political, educational and other
social institutions.)
Humanitarianism underlay many of the reforms introduced by the British
in the first half of the nineteenth century. The introduction of British civil,
penal and procedural law put an end to certain inequalities that were part of
Hindu and Islamic jurisprudence. In pre-British Hindu law, for instance,
punishment varied according to the caste of the person committing the
offense as well as to that of the victim. In Islamic law the evidence of non-
Muslims was inadmissible; and both Hindus and Muslims regarded their
codes as divine, though early Hindu jurists gave considerable importance to
customary law.4
According to O’Malley, two revolutionary results of introducing the
British judicial system were the establishment of the principle of equality
and the creation of a consciousness of positive rights: “The last was a plant
of slow growth owing to the object submissiveness of the lower classes
which prevented them from taking advantage of the system of equal laws
and vindicating their rights by legal action.”5 However, not only their
“abject submissiveness”, but also their illiteracy, extreme poverty and the
intricacies of a highly complex, expensive, cumbersome and slow system of
law made it very difficult for most villagers to resort to the courts to have
their rights enforced and grievances redressed. Spear has aptly said, “the
courts were to the public a great penny in the slot machine whose working
passed man’s understanding and from which anything might come except
justice.”6
The principle of equality found expression in the abolition of slavery, in
the opening of the new schools and colleges—in theory at least—to all
irrespective of religion, race and caste. The new economic opportunities
were also; in theory, open to all, though castes and other groups who
traditionally lived in the big towns and coastal areas enjoyed a considerable
advantage over the others.
The introduction of reforms and the British legal system involved the
changing or abolition of customs claiming to be a part of religion. This
meant that religious customs had to satisfy the test of reason and humanity
if they were to be allowed to survive. As British rule progressed, rationality
and humanitarianism became broader, deeper and more powerful, and the
years since the achievement of Independence have seen a remarkable
increase—a genuine leap forward—in the extension of both. The attack on
untouchability which Independent India has launched provides a striking
example of such extension. No alien government would have dared to
declare the practice of Untouchability in any form an offense, or to enforce
the right of Harijans to enter Hindu temples and draw water from upper
caste wells in villages.
Humanitarianism resulted in many administrative measures to fight
famine,7 control epidemics, and found schools, hospitals and orphanages.
Christian missionaries played a notable part in humanitarian activity,
especially in providing education and medical aid to sections of Indian
society most in need of them—Harijans, women, orphans, lepers and tribal
folk. Equally important were their criticisms of such Hindu institutions as
caste, untouchability, the low position of women, child marriage and
polygamy. The British-Western attack resulted in a reinterpretation of
Hinduism at both the ideological and institutional levels, and the conversion
of the lower castes (especially Harijans) to Islam and Christianity was an
important factor in producing a changed attitude among the Hindu elite
toward caste and Untouchability.
 2

A popular term for the changes brought about in a non-Westem country by

contact, direct or indirect, with a Western country is “modernization”.
Daniel Lerner, for instance, after considering the suitability of
“westernization” as well as “modernization”, has opted for the latter.8
According to him, “modernization” includes a “disquieting positivist spirit”
touching “public institutions as well as private aspirations”. But the
positivist spirit is not enough a revolution in communications is essential.9
Modernization is also marked by increasing urbanization which has, in turn,
resulted in the spread of literacy. The latter again has tended to enhance
“media exposure”, and finally, enhanced media exposure is associated with
wider economic participation (per capita income) and political participation
(voting). Modernization also implies social mobility: “A mobile society has
to encourage rationality for the calculus of choice shapes individual
behaviour and conditions its rewards. People come to see the social future
as manipulable rather than ordained and their personal prospects in terms of
achievement rather than heritage.”10
“Westernization” is unsuitable for several reasons: It is too local a label,
and the model which is imitated may not be a Western country but Russia,
Turkey, Japan or India. An important reason for Lerner’s preferring
modernization to Westernization is that educated people in the Middle East,
which is Lerner’s area of interest, while wanting “the modern package”
“reject the label ‘made in U.S.A.’ (or, for that matter, ‘made in
U.S.S.R.’).”11 The allergy to “Westernization” is the result of Middle
Eastern “ethnocentrism, expressed politically in extreme nationalism,
psychologically in passionate xenophobia. The hatred sown by anti-
colonialism is harvested in the rejection of every appearance of foreign
tutelage. Wanted are modern institutions but not modern ideologies, modern
power but not modern purposes, modern wealth but not modern wisdom,
modern commodities but not modern cant.”12 The passionate urge to
repudiate the West prompts some Middle Eastern leaders to ignore “certain
behavioural and institutional compulsions common to all [Europe, America
and Russia]” countries which have achieved modernization, and to try
“instead new routes and risky bypasses.”13
One of the results, then, of prolonged contact with the West is the rise of
an elite class whose attitude to the West is ambivalent. The hostility aspect
of the ambivalence may express itself in a variety of forms, and in several
areas of culture and social life. It is indeed a potential source of anti-
rational, and even self-destructive, action. One reason for the enormous
appeal of Communism to non-Western countries is its hostility to the West,
expressed in Communistic anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.
Communism is seen as a humanitarian creed in its espousal of the cause of
the underdogs, the workers and the subject nations; and its forecast that
capitalism and imperialism are doomed to disappear and give way to a
classless society wears the mask of science. It also enables the non-Western
intellectual to reject, in the name of science and humanity, not only the
aggressive West but also his own society and its traditions. It enables him to
identify himself with the future, with progress, science and
humanitarianism.
How can the sociologist be certain that a particular change is part of the
process of modernization? Such a difficulty is not merely logico-
philosophical, but is inescapable in the actual analysis of empirical
processes of change. Robert Bellah rightly observes, “Where modernization
means only an increased effectiveness in goal attainment with no increase
in the rationalization of the goal-setting process very serious pathologies
can result. Empirically such pathologies of modernization have occurred,
but they are the product of partial or disturbed modernization, not the
inevitable result of modernization itself.”14 Modernization thus involves the
“rationalization of ends”, according to Bellah, which means that the goals
chosen by a society should be “rational” and the subject of discussion.15 It
needs to be pointed out, however, that social goals are in the final analysis
the expression of value preferences, and therefore, non-rational. The public
discussion of goals can in no way guarantee their rationality. Rationality
can only be predicated of the means but not of the ends of social action.
 The term “Westernization”, unlike “modernization”, is ethically neutral.
Its use does not carry the implication that it is good or bad, whereas
modernization is normally used in the sense that it is good. But there are
other difficulties in Westernization; as we have seen, it often involves, on
the part of Westernized individuals, political or cultural hostility to the
West. Moreover, not all the elements of Western culture in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries originated in Western Europe. Some important
components of Western technological superiority in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries were derived from the ancient Far East, and from
medieval India. Gunpowder, printing types and paper were all invented in
China. Lynn White, Jr. has stated that “the symptom of a conscious and
generalized lust for natural energy and its application to human purposes is
the enthusiastic adoption by thirteenth-century Europe of an idea which had
originated in twelfth-century India—perpetual motion.”16 The Arabs
transmitted the idea of perpetual motion from the Indians to the Europeans
just as they passed on Hindu numerals and positional reckoning. What
distinguished medieval Europeans from Indians and Arabs was their intense
interest in the idea of perpetual motion, “the attempt to diversify its motors,
and the effort to make it do something useful.”17
Again, evangelical Christianity is regarded as characteristically Western,
and it is indisputable that Christian missionaries played a crucial role in
India’s “modernization”. But Christianity, like all other world religions, had
its origin in Asia.
While there are certain common elements in Westernization, each
European country, along with the United States, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, represents a particular variant of a common culture, and
significant differences exist between one country and another. In the
analysis of social and cultural change in India the British model of
Westernization is obviously the most important one, though since 1947 the
American and Russian models have become increasingly relevant. I have
treated the British model as a static one, as complete, ready and gift-packed
for delivery to India by the middle of the nineteenth century. I am aware
that such an assumption is historically untenable, but it is heuristically
unavoidable.
 Westernization is an inclusive, complex and many-layered concept. It
covers a wide range from Western technology at one end to the
experimental method of modern science and modern historiography at the
other. Its incredible complexity is seen in the fact that different aspects of
Westernization sometimes combine to strengthen a particular process,
sometimes work at cross-purposes, and are occasionally mutually discrete. I
shall try to make clear what I mean by reference to a few examples.
Traditionally Indians ate their meals sitting on the floor. The food was
served either on leaves or on metal (brass, bronze or silver) plates. Among
the upper castes, and especially among Brahmins, eating was a religious
act. The food had to be cooked while the women were in a ritually pure
state, since it was offered first to the domestic deities before being served to
the members of the family. The men and children ate first, adult men being
in a ritually pure state while eating. This meant removing their shirts and
changing into a silk dhoti (silk is ritually superior to cotton) and upper
cloth, or a freshly washed cotton dhoti and upper cloth. At the end of the
meal the dining leaves became impure and were thrown out. The places
where the leaves had rested were purified with a solution of cow-dung.
Now, in the larger towns and cities, the educated and Westernized groups
increasingly prefer to eat at tables.18 The most obvious feature of the
change is the new technology—chairs and table, stainless steel utensils,
spoons—but it also has other implications. It means a degree of
secularization, and the deliberate adoption of a style of life different from
the traditional, because it is prestigious or convenient or both. The point I
wish to stress is that the new mode of eating contributes to an increase in
secularization, as the table is not likely to be purified with cow-dung
solution after meals, and the ritual acts traditionally performed before and
after meals tend to be dropped.
In urban areas school and office schedules determine the times of eating,
and all members of the family, except the senior woman of the house who
serves or supervises the serving, sit together for dinner. The weakening of
customary dietary restrictions leads to the consumption of hitherto
forbidden vegetables such as tomatoes, beetroot, carrots, onion and radish.
Eggs are slowly becoming a part of the diet of urbanized, middle class,
vegetarian castes.
 In short, education, high income and urbanization result in a secularization
of the style of life, which includes a radical change in the technology of
eating as well as in the timing of meals and the dietary. Eating at a table, a
product of secularization, also furthers secularization; in other words, there
is a feedback from the new technology to secularization. A new attitude
toward food begins to emerge; it is looked at more from the point of view of
whether it promotes health and efficiency and less from whether it is
traditionally permitted or prohibited.
In other instances, unlike the one above, Westernization in one area or
level of behaviour does not result in Westernization in another related area
or level. The two remain “discrete”. In the summer of 1952, in my field
village of Rāmpura in Mysore, I came across the driver of a government
bulldozer who was levelling a few acres of land in one of the fields of the
headman. The driver was a Tamil-speaker from Bangalore, the biggest city
in the state, and his recreation in the village was giving demonstrations of
traditional black magic. He saw no inconsistency between driving a
bulldozer for his livelihood and indulging in displays of black magic for his
pleasure. It is only fair to remark that the foregoing instance, egregious as it
is, is not unique or even unusual. Indian workers in factories, generally men
with low education, carry over religio-magical attitudes to the technology
they work with. Thus, a printer may decorate the machinery in his shop
with vermilion before beginning the day’s work. All over India, during the
annual festival of Dasara (September-October), it is customary for the tools
of one’s trade to be cleaned, and venerated with vermilion, incense and
flowers. This holds not only for the village carpenter, goldsmith and potter,
but also for urban workers in mills and factories. Motor cars are washed,
marked with vermilion, and festooned with flower garlands. Sewing
machines, typewriters, and books receive similar attention. (Books
traditionally represent Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning.)
Thus the manipulation of Western technology does not mean that the
manipulators have accepted a rationalistic and scientific world view. Far
from it. The bulldozer driver in Rāmpura had mastered the mechanical
motions necessary to drive it, and could even do minor repairs; but he was
not only traditional in his religious beliefs, he had even picked up some
black magic, a knowledge usually confined to small groups. He did not
perceive any incompatibility between driving a bulldozer and practising
black magic. The two sectors were kept completely “discrete”. The
veneration of tools and machines at the Dasara festival, however, is more
than “discreteness”; it represents a carry-over of traditional magico-
religious beliefs into the new world of modern technology.
There are instances, moreover, where Westernization has given birth to
forces which are mutually at cross-purposes. This is perhaps more evident
in its earlier than in later stages, though there is no guarantee that all short-
term discordances will disappear in the long run. The introduction of
printing, for instance, made possible the transmission of not only modern
knowledge but also knowledge of the traditional epics, mythology, the lives
of saints and other religious literature. Shanti Tangri records that:
 By 1877 there were 3064 titles published in the vernaculars, another 729
in classical languages, and 544 in English; 2451 of these were original,
2003 republications and 436 translations. Alternately 1138 of these were
educational and 3752 general. And though a great deal of this general
literature was poor in quality and dealt with mythology or religion from
a traditional-conservative viewpoint, the revolution of communication
was on.19 (Italics mine)

In the political and cultural field, Westernization has given birth not only
to nationalism but also to revivalism, communalism, “casteism”, heightened
linguistic consciousness and regionalism. To make matters even more
bewildering, revivalist movements have used Western-type schools and
colleges, and books, pamphlets and journals to propagate their ideas.
When the links between the Western stimulus and the Indian response are
few, there is no doubt as to the identification of the process. But doubts may
arise when the links are numerous or not visible on the surface. Thus it is
easy to perceive increased literacy as the result of printing and the
development of towns, but it is difficult to perceive the connection between
Westernization and the Backward Classes Movement, or the Ārya Samāj or
linguistic consciousness in the twentieth century. I think it will be
increasingly necessary to qualify “Westernization” by the prefix "primary”,
“secondary” or “tertiary”; in primary Westernization, unlike secondary and
tertiary, the linkage is simple and direct.

The foregoing may convey some ideas of the complexity as well as the
diversity of the process involved in Westernization. I have also made the
point that each Western country represents only a particular model of
Westernization, and that significant differences exist between the different
models. Moreover, within each country various sections of its population
carry or embody particular aspects of its culture in addition to sharing
certain others which are common to all. A knowledge of the social
background of the different sections of the population—both of the “model”
country and the “borrowing” country—will greatly further understanding of
the different facets of Westernization, the way particular elements have
been transmitted, and the changes they may have undergone during
transmission. While I shall refer only briefly to the different sections of the
British population, I will have more to say on the Indian sections. It is
patently absurd to assign a purely “blotting-paper role” to the Indians; they
did not merely absorb everything they came into contact with—though this
has no doubt happened in the case of a few individuals—and transmit to
others what they had absorbed. Some elements were borrowed from the
West while others were rejected, and the borrowed elements in turn
underwent a transformation in India. While some elements of British
culture and style of life appealed to all Indians, different aspects of British
culture were especially attractive to different sections of the Indian
population. Thus the Coorgs, with their catholic dietary which included
practically all meat except beef, and their love of liquor, dancing, sports and
hunting, found it easy to emulate the style of life of the European planter in
Coorg, whereas the South Indian Brahmin or Lingāyat would have found it
very difficult. As it happened, South Indian Brahmins took to English
education in considerable numbers and entered professions and government
service at all levels. In the first phase of their Westernization, their
professional life was lived in the Western world while their domestic and
social life continued to be largely traditional. (The term “cultural
schizophrenia” naturally comes to one’s mind, but a caution must be uttered
against viewing it as pathological.) Only South Indian Brahmins who had
prolonged exposure to Western life outside India, either as students or as
members of the defense services, found it possible to switch over to British
diet, drink and dance.
While selection, elaboration and transformation of the elements of British
culture do occur, it is essential to add that it is not a deliberate process, with
rational choice operating at every stage. There is a seeming spontaneity in
borrowing, and elaboration has the appearance of organic growth. But at
this juncture it is well to remind ourselves of the historical background of
Indo-British contact. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the British
were masters of a great part of India, and they had at their disposal
overwhelming and organized force with which to impose their will on the
Indian population. This gave them a sense of superiority to Indians. As
rulers they had their goals and policies which at every stage they attempted
to implement through their British representatives in India. The
personalities of the local implementers of policy, the men on the spot, were
of critical importance in this connection as great distance and poor
communications gave them considerable latitude, especially before steam-
powered ships became popular, and prior to the cutting of the Suez Canal.
The British in India fell into several distinct occupational and social
categories. Bernard Cohn has observed:

Even in an outstation like Banaras, there was not one British society but
several British societies. The basic cleavage was official versus non-
official. In terms of its impact on India and England and in terms of
power and status, the official community far outweighed the unofficial
community in the first half of the nineteenth century. The official
civilian had a generally higher status and pay than did the military
official. The head of the Government was usually a civilian. And the
owners of the East India Company were civilian.20

After the civilians came the merchants and traders who, except for some
wealthy and powerful ones in the Presidency Towns, tended to be socially
separate from the officials. The planters were somewhat distinct from other
commercial groups, and lived near their plantations or in towns where their
crops (indigo, jute, tea) were processed. Finally, in the port cities there were
the European artisans, servants and floaters, often recruited from the
enlisted ranks of the military and from the sailors of East Indiamen. This
group shaded into the Eurasians, who were at the bottom of the White
hierarchy.
The occupational categories overlapped to some extent with the social
divisions in British society. The military and civilian officers were drawn
from more or less the same strata of English life: landed gentry, substantial
merchants of London, and the professions.21 The military outnumbered the
civilians, and usually lived separately from the latter. Though fewer in
number, the civilians were “the dominant class in the British colonial
society”.22 They were connected by kinship and affinity, by a common
social background, and by the old school tie to Haileybury.23
The merchants, traders and planters, on the other hand, hailed from lower
social orders; they were the sons of merchants and officials. The planters
considered themselves a cut above the traders and merchants, and their
greatest ambition was to gain entry into the society of civilian officials.24
The missionaries as a group were small and insignificant in the beginning
of the nineteenth century and, as mentioned earlier, they were only
permitted to work in British Indian territory from 1813 onward, and that,
under a system of licensing. Their importance, however, increased steadily
during the subsequent years of the century.25 Of the several class affiliations
of British missionaries in India, we can only speak with certainty regarding
the Baptists and Methodists, many of whom were lower class, being the
children of artisans and traders.26
Students of Indian society may be forgiven if they see the British in India
in a varna idiom. At the top of the social pyramid were the officers of the
civil service, the higher ranks of the military, and the biggest and wealthiest
among the merchants and bankers. They corresponded to Brahmin,
Kshatriya and Vaishya categories respectively. Below them were the
European artisans, servants and “floaters” corresponding to the Shūdras. To
the bulk of Indians, however, the Europeans were an undifferentiated mass
of people standing above Indians as far as purely secular criteria of rank
were considered, but occupying an extremely low ritual rank.27
Frykenberg notes that the English in India underwent a process of
Indianization, and lived like one of the many Indian castes. “Guntur
[headquarters of a district in Andhra Pradesh in South India], like the
country in general, possessed anything but a homogeneous society. Its
population was communally dissected and stratified. The British in Guntur
were one among many self-contained and semi-isolated communities.”28
However, the British civilians in the course of their official work came into
close contact with the Deshasthas, Marāthi-speaking Brahmins, who had for
nearly three centuries administered Guntur district, and who supplied the
British with a number of lower officials. The British rulers also had close
contact with the previous Muslim rulers of the area, and with several other
castes and communities.29
The close official contact between British civilians and Deshasthas led in
many cases to the establishment of intimate friendships between them.
“British businessmen contacted local business communities (Komatis,
Chettis, Armenians and Muslims); and missionaries, by their very work,
found themselves often among the poorest and lowliest of communities
(e.g., Mālas and Mādigas).”30
There was also contact between Indians and the British across the lines of
occupation, income, and class; for example, the British civilian and judge
came into contact with a variety of Indians in the course of their official
work. In fact, Cohn argues conclusively that the Briton’s view of India and
Indians varied according to his occupation and the particular period of Indo-
British history during which he worked in India. Thus after 1840, as a result
of the British officials’ experience with settlement work, there began to
develop an admiration for the peasant and contempt for the educated, urban,
middle class Indian, and this continued until Independence.31

I shall now turn to the Indian side in order to identify the sections of the
traditional society which led the others in Westernization, and shall also
describe some of their aims, ideas and conflicts. I shall call them the "New
Elite"' as there is no doubt that they were an elite group, and their role was
seminal in the ushering in of new India. I shall not call them the “middle
class” inasmuch as the term is used in different senses by different scholars,
and I am not certain that the new elite—for example, Rām Mohan Roy, the
Tagores and Swāmi Vivekānanda—always hailed from, or formed the
“middle class”.
Only a tiny fraction of the Indian population came into direct, face-to-face
contact with the British or other Europeans, and those who came into such
contact did not always become a force for change. Indian servants of the
British, for instance, probably wielded some influence among their kin
groups and local caste groups but not among others. They generally came
from the low castes, their Westernization was of a superficial kind, and the
upper castes made fun of their pidgin English, their absurd admiration for
their employers, and the airs they gave themselves. Similarly, converts to
Christianity from Hinduism did not exercise much influence in Indian
society as a whole because, first, these also generally came from the low
castes, and second, the act of conversion alienated them from the majority
community of Hindus. Finally, conversion to Christianity often only
changed the faith but not the customs, the general culture or the standing of
the converts in society.
 As far as the bulk of the people were concerned, Westernization began to
occur indirectly and gradually; the process has become greatly intensified,
in many ways, since 1947 when India became independent. The first and
most critical step in Westernization was the establishment of Pax
Britannica, and the revolution in communications that followed. The
extension of the administration and trading frontiers broke the centuries-old
isolation of groups inhabiting the forested mountains, and provided them
with new contacts and opportunities. The development of communications,
and the removal of internal customs barriers, integrated the economy of the
various regions in the country into a single one. The introduction of steam-
powered ships and the building of the Suez Canal (1869) enabled Britain
not only to increase her control of India and other parts of her Eastern
empire but also to link up the Indian economy with the economy of the
world outside. Indigo, jute, cotton, tobacco, tea and coffee began to be
grown in India by European planters for consumption abroad. World prices
for these products assumed significance for the living standards of
thousands of people in different parts of the country. The advent of
plantations marked the beginning of migration of labourers to the two
plantation areas—one formed by the mountain regions of Assam and
Bengal, the other in the southern parts of the Western Ghats. The Assam
area was by far the more important, in terms of the number of workers
employed and the value of the crops. Assam attracted labourers not only
from neighbouring states but also from modern Madhya Pradesh,
Maharāshtra and Madras, whereas the Western Ghats attracted labourers
only from the surrounding densely populated areas. Tea plantations were
started in 1840, and importation of labourers for work on them began
thirteen years later. The movement of labour was greatly facilitated by the
abolition of slavery in 1843, which cut the legal knot binding the serfs and
slaves, generally from very low or Harijan castes, to the landowners from
the higher castes. It is interesting to note in this connection that the
labourers on the South Indian plantations came mostly from the Harijan
castes, whereas those on the Assam plantations came from “clean” castes,
Harijans and tribes such as Mundas and Santals.32
The increasingly close integration of India with the world outside is seen,
from 1850 on, in the migration of Indian labourers, under the “indenture
system”, to other British overseas dependencies such as Ceylon, Malaysia,
Fiji, South Africa, Mauritius, the Caribbean and British Guiana. During the
period 1834 to 1908, when there were no restrictions on the emigration
overseas of Indian labourers, some fourteen million left India; ten million
returned subsequently because of the harshness of the indenture system, of
working conditions and the racial discrimination.33
In a word, the political and administrative inteģration of India—a process
continuing well into the sixties of the twentieth century—involving as it did
the development of communications, the beginnings of industrialization and
agricultural development, increased spatial and social mobility not only for
the elite but also for the rural poor, and laid the foundation for subsequent
nationwide Westernization.
My main concern here, however, is with those who participated in
Westernization processes in a more immediate sense, who attended the new
educational institutions, entered the professions, took up jobs in the
bureaucracy, and engaged themselves in trade, commerce and industry in
the big and developing towns. A much larger number underwent
Westernization in a secondary sense—for example, patients in the hospitals,
litigants in law courts,34 and readers of newspapers and books in the Indian
languages.
From a geographical point of view the inhabitants of coastal areas,
especially those close to the fast-growing port towns, were favourably
situated to undergo primary Westernization. The areas immediately around
Calcutta, Bombay and Madras experienced Westernization for a hundred or
more years before interior areas such as the Punjab Again, people in
princely states were generally more sheltered from the new winds of change
than people in British India; in a few exceptional states such as Mysore,
Travancore and Baroda, however, the Westernization process or some
aspects of it, made greater headway mainly owing to the power, prestige
and initiative of enlightened though autocratic rulers.
The three presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras attracted
elements of the Indian population who quite early showed a sensitivity to
the new commercial, educational and other opportunities. Merchants and
bankers found in the British-administered areas not only security of life and
property but also freedom from the arbitrary exercise of political power.
According to Tangri, "The growing middle class in port towns was thus
primarily non-Muslim. Western education gave to them opportunities for
associating with the ruling elites, prospects for jobs in government and
business, enhanced social status and better commercial contacts with the
growing foreign firms.”35
It is necessary, however, to caution against a purely geographical approach
to the location of elites. For instance, though the Punjab came under the
impact of Westernization much later than the littoral areas, some caste
groups there such as the Khatri, Arora and Agarwāl have traditionally
engaged in trade and commerce and shown a high sensitivity to the profit
incentive. The arid, inland region of Rājasthan is famous for its trading
caste of Mārwāris who are to be found in trade, banking or industry in every
big city in India. During British rule, these various groups took advantage
of trading and commercial opportunities not only in their home regions but
also outside. Some even went abroad to other British colonies and
established themselves in trade and commerce there.

5
Generally speaking, people living in towns are more exposed to Western
influences than are rural folk. The bigger the town the greater is the chance
of such exposure, while in the smaller villages such chances are, even
today, minimal, though greater than before Independence. But urbanism
does not always result in Westernization. Tangri points out that in 1842
schools had to be closed for lack of students in the two North Indian towns
of Chaprah and Arrah, with populations of 50,000 each. According to him it
was not urbanism as such, but the greater contact with foreign influences in
the coastal areas, that was crucial. He also notes that in 1931 Hindus with
10.5 per cent of their population in urban areas had 8.4 per cent literates,
whereas Muslims with 13.5 per cent in urban areas had only 6.4 per cent
literates.36
Members of the minority religions are more urbanized than Hindus or
Muslims. If we consider figures for 1931, we see that 89 per cent of Pārsis,
69.2 per cent of Jews, 34.6 per cent of Jains, and 20.2 per cent of Christians
are urban. (The Sikhs, however, provide an exception to the general rule
with only 7.8 per cent of their population living in urban areas.) But the
overall strength of the Hindu and Muslim population is so great that, in
1931, Hindus formed 66.46 per cent and Muslims 27.68 per cent of the total
urban population, with Christians (3.22 per cent), Jains (1.16), Sikhs (0.91),
Jews (0.04) and Pārsis (0.03) trailing well behind them.37
As far as the Hindus are concerned, there was—and to a very limited
extent still is—a very broad and general correlation between traditional
caste hierarchy and the new Western-occupational hierarchy. Thus the
members of the higher castes dominated the professions, the higher level
posts in the government—in fact, all white-collar jobs—while the lower
castes provided certain essential services and goods. A traditional-modern
continuum did exist; Brahmins, Baidyas, Kāyasthas and Banias sought
Western education and reaped its rewards, whereas members of the low
artisan, servicing and landless labour castes became launderers, barbers,
domestic servants, peons, basket makers, oilmen, potters and sellers of
vegetables, milk and fruits. I would like to caution, however, that it is only
too easy to exaggerate the scope of this continuum. There were breaches in
it from the beginning, and as the years passed the breaches became wider
and more significant.
It is doubtful whether such a continuum exists in industry, although earlier
generalizations, which were not based on carefully conducted empirical
studies, helped to spread the idea that at the lowest levels of the industrial
workforce Harijans and other low castes preponderated.38 As a careful
student of Indian labour problems, Morris D. Morris has remarked,
“Despite the ubiquity of caste and the intense interest the phenomenon has
generated among scholars, virtually no attention has been paid to the
relationship of caste to the process of industrialization in India. Certain
generalizations have been made about the caste groups that flow into
industry, about the impact of industrial employment on caste coherence and
about the caste composition of industrial entrepreneurship. Although some
widely-held notions exist, it is rather startling to discover that these
conclusions have no detailed empirical support whatever.”39 After a critical
examination of current generalizations he concludes, “Very generally
speaking, however, the available evidence suggests that Hindus of all castes
will seek and accept all jobs in the industrial sector and that this has been
true historically.”40 History apart, a recent survey by Richard Lambert of
five factories in Poona city confirms Morris’s conclusion. Lambert found
that 15 per cent of the workforce was Brahmin, 35.2 per cent Marātha, 8.5
per cent “Intermediate Castes”, 6.8 per cent village servants, 16.8 per cent
“Backward Castes”. The fact that some members who should have gone
into the last category returned themselves as Buddhists is responsible for
the low percentage of Backward Castes. (“Other religions” accounted for
9.3 per cent.) Lambert concludes, “Another presumption—that Brahmins
are reluctant to enter so physical an enterprise as factory work—finds no
support here. Nor do the Backward Castes seem to be either excluded from
or disproportionately attracted to the factories.”41 The factories attracted
workers from all levels of traditional society as they offered comparatively
high wages.42
Of the nature of the relation obtaining between caste hierarchy and factory
hierarchy in the Poona factories, Lambert has written that

Brahmins are disproportionately represented in the clerical and

supervisory classes and hold the highest ranking positions within those
classes. Their relative position among the P & M [non-clerical workers
below the supervisor level] workers depends upon the factory, and in
most factories it is not substantially higher. The Backward Classes are
hardly represented at all among the supervisors and clerks and are either
absent or lower in mean wages in all factories. Aside from Brahmins
and Backward Classes, the general ranking of castes does not seem to be
reflected in significant differences in hierarchical positions within the
factories.43

It is not unlikely that this pattern is common to the whole of peninsular

India except probably in factories run by the state governments, where
appointments at all levels, especially the higher levels, until very recently
gave preference to the nonBrahmin castes.
Looking at the urbanization process from the rural end, Harold Gould has
argued that in Uttar Pradesh it is only high castes such as Brahmins and
Rājpūts who are undergoing Westernization, including urbanization, and
that the lower castes lack the means as well as the motivation to move into
the modern world. They are poor, uneducated and lack kin connections in
towns, and all these hamper their mobility.44 And when a low-caste family
became rich, as it very rarely did, it invested much of its money in building
up its “traditional status”, whereas the Brahmins and Rājpūts had a positive
urge to invest in Westernization in their effort to seek new means of
distinguishing themselves from the swiftly Sanskritizing low castes. Gould
has cited evidence from two other villages in Uttar Pradesh besides his own
in support of his view that it is the high castes such as Brahmins, Rājpūts
(Thākurs) and Jāts who are undergoing Westernization and urbanization,
and not the lowest and poorest: “reality appears to be at wide variance with
classical expectations concerning mobility in modernizing societies, where
it is held that the landless and the impoverished are compelled to move
towards the city in search of cash employment while the landed and the
well-off are content to remain proportionately longer in their rural
habitat.”45
Gould includes Brahmins, Rājpūts and Jāts (landowning peasant caste)
among the high castes, and the Ahīr, Murau, Kūrmi, Kori and Chamār
among the low. But one of his “low” castes, the Ahīrs, have shown since at
least the beginning of this century considerable dynamism and are present
in some strength in the Indian army.46 And they are now demanding the
formation of an Ahīr regiment. Another “low” caste of Uttar Pradesh, the
Noniyas, have become wealthy by taking advantage of new economic
opportunities since the latter part of the nineteenth century, and they now
call themselves Chauhans, in an effort to claim Kshatriya status47 The well-
known Harijan caste of North India, the Chamārs, are to be found in some
strength in cities such as Agra, Aligarh, Lucknow, Kānpur and Delhi, and
they too have shown a desire to move ùp not only along the traditional
Sanskritic axis but also along the modem, Western axis. Bernard Cohn, who
made an intensive field study of the Chamārs of Senāpur in Eastern Uttar
Pradesh, a particularly depressed area of Uttar Pradesh if not of India as a
whole, has written that in 1952, 36 Chāmars out of a total of 636 were
employed out of the village. Extra-village employment was not, however,
new to them, but familiar since the middle of the nineteenth century.

The figure of thirty-six Camārs working out of the village does not give
an adequate picture of their experiences out of the village. The majority
 of adult male Camārs have at one time or another worked away from the
village in a city. Urban employment is not, however, a way of life for
these people.... A few younger men work in the cities through choice,
some even say they like it, but the older men, i.e., those over thirty,
seem to prefer the village.48

In 1952,72 Chamārs (71 men and one woman) were literate out of a
population of 583 who were above five years of age.49
 Taking an all-India view, it is impossible to maintain that Harijan castes,
let alone the “low” castes, have failed to be drawn into the urbanization
process. I agree with Morris when he says:
While there have been village studies that give us evidence that caste
status and income are somewhat correlated, there is no evidence to my
knowledge that will show us that the migration out of rural areas is
disproportionately high for special castes. While it is certainly true that
the low castes together with Untouchables constitute an overwhelmingly
large proportion of migrants to urban areas, on the face of it this is
merely the result of the fact that God[!] has put so many Indians into
these categories in the rural sector.50
Translated into lay language this means that since the low castes so greatly
outnumber the high castes, there are more of them everywhere, including
the cities.

6
It is generally assumed by writers on India that the modern Indian elite
draws disproportionately on certain sections of the population. Edward
Shils, for instance, comments on the predominance of Brahmins among the
new elites:
Just as the pandits acclaimed the British, even though they no longer
occupied the highest positions which had been theirs when they were in
power under the pre-British rulers, Brahmins with modern education
served the British in the Civil Service. For a long time the Madrasi and
Bengali Brahmins led the way in the service of the British and they were
predominant among the Indians in the Indian Civil Service. Likewise,
when the current began to turn toward independence and toward
modernizing social reforms, the Brahmins took the lead there too.51
Others such as B.B. Misra52 and Selig Harrison53 have written in similar
terms on the dominance of Brahmins in the administration, professions and
the political movement. The Brahmins referred to by these writers are an
all-India category and not a localized, endogamous jāti. Brahmin, as an all-
India varna, refers to a congeries of jātis which differ from each other in
language, diet, dress, occupation and style of life. Thus in some places
Brahmins are not only not priests or scholars, but are poorer and socially
more backward than castes which are ritually below them. In parts of Uttar
Pradesh and Rājasthan, they are occasionally found working as tenants of
Rājpūt or Jāt landowners. The low position and lack of learning of
Brahmins in the Punjab has been commented upon by Prakash Tandon.54
Even the Brahmins in a single linguistic region, let alone Brahmins all
over India, are split up into several endogamous jātis, and inter-jāti
differences cannot be ignored. Thus in Gujarat, until recently, Nāgar and
Anāvil Brahmins were prominent in secular-Westem contexts while the
others such as the Audich Sahasra were not. And, as we have seen earlier,
even within a local section of a single jāti there may be much cultural and
economic diversity, and this sometimes provides a basis for the fissioning-
off of the “superior” section from the rest.
The point I wish to make is that an entire varna category is rarely found
occupying only a particular stratum or a few strata in the new hierarchy.
What happens is that in certain strata and occupations, members from
certain local jātis are found much more frequently than are other similar
jātis. Sometimes a cluster of roughly equal and allied jātis may
preponderate in certain occupations. Translating jāti into varna terms has its
hazards, though it is unavoidable when discussing India as a whole. Listing
all the jātis involved in a given process would not only detract from
readability but would also assume that we have the necessary information.
Vague terms have their uses.
The composition of the new elite varies not only regionally but also over a
period of time. Thus the Indian elite in 1964 contained elements that would
have been regarded as “backward” in 1904, and even in 1934. Over the
years, sections of the population labelled “backward” have undergone
Westernization in increasing measure; this is more true of some parts of the
country, such as South India, than of the others. In my discussion of the
elite I shall, however, keep in view the period just before World War I when
the character of the new elite began to alter radically. I shall refer to some of
these changes later.
I have already noted that there is a certain amount of continuity between
the traditional elite and the new or Westernized elite. Such continuity exists
in a double sense: first, some members or sections of the traditional elite
transformed themselves into the new elite, and second, there is a continuity
between the old and new occupations.55 A simple instance of continuity is
provided when the sons of a Brahmin pundit enter the professions, or when
a chieftain’s son achieves a high position in the Indian army, or a Bania’s
son becomes a leading exporter and importer of goods. It is only natural
that during the first phase of Westernization each section of the Indian elite
should choose a model of Westernization traditionally closest to it. This is
only true, however, in very broad terms, and there were exceptions. The
Pārsis of Bombay,56 for instance, were one of the first groups to take
advantage of the new opportunities; they entered the professions,
government service, industry, commerce and trade, especially trade in
liquor, and finally, were also prominent in civic and national life. But a
section of rural Pārsis living near Surat remained—and continue to remain
—backward, economically, educationally and socially. Again, Marāthi
Brahmins not only entered the professions and government service, but also
the army.
I shall now take note of some of the castes that took the lead in
undergoing Westernization—though when a caste is mentioned this does
not mean that all its members became Westernized to the same degree, or
that other groups not mentioned have not undergone any Westernization.
Brahmin groups in most parts of India, Kāyasthas (writers and government
officials) in North India,57 Baidyas in Bengal,58 Pārsis and Banias in
Western India, some Muslim groups in Uttar Pradesh and Western India,
and Nāyars and Syrian Christians in Kerala, took to Western education and
the new careers which it led to. Various Brahmin jātis in different parts of
the country—South Indian Brahmins excepting Nambūdris, Nāgar and
Anāvil Brahmins in Gujarat, and Kashmīri, Bengali and Marāthi Brahmins
—were prominent in the professions and government service. The new
opportunities for trade and commerce which British rule opened up were
taken advantage of by trading castes such as Khatris and Aroras from the
Punjab; the trading castes of Rājasthan, and Hindu and Jain Banias, and
Muslim Bohras, Khojas, and Memons, all from Gujarat; Komatis from
Andhra Pradesh, Chettiars and Muslim Labbais from Madras; and finally by
Syrian Christians and Muslim Māpillas from Kerala. However, it was not
always caste groups having trade as a hereditary occupation that took
advantage of the new opportunities. The Pātidār of Gujarat are a peasant
caste who took to trade and commerce only during the closing decades of
the nineteenth century.59 The Boad Distillers of Orissa provide another
instance of similar change. In the Kondmals area of Orissa, until about
1870, the Konds and everyone else were able to make their own liquor:

In 1870 the drink shops in the region to the south of the Kondmals were
closed and the sellers of drink migrated in large numbers across the
border from Ganjam into the Kondmals. Shortly after this the
Government made it illegal for the Konds to distill their own liquor.
Home-stills were closed and the Konds were compelled to patronize
out-stills, which were run by men of Distiller castes, both those who had
recently come in from Ganjam, and those from Boad, who had long
been resident in the village.60

In their thirst for liquor, many Konds lost their land and became labourers
in the service of the new landowners. The prosperity of the Boad Distillers
continued till 1910 when the Government of Bengal, of which Orissa was
then a part, decided to close down all drink shops in the Kondmals.
Before the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Rājpūts and Brahmins of Oudh
dominated the Bengal army. But because of the role of these two groups in
the Mutiny, the new Indian army excluded them and “brought in men from
the Punjab, both Hindu and Muslim, the now reconciled Sikhs from the
same quarter, Pathans from the frontier, and Gurkhas from Nepal.”61
However, Rājpūts from outside Oudh, and Marāthi Brahmins continued to
be recruited. Jāts, Ahīrs, Dogras and Cooigs were some of the other groups
showing a preference for careers in the army. The two World Wars,
especially World War II, saw the entry into military service of sections of
the population traditionally averse to it. The spread of education, increased
spatial mobility, and unemployment were some of the factors responsible
for this radical departure from traditional occupations. The Second World
War witnessed the expansion of the Indian armed forces from 175,000 men
in 1939 to about two million men in the course of a few years. According to
Spear, “Though only a small proportion of the total went abroad, all were
uprooted from their village homes, subjected to discipline and strange
habits, and in many cases were taught trades and modern techniques. This
in itself was a major jolt to a tradition-bound society. There were large
openings for the middle classes in the officer cadres and in the enlarged
bureaucracy which increased their sense of responsibility and self-
respect.”62
The fact that the traditional elites were able to extend their dominance to
new, Western situations gave rise in some parts of the country to what has
been called the “Backward Classes Movement”. The lower castes wanted a
share in the new opportunities, and they were also stirred by the new
equalitarian winds blowing across India. The movement assumed a
particularly vigorous form in peninsular India where the non-Brahmin
castes succeeded in obtaining for themselves concessions and privileges,
while at the same time they were able to have imposed on the Brahmins
restrictions with regard to access to education and employment in the
administration. The movement also occurred elsewhere in India, including
Bengal, though there it did not assume the form that it did in the South. In
Madras,63 Bombay,64 and Bengal65 the leaders of the Backward Classes
Movement stayed clear of the nationalist movement, and were avid in their
support of the British rulers. The Backward Classes Movement everywhere
went with a certain amount of anti-Brahminism; this found political and
even cultural expression throughout South India, in Madras in particular.
The Scheduled Castes (Harijan) Movement originated as a part of the
Backward Classes Movement, though as the years went by it acquired
distinctive overtones of its own.
Although the fact of overlap between traditional and new elites increased
the cultural if not the structural distance between the higher and lower
castes, it did indirectly give rise to the Backward Classes Movement which
has as its aim the abolition of all distance between castes. It is
understandable that the Movement has been strongest where the overlap
was greatest; and it is arguable that the existence of a wide economic,
cultural, and structural gulf between the higher and lower castes is a factor
making for the speedier mobilization of the latter, once the door is opened
to the new Western forces. It is also likely that the Bhakti movement’s
attack on the idea of inequality, which left a deep impression on the non-
Brahmin castes of South India, was a factor in rousing them so quickly. A
comparative study of the Backward Classes Movement, and of the social
composition of the new elites in different parts of the country, would be
necessary for a proper understanding of current regional variations in
patterns of stratification.
I have earlier cited a few instances of discontinuity between traditional
and modern elites. In all such cases there was a discrepancy between their
traditional rank in the local caste hierarchy and their newly acquired secular
position. This was usually resolved by the nouveaux riches Sanskritizing
their way of life and claiming to be high castes. Bailey has shown how the
Boad Distillers of Phulbani in Orissa rose up from their previous position as
one of the “Low Hindu” castes, below the Barber, to the “High Hindu”
category, disputing with Warriors for second place.66 Sanskritization, then,
restored the equilibrium, and traditionally it has been able to do this in the
case of all castes except the Harijan. In the first place, there were very few
opportunities for Harijans to acquire wealth or political power, and in those
rare cases where they did acquire it, their being on the wrong side of the
pollution line proved an almost insuperable obstacle to mobility. The
position changed to some extent during the British period; the British law
courts refused to give legal recognition to the disabilities traditionally
imposed on Harijans, and this, when combined with new opportunities for
education, trade and commerce, and spatial movement, laid the groundwork
for social mobility. Given these preconditions, Sanskritization provided an
established avenue to “passing”. Thus Āgra Chamārs call themselves Jātab
(corruption of Yādav), and it is not unknown for a Jātab to claim to be a
Brahmin. In 1962 a Jātab claimed to be a Brahmin and married a Brahmin
girl from Mount Abu in Rājasthan.67 Similarly, André Beteille found a
Pallan (Tamil Harijan) from another village passing for a Padaiyāchi in
Srīpuram, a village near Tiruvaiyār in Tanjore district. He was, however,
discovered and beaten, after which he fled the village, leaving all his
belongings behind him.68
In the case of Indian Muslims, however, a small body of politically
powerful Muslims constituted a most important part of the pre-British
aristocracy of India, while the bulk of them, converts from the low castes/
remained poor and at the bottom of the hierarchy of Muslim castes. The
aristocracy was resentful of the fact that they had been displaced by the
British as rulers of India, and until the last quarter of the nineteenth century
exhibited a strong resistance to Westernization. When the Muslims broke
out of their self-imposed isolation and decided to swim with the new
current, they found that the Hindus had drifted a long way down the stream.
Of the founder of the movement toward Westernization among Muslims,
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), the British historian Percival Spear
has this to say:

Thus the Sayyid sought to bring Islam in India into line with modern
thought and progress. But there was no thought of union with the
Hindus. They were still a heathen body tainted with idolatry and
superstition. Toleration was matched with aloofness in his thought, co-
existence with separateness. He preached cooperation with the British to
avoid eclipse and absorption by the Hindus. When the Congress was
founded in 1885, he advised Muslims to hold back on the ground that in
an independent India the majority would rule, and the Hindus
outnumbered the muslims by three to one.69

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was the first Westernized Muslim to give
expression to a separatist ideology, and this was further developed by the
poet-philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal. In the hands of the astute M. A.
Jinnah, it was translated into the political reality of Pakistan.
The Indian National Congress also included Muslims, some of whom
were highly Westernized. But by and large it was the traditionalist Muslims
such as the leaders of the Deoband School who supported the Indian
nationalist movement.70

I have considered briefly the social background of the new elite groups, and
shall now describe a few ideas and beliefs which formed part of their
traditions. It is important to remember that the elite played a creative role in
reinterpreting Indian thought, traditions, culture and history in response to
European criticisms. Their role was far from restricted to borrowing things,
ideas and institutions from the British; the borrowing was selective and the
borrowed item subjected to elaboration and reinterpretation. A knowledge
of the background and traditions of the elite groups explains to some extent
this selectivity. Different elite groups looked up to their corresponding
sections in British society in India—or rather, all sections of the population
looked up to the British while some looked up to specific sections of it.
While only a few Indian merchants in the big cities came into actual contact
with their British counterparts, the entire Indian business community had its
own myths and images about the ways, attitudes and ideas of British
merchants.
The richness and heterogeneity of the religious, intellectual, moral, literary
and artistic traditions of India have been widely commented upon by a host
of scholars, and it is not necessary for me to add anything here. In the field
of religion, for instance, every major religion of the world with the
exception of Confucianism is represented in India.
Students of Indian culture and thought have remarked on the tolerance of
Hinduism and its readiness to affirm the truth of all religions.
Radhakrishnan has written, “No country and no religion have adopted this
attitude of understanding and appreciation of other faiths so persistently and
consistently as India and Hinduism and its offshoot of Buddhism.”71 The
dominant trend was tolerance, though occasionally there were outbursts of
bigotry and even persecution of people of other faiths. Thus there was a
certain amount of intolerance between the Shaiva and Vaishnava sects in the
South, and between them and the Jains. But in the main, “Hinduism is
essentially tolerant, and would rather assimilate than rigidly exclude.”72 In
fact, many educated Hindus find it difficult to comprehend how some
people can believe their own religion to be true and all others false. They
see evangelism as the expression of aggressive intolerance.
The caste system provided an institutional basis for tolerance. Living in a
caste society means living in a pluralistic cultural universe: each caste has
its own occupation, customs, ritual, traditions and ideas. Caste councils,
especially the council of the locally dominant caste, are the guardians of
such pluralism. Is cultural pluralism consistent with the fact that the castes
of a region form a hierarchy, and that there is also mobility as well as
argument about mutual rank? In the first place, the idea of hierarchy is
favourable to, if not reinforced by, cultural differences between castes
occupying different levels. Second, it is only the two ends of the hierarchy
which are fixed, and in between there is much argument about mutual rank.
When rank changes, the style of life becomes Sanskritized.
Again, the caste system made heresy-hunting unnecessary. A rebel sect or
group in the course of time became a caste, which ensured its continuous
existence though at the cost of sealing it hermetically from the rest of the
society. To complete the irony, in some cases such a sect reflected in its
microcosm the macrocosm of the caste system of the wider society.
Witness, for instance, the Sikhs, Lingāyats and Jains. Occasionally, tribal
groups such as the Kotas, Todas, Badagas and Kurumbas used the model of
the caste system to regulate their mutual relations.73
The tolerance of Hinduism continued into the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Not only did educated and Westernized Indians such as Rām
Mohan Roy and Gandhi express their profound admiration for the
personality and teachings of Jesus Christ, but the illiterate Brahmin Saint of
Bengal, Rāmakrishna, in a unique effort at empathy tried to experience
from the inside what it was to be a member of different religions.74 The
decision to make India a secular state is in tune with this tradition of
tolerance, but the Indian concept of secularism is different, for instance,
from the American. (For a stimulating discussion of the differences between
the two views of secularism see Marc Galanter’s “East and West—a Review
of Donald Eugene Smith”, India as a Secular State, Princeton, 1963.75)
The intellectual tradition inherited by the elite groups has been
characterized by continuous self-criticism; this goes back to the later Vedic
times. There was thus a strong reaction to the hyperdeveloped sacrificialism
of the Brāhmanas (circa 900 B.C.) in Buddhism and Jainism, and also
among some Brahmins.76 The Indian philosophical tradition was rich in
diversity, and public debates between members of different schools were an
established institution. A teacher’s greatest success was believed to be a
student who defeated him in argument.
The Bhakti movement of medieval India embodied a revolt against the
idea of inequality inherent in caste as well as against the intellectualism of
the traditional paths to salvation (moksha). Thus Ramānanda, one of the
medieval .saints of northern India, attacked the idea of inequality and caste
exclusiveness in food and drink. Of the influence of Vaishnavism on Hindus
and society, Estlin Carpenter has written, “It sought to remove religion
from the carefully guarded ceremonies of Brahminical ritual and throw
open its hopes and privileges to men and women of every rank and caste, of
every race and creed. It needed no priest, for the offering of love required
no sacerdotal sanction, and the grace of god was in no man’s keeping.”77
The traditions of tolerance, syncretism and self-criticism manifested
themselves early in British rule. Rām Mohan Roy, who may be rightly
regarded as the prophet of modern India, was a severe critic of
contemporary Hinduism, and took the lead in urging the British
Government to wipe out suttee as well as to introduce schools for the
imparting of modern knowledge in English. He actually opposed the
establishment, in 1823, of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta; he did not want
any public money to be spent on Sanskrit education, but on English
education instead. He was himself, however, a product of the traditional
educational system, and had studied Arabic and Persian before starting on
Sanskrit, beginning the study of English only at the age of twenty-four. He
was early influenced by Sufism, and later developed an admiration for
Christianity. “He learnt Hebrew and Greek to pursue his researches in
Christianity, and in 1820 wrote a book called The Principles of Jesus: the
Guide to Peace and Happiness. In 1828 he established a theistic society
called the Brahmo Samaj, and made a serious study of the Upanishads and
the Vedanta Sutras which he found comparable to Sufism and
Christianity.”78 Throughout his life Rām Mohan Roy fought the orthodox
elements in Hindu society. He condemned many evil customs of the day as
not sanctioned by the scriptures ( shāstras), and he also appealed to the
criterion of reason for which he found a source in the Upanishads.79
A Westernized intelligentsia had emerged among Indians by the sixties of
the nineteenth century, and leaders of this class became the torchbearers of
a new and modern India. The leaders included such great names as the
Tagores, Vivekānanda, Rānade, Gokhale, Tilak, Patel, Gandhi, Jawaharlal
Nehru and Radhakrishnan. The Westernized intelligentsia increased in
strength and numbers, and the dawn of independence in 1947 invested them
with the power to plan a peaceful revolution of Indian life.

8
I shall now refer to some of the dilemmas and conflicts of the new elite.
The first, and a rather basic, characteristic of theirs was an ambivalence
toward their own society as well as toward the ruling British. Their extreme
self-criticism was expressed in their desire to alter or do away with several
features and institutions of contemporary India. There were the egregious
“evils” such as suttee, thuggee, human sacrifice, female infanticide, slavery,
untouchability and religious prostitution. And then there were others, less
conspicuous: polygyny, “child marriage”, dowry, heavy expenditure at
weddings and funerals, the segregation of women (purdah), and the
traditional ban on divorce, widow marriage and sea voyage. Christian
missionaries were quick to pounce on the evils of Hinduism, to denounce
them and point out how immaculate Christianity was in contrast. According
to O’Malley:
For their part the missionary publications drew attention to the defects
of Hinduism, the evils of the caste system, etc., and pointed out the truth
of the Christian religion and the superiority of Western learning and
science. Active missionary propaganda had now been in northern India
for over a quarter of a century, and Lord Minto had noticed in 1807 that
its effect was not to convert but to alienate the followers of both
Hinduism and Islam owing to the crude methods it followed.... Hindus
were exhorted to abolish “the whole institution of caste, that is to say
their whole system of civil polity, as well as their fondest and most
rooted religious tenets”; and resentment was roused by invective
launched against the revered order of Brahmins.80
This was, however, but one side of the coin. On the other side was the fact
that beginning with the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the scholarly
world witnessed the translation of Sanskrit literary, legal and philosophical
works into English and German, and also the gradual unfolding of Indian
history and prehistory through the work of archaeologists, numismatists and
epigraphists.81 The work of Western and Western-inspired scholars resulted
in providing new and objective perspectives for Indian civilization: it was a
civilization that went back in time to the third millennium B.C., and it was
astonishingly versatile. Thus the new elite were given a sense of pride in
their country, and its rich and ancient culture. This enabled them to stand up
to the Western colossus, and was a continual source of strength in their
longing to become a nation, independent, sovereign and equal to others.
The discovery of the past was not, however, without its pitfalls and dangers.
It produced a certain amount of paleocentrism in all educated Indians and,
as is well-known, a great past can be either an energizer or an opiate. In the
main, however, it acted as an energizer, and has provided modern India with
a mystique for national identity as well as development. Simultaneously
with the stimulation of national consciousness came regionalism,
“communalism” and casteism; this posed—and continues to pose—serious
problems for emergent India.
Related to the ambivalence toward their own society was the other
ambivalence, that toward the British. The British were admired and envied
for a variety of things: they had political and economic power, organization
and discipline. They were the masters of the new knowledge, ideas and
technology. They were, by and large, able and just administrators, honest
merchants, brave warriors and intrepid hunters. (What also astonished all
Hindus was that they ate meat at every meal, and all kinds of meat at that,
including polluting pork and forbidden beef, consumed substantial
quantities of liquor, and continuously smoked pipes or cheroots.) Even
today one occasionally hears from elderly Indians compliments paid to the
discipline, sense of dedication and fair-mindedness of the individual Britons
with whom they had come into contact. While educated Indians dislike
deeply the evangelizing aspect of missionary work, they readily
acknowledge the good work done by the missionaries in providing
education and medical relief to all sections of the population, and especially
to Untouchables and women. Some Indian reform movements such as the
Ārya Samāj, Sanātan Dharma Sabha and Khālsa of the Sikhs of the Punjab,
the Rāmakrishna Mission of Bengal and the Servants of India Society and
the Deccan Education Society of Poona—all emulated the missionaries by
starting schools, colleges and hostels. The appreciation of missionary work
often led Indians to be very critical of their own society. The continuous
perception of the contrast between themselves and their rulers produced a
feeling of inferiority among many educated Indians, a feeling which took a
variety of expressions and postures from open self-debasement to bitter
denunciation of everything Western. Xenophilia, paleocentrism and
communism, and the extreme idealization of Indian life and culture coupled
with crude caricaturing of Western life and culture, were among the varied
reactions of educated Indians to the West, and the same individual often
shifted from one posture to another.
The British, especially the less sensitive among them, were arrogant
toward Indians and practised exclusiveness as rigorously as the highest of
castes. According to Spear:
 A president of the Ethnological Society could argue that Indians were
inferior as a race to Europeans. Lord Northbrook complained in the
seventies of the general official opinion that no one but an Englishman
could do anything.... India was commonly regarded as a conquered
country and its people as a subject race. Here again a common evil
provoked a common resistance; the Brahmin and the Shūdra felt a
common grievance and were drawn together for its redress in a way
which would never have happened otherwise.82
The Christian attacks on Hinduism and India again were deeply resented,
especially as the white missionaries enjoyed the tacit support of the British
rulers. Racial as well as religious and intellectual arrogance and
exclusiveness drove a deep wedge between the British and Indians, and it is
generally recognized that the fears aroused by missionary conversions and
attacks were a factor in the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The British tendency to
treat all castes alike inspired the wrath of the higher Hindu castes and
Muslim upper classes.83
The new elite had to be two-faced, one face turned toward their own
society while the other was turned toward the West. They were spokesmen
for the West as far as their people were concerned, and spokesmen for their
people as far as the rulers were concerned. They became the indispensable
intermediaries between the rulers and the non-Westemized masses, and they
acted as a cushion softening the shocks which went periodically from one to
the other.
The new elite had to face opposition from the leaders of orthodox opinion.
The latter had the power to fine, and to excommunicate (bahishkāra),
temporarily or permanently, the advocates of heterodoxy. Excommunication
was a serious matter, as no member of the caste would have social
intercourse, including marriage, with the excommunicated person and his
family. Until the new elite increased substantially in numbers, they were
subjected to harassment at the hands of the orthodox. D.D. Karve’s The
New Brahmins84 gives some idea of the trials and tribulations undergone by
this pioneer group of dedicated men, whose contributions to the cause of the
modernization of Indian society have not been sufficiently appreciated by
later generations.
In contending with the orthodox, the new elite had to use arguments which
carried weight not only with them, but with the masses as a whole. Thus
with the orthodox, the sacred literature of the Hindus, generally referred to
as shāstras, had great authority, and a custom had to be observed, however
obnoxious, because it had been sanctioned or approved by the “shāstra”.
“Shāstra” is an omnibus term and refers to a number of works, not all of
which are of the same degree of authority or always unanimous.85
Furthermore, in the period before printing became popular, only a handful
of learned pundits had access to the sacred literature, and in some cases the
texts had been altered by later interpolations: “Later Orientalists like Wilson
and Max Mūller were to maintain that the one line in the Rig Veda which
was held to enjoin sati was a deliberate distortion.... But it must be
remembered that in 1808-30 the Pandits held the field and those whose
opinion was sought by the government were little disposed to question the
texts.”86
Both the orthodox and the leaders of reform appealed to the shāstras in
support of their views. Even the rationalist Rām Mohan Roy appealed to the
shāstras in his fight against suttee.87 Vidyāsāgar tried to prove that
widowhood was not enjoined by the shāstras, and in Bombay, Mandlik
sought the permission of pundits for several reforms including voyaging
across the seas.88 Rām Mohan went back to the Vedas in an effort to rid
Hinduism of innumerable and evil accretions over the centuries, and
Dayānand Saraswati was only following him when he denounced all post-
Vedic accretions to Hinduism and founded, in 1875, the Ārya Samāj. It was
only in the closing years of the nineteenth century that the leaders of reform
began appealing to reason instead of shāstras in judging the desirability or
otherwise of customs. And in the twentieth century Narayan Chandavarkar
loved to call himself a “rational reformer unperturbed by the shāstras”.89
Perhaps this was hastened by the realization that caste was the crucial factor
in determining customs, not the shāstras. Reason was henceforth to be the
touchstone, and the new elite were to declare what was reasonable and what
was not.
 The very people who wanted radical changes in their society, and who
were most articulate in denouncing its evils, spoke, when they were
addressing the West, of the past glories of India, of the versatility and
continuance of its civilization, of the many saints and thinkers India had
produced through the ages, and the great and noble ideas they had
expressed. This was not “double think”, but only that different aspects of
the same complex phenomenon were emphasized in different contexts to
achieve certain definite ends. Thus Indian society had to be rid of its evils
and put on a path that would enable it to develop and eventually compete
with Western countries on equal terms. On the other hand, it should be
made known to the West, and in particular, Britain, that India was a great
country that had temporarily fallen on evil days and that wanted to be free
at the earliest possible moment in order to be able to set its house in order. It
is ironic that it was largely the work of British and European scholars that
had brought to light the greatness, versatility and antiquity of Indian
civilization. This discovery contributed to the self-respect of Indians and
gave them confidence to face the West as equals, and to demand freedom
and the right to develop. The greatness of India was also a familiar theme
with Indian politicians addressing Indian crowds, here again it was used to
rouse them to join the ranks of the fighters for Indian freedom. But in some
Indians paleocentrism represented a flight from the harsh realities of the
present.
Prior to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the British rulers carried out some
essential and overdue reforms, laid the foundations of the political,
administrative and legal integration of India, and started schools and
colleges. In 1857 the three universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras
were started, and English was the language of teaching in high schools and
colleges.
The Mutiny shook the rulers and forced them to an “agonizing
reappraisal” of their policy toward India. It resulted in their turning away
from innovation, in abandoning the reform of Indian institutions and
customs however repugnant to them.90 But just as the British hopes of the
early modernization of India began to fade, the new class of the
Westernized elite was beginning to emerge in some strength. The white man
was unaware that his burden had already begun to shift onto brown
shoulders, and that very soon he would start resisting the transfer of his
burden. The new elite gradually grew in numbers, strength and influence,
and its desire to introduce radical changes in its society became a passion, a
passion with more than a touch of the religious in it. In the process of
reforming society, the elite discovered that it needed political power to carry
out quickly and successfully the task of modernizing India.
Following the Mutiny, the British decided to pursue a policy of non-
interference in religious matters, but this was not easy in view of the
pervasive character of Hindu and Islamic religions. They had to continue
the work of administrative and political integration of India they had begun
several decades earlier, even though this occasionally meant encroaching on
religion. The three codes, Civil Procedure Code, Indian Penal Code and the
Criminal Procedure Code, were enacted in 1859, 1860 and 1861
respectively, while the Indian Evidence Act came into force in 1872. The
Indian Divorce Act was enacted in 1869, and the Special Marriage Act,
enabling persons belonging to different castes to marry, in 1872. Several
other acts were passed during this period, but codification may be said to
have been practically completed by 1882. Legislation relating to land
tenures, varying from region to region, was undertaken later. Finally, only
Hindu and Muslim personal and family law were left uncodified, but the
custom of having Brahmin Pandits and Muslim Kazis as advisors to judges
was done away with in 1864.
Sir Charles Wood’s dispatch of 1854 had emphasized the need to “extend
European knowledge throughout all classes of the people,” and this object
was to be achieved “by means of the English language in the higher
branches of instruction and by that of the vernacular languages to the great
mass of the people.”91 In stressing the need to extend primary education
through the medium of Indian languages, the government was showing a
welcome appreciation of the need to spread education among the masses.
Private enterprise in education, including foreign missionary enterprise, was
encouraged through a system of grants-in-aid. An education department,
headed by a British official, was instituted in each province in 1855.

9
Even to a superficial student of the nineteenth century it is clear that the
urge to reform traditional Indian society preceded the urge for freedom. The
first response on the part of the new elite was to agitate for the removal of
the glaring social evils of contemporary India. The nationalist urge gained
gradually in strength in the latter half of the nineteenth century, so much so
that in the nineties the question was sharply posed as to whether reform
should have priority over freedom or vice versa.
The new spirit of self-criticism and the desire to introduce radical changes
in Indian society were visible quite early in the nineteenth century in
Bengal, and Rām Mohan Roy’s activities contributed much to this ferment.
The missionary attacks on Hinduism roused both the orthodox and the
reformers to close ranks and declaim against Christianity.
Dr. Duff who arrived in India in that year [1830], noticed that the
vernacular press began for the first time to make a vigorous assault on
Christianity and bitter hostility towards it was the common characteristic
of all the newspapers. A mushroom growth of ephemeral publications
sprang up which relied largely on extracts from Paine’s Age of Reason
translated verbatim—an interesting indication of the extent to which
contemporary English literature was studied and used for political
purposes.92 (Italics mine)
It may be recalled here that the first printing press for the Bengal region
was set up in 1801 in Serampore near Calcutta by the Baptist missionaries
Carey, Marshman and Ward, and that the first Indian language (Bengāli)
journal was published by them in 1818.93 Calcutta had, by 1830, and
influential group of rationalists who were notorious for their total rejection
of the indigenous society and who accepted in its place everything Western,
including Christianity. It is only apt that they symbolized their acceptance
of the West with a meal which included beef 94 Raja Rām Mohan Roy was
too deeply committed to his religion, culture and country to have any
sympathy with the Occidentalists, and he founded in 1828 the Brahmo
Samāj, a society for the reformation of Hinduism, which was to play an
important role in the intellectual and social history of nineteenth century
Bengal. The movement toward reform of Indian society continued to gain
strength till the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when it found that
suddenly a rival interest had begun to grip the minds of the new elite—
nationalism. Indian nationalism was fed by the study of European history
and English literature, and by the liberal strand—visible from very early in
British rule—in British policy toward India. (Familiarity with English
literature is visible as early as the 1830s. As far back as 1838, Trevelyan
wrote, “Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian
youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners. They speak of our great men
with the same enthusiasm as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in
the same subjects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they
become more English than Hindu... .”)95
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the building of railways, the
growth of the press and the spread of education all contributed to a sharp
rise in nationalism. The failure to admit educated Indians to the higher
ranks of the administration96 and the army, and the practice of racial
discrimination by the British, provided an additional impetus to the
movement. The nationalist Sārvajanik Sabha was founded in Poona in
1870, and the Indian Association was founded by Sir Surendranath
Banerjee in 1876. The latter was an organization of the new elite to create
and rouse public opinion by direct appeals to the people. The Indian
Association was the precursor of the Indian National Congress, founded in
1885: Its immediate goals were to make the legislatures representative and
the civil service more Indian, and its long-term goals were to educate the
people politically and secure a form of responsible government.
I shall not attempt here to trace the development of Indian nationalism
through its various stages, and shall only point out the paradox that the new
elite which started out early in the century with the aim of cleaning the
Augean stables of contemporary India found itself overtaken by growing
nationalism. Naturally enough, there was a debate, if not a struggle,
between those who held that the reform of society should have priority over
the demand for freedom and others who held the opposite view. The former
section of the Congress were called the “moderates”, and the latter,
“extremists”. The moderates were represented by M.G. Rānade and G.K.
Gokhale while the extremists were led by B.G. Tilak. The difference
between the two groups was found to be unbridgeable.
 The split came on the double issue over the attitude toward the British
Government and the attitude toward social reform. Tilak coined the
phrase “swaraj [self-rule] is our birthright”; he would tolerate no
compromise with the foreigners, whom he would harry out of the land.
In his own mind he drew the line at violence, but it is clear that this was
a tactical decision [rather] than a moral conviction. Gokhale believed in
reason, in liberal principles, in cooperation and in gradual reform, and
he used his great powers of persuasion to advocate these views. They
also differed about social reform, a burning question for all nationalists.
Gokhale and the moderates wished to press on with this and welcomed
government cooperation, for they believed that only through social
regeneration could the new Indian nation become strong enough to take
over the reins of power. Tilak, on the other hand, would have no
interference from outside the Hindu body. In his view it should be
independence first and social reform afterward.97

The conflict ended in a victory for the “extremists” when the Indian
National Congress adopted, in 1906, as its goal the “system of self-
government obtaining in the self-governing British colonies”.98 An open
split between the “extremists” and “moderates” occurred during the
following year, at the Surat session of the Congress, ending with the
expulsion of the “extremists”. However, when nearly thirteen years later
Mahatma Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress,
programs of social reform were woven into the freedom struggle. Gandhi
stressed the need for the eradication of Untouchability, the uplift of women,
communal harmony, revival of village industries, and in particular, Khādi,
“basic” and adult education, propagation of Hindi and prohibition.99 Louis
Dumont observes:

Gandhi’s position between Tilak and Gokhale is highly characteristic; it

looks likely that, as the reformists before him, Gandhi was conscious of
the contradiction involved in a caste society demanding anything like
“home rule”, and it may be said that he blended the reformist and the
extremist approach in so far as he insisted that India should show her
capacity to reform herself even while asking to be left alone.... It is
reasonable to suppose that Gandhi’s objective was also double: to attain
 independence and to save Hinduism. In order to attain both ends it was
necessary to show the beginning of reform, but reform was, in fact if not
consciously, subordinated to independence.100

It is doubtful, however, whether anyone, even a Gandhi, could have

persuaded the Indian people, after the end of World War I, that reform of
their society was more important than Independence. That debate had been
settled for good in 1906 at the Calcutta session of the Congress. Besides,
the War had produced a marked rise in nationalism, and had roused the
expectations of large numbers of Indians that its end would be marked by
some form of responsible government for India.
The Westernization of India produced in Indians an urge to change their
traditional society, but in the course of time it came to occupy a secondary
place beside the even more powerful, in fact almost elemental, urge to
freedom. In a country segmented along the lines of religion, caste, language
and region, heightened national self-awareness necessarily implied
heightened self-awareness at every level of the social structure from the
highest to the lowest—the one could not be had without the other. The
existence of a considerable degree of overlap between the old and new
elites and the consequent exclusion of traditionally underprivileged groups
from the new benefits—along with the presence of an alien and powerful
ruler who not unnaturally took advantage of the deep divisions within the
society—resulted in the division of the subcontinent into India and
Pakistan. Independent India is forced, in the interests of her survival, to
commit herself to a policy of quick elimination of traditional and hereditary
inequalities, and in particular, of Untouchability. The impulse toward
equality has resulted in a policy of protective discrimination—or
discrimination in reverse—toward tribes, Harijans and backward castes to
enable them to catch up with the advanced groups. Finally, in the case of
sects and religions, self-awareness has resulted in the reinterpretation of
traditions, “communalism”,101 and even revivalism. Revivalist movements
such as the Ārya Samāj, the Sanātan Dharma Sabha, the Rāmakrishna
Mission, the Sikh Khālsa and the Aligarh Movement, have founded
educational institutions imparting modern knowledge, provided hostels and
so on. This has produced in the course of time a body of men with western
knowledge but who also emphasize the distinctness and superiority of their
particular sect or religion. Between them and the nationalists there was an
irreconcilable conflict, which has resulted not only in the creation of India
and Pakistan, but has provided each country with certain built-in threats to
its own survival and development.

NOTES

1 M.N. Srinivas, “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization”, in Caste in modern India, pp. 42–

62.
2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 22,1962, p. 894A.

3 As a matter of actual fact, however, the British did not always insist on

government schools being open to Harijan children. “Few, if any, of the antyaja [Harijan] are found
in Government schools. This is to be ascribed not only to the Brahmanical fear of contamination and
the general caste prejudices of the people, but to the want of firmness on the part of the Government
educational authorities as has been the case in some instances of the agents of the missionary
bodies.’’ (John Wilson, Indian Caste, vol. II, 1877, p. 45.) Professor Ghurye mentions that even as
late as 1915 a press note of the Government of Bombay referred to the “familiar sight of Mahar and
other depressed class boys in village schools where the boys are often not allowed to enter the
schoolroom but are accommodated outside on the verandah.” (Caste and Class in India, p. 166.)
4 See Benjamin Lindsay, “Law”, in L.S.S. O’Malley (ed.), Modern India and the West, Oxford, 1941,

pp. 107–137.
5 L.S.S. O’Malley, "The Impact of European Civilization”, in L.S.S. O’Malley (ed.), op. cit., p. 59.

6 P. Spear, The Twilight of the Mughals, Cambridge, England, 1951, p. 95.

7 See in this connection P. Spear, India, a modern History, p. 286. Also Kingsley Davis, The

Population of India and Pakistan, Princeton, N.J., 1951, pp. 38–41.

8 See D. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, I1!., 1958, pp. 45–49.

9 Ibid., p. 45.
10 Ibid., p. 48.

11 Ibid., p. 47.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 R. Bellah, Epilogue to Religion and Progress in modern Asia, edited by R.N. Bellah, Glencoe,

I11., 1965, pp. 195–196.

15 Ibid., n. 23, p. 227.

16 Lynn White, Jr.’, Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford, 1962, pp. 129–130.

17 Ibid., p. 131.

18 At festivals, however, dining leaves may be spread on the table, or the table given up for the floor.

19 Shanti Tangri, "Intellectuals and Society in Nineteenth Century India”, Comparative Studies in

Society and History, vol. III, no. 4, July, 1961, p. 376.

20 B.S. Cohn, "The British in Benares: A Nineteenth Century Colonial Society”, in Comparative

Studies in Society and History, vol. IV, no. 2, January, 1962, pp. 172–173. I have relied on Cohn’s
important paper for my view of British society in India at that time. See also R.E. Frykenberg’s
“British Society in Guntur During the Early Nineteenth Century”, in Comparative Studies in Society
and History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1962, pp. 200-208. Russell, writing in 1857, gave the following account of
social distinctions among the British in India: “The social distinctions are by no means lost sight of in
India; on the contrary, they are perhaps more rigidly observed here than at home, and the smaller the
society the broader are the lines of demarcation. Each man depends on his position in the public
service, which is the aristocracy.... The women depend on the rank of their husbands. Mrs. A., the
wife of a barrister, making £4000 or £5000 a year, is nobody compared with the wife of B. who is a
deputy commissioner, or with Mrs. C., who is the better half of the station surgeon. Wealth can do
nothing for a man or woman is securing them honour or precedency in their march to dinner.... A
successful speculator, or a ‘merchant prince’ may force his way into good society in England ... but
in India he must remain forever outside the sacred barrier, which keeps the non-official world from
the high society of the services.” Quoted in Hilton Brown, The Sahibs, London, 1948.
21 “The lower orders of British society are not represented at all in the civilians of the Company, and

I have found no information that would lead me to suspect that the working class, or even small
traders and merchants, provided sons for the service.” Cohn, see supra note 20.
22 Ibid., p. 199.

23 The official class in Madras also had similar ties. Frykenberg, see supra note 20, p. 207.

24 Cohn, op. cit., pp. 173, 198.

25 “By the 1840s, however, the Company’s officials themselves were heavily committed to mission

work.” Cohn, op. cit., p. 196.

26 Cohn, op. cit., p. 173.

27 Olive Douglas has narrated an incident which illustrates what I mean: “Coming home we saw a

native cooking his dinner on a little charcoal fire, and as I passed he threw the contents of the pot
away. Surprised, I asked why. ‘Because,’ I was told, ‘your shadow fell on it and defiled it!’” (Olivia
in India, London, 1913, quoted in Hilton Brown, op. cit., p. 230.)
28 Frykenberg, see supra note 20, p. 205.

29 Ibid., pp. 204–205.

30 Ibid.,p. 208.

31 Cohn, op. cit., p. 190.

32 Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan, pp. 115–117.

33 Tangri, see supra note 19, p. 287.

34 Peasants seem to have imported legal forms and concepts from British or British-inspired law

courts to traditional village panchayats. See my “A Caste Dispute Among the Washermen of
Mysore” Eastern Anthropologist, vol. VII, Nos. 3–4, March-August, 1954 The impact of British law
on traditional panchayats needs to be explored systematically if we wish to further our understanding
of Westernization in an important area.
35 Tangri, op. tit., p. 385.

36 Tangri, op. cit., p. 384. Arrah and Chapra are both located in Bihar. They were formerly known as

Shahabad and Saran respectively. In 1961 Arrah had a population of 76,766 and Chapra, 75,580.
37 The 1941 percentages were 71.09 for Hindus, 22.93 for Muslims, 1.58 for Christians, 0.27 for

Jains and 1.33 for Sikhs. Figures are not available for Pārsis and Jews (Davis, op. cit., p. 142.)
38 See for instance B. Shiva Rao, “Labor in India”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and

Social Science, vol. 233,1944, p. 128. See also Randhakamal Mukherjee, The Indian Working Class
(third edition), Bombay, 1951, p. 6.
39 M.D. Morris, “Caste and the Evolution of the Industrial Workforce in India”, Proceedings of the

American Philosophical Society, vol. 104, no. 2, April, 1960, p. 124.

40 Ibid., p. 130.

41 R.D. Lambert, Workers, Factories and Social Change in India, Princeton, 1963, pp. 34–36.

42 See in this connection C.A. Myers, Industrial Relations in India, Bombay, 1960, p. 92, note 12.

The Department of Sociology in the University of Delhi made a survey of the Okhla Industrial Estate
near Delhi during 1961–1962, and it revealed that, out of a sample of 162 workers, 73 came from the
high Hindu castes and the rest from the artisan castes. Sixteen of the Sikhs were from high castes and
13 from artisan castes, and the remaining 7 workers were Christians.
43 Lambert, op. cit., pp. 161–162. Narayan Sheth who made an intensive study of an engineering

factory in Baroda in 1957–1959 informs me that 26 per cent of the workers in it came from the high
castes of Brahmin, Bania and Pātidār; 25 per cent from castes immediately below them; 14 per cent,
artisan castes; 22 per cent, low castes (Bāria, Kolī, etc.); 7 per cent, Harijans; and 6 per cent,
“others”, including Muslims. Sheth thinks that the high percentage of the high castes among workers
may have been due to the fact that the factory produced equipment like switch gear and electric
motors which demanded skill from the workers. (Personal communication to the author.)
44 H.A. Gould, “Sanskritization and Westernization, a Dynamic View”, Economic Weekly, vol. XIII,

no. 25, June 24,1961, p. 947.

45 Ibid.

46 See Dr. M.S.A. Rao, “Caste and the Indian Army”, Economic Weekly, vol. XVI, no. 35, August

29, 1964, pp. 1439–1443. For the last forty years the Ahīr Kshatriya Mahāsabha of Uttar Pradesh has
been publishing a monthly journal, Yādav.
47 See W. L. Rowe, "The New Chauhans: A Caste Mobility Movement in North India”, in J.

Silverberg (ed.), Social Mobility in Caste in India, special issue of Comparative Studies in Society
and History. See supra chap. 1, note 27.
48 B.S. Cohn, “Changing Traditions of a Low Caste”, in M. Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure

and Change, pp. 209–211

49 Ibid.

50 Morris, see supra note 39, p. 126.

51 E. Shils, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation, The Hague,

1961, p. 20.
52 B.B. Misra, The Indian Middle Classes, Oxford, 1961, p. 54.

53 S. Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades, Princeton, N.J., 1960, p. 55.

54 P. Tandon, Punjabi Century, 1857–1947, London, 1961, pp. 76–77.

55 The study of the elites in three different regions of India by historians confirms such continuity.

The subsequent rise of what are called “counter-elites” in regions such as Madras and Uttar Pradesh
also assumes continuity. See in this connection the following papers read at the meeting of the
Association for Asian Studies in San Francisco, April 2–4, 1965: (1) J.H. Broomfield, “An Elite and
Its Rivals: The Bengal Bhadralok at the Opening of the Twentieth Century”; (2) P.R. Brass,
“Regionalism, Nationalism and Political Conflict in Uttar Pradesh" ; and (3) E. Irschick, “The
Brahmin and Non-Brahmin Struggle for Power in Madras”. (Mimeographed)
56 P. Spear, India, a Modern History, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961, p. 300.

57 Ibid. and Misra, op. cit., pp. 53–54.

58 N.K. Bose, “Some Aspects of Caste in Bengal”, in Milton Singer (ed.), Traditional India:

Structure and Change, pp. 197–198.

59 D.F. Pocock, ‘The Movement of Castes”, Man, vol. LV, May 1955 pp. 71–72.

60 F.G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier, Oxford, 1958, p. 186.

61 Spear, op. cit., p. 278.

62 Ibid., p. 397.

63 M.N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India, Bombay, 1962, p. 24.

64 M. Patterson, “Caste and Political Leadership in Maharashtra”, Economic Weekly, September

25,1954, pp. 1065–1067.

65 N.K. Bose in Singer (ed.) see supra note 58, p. 200.

66 Bailey, op. cit., p. 190.

67 Information given by Owen Lynch, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.

68 A. Beteille, Caste, Class and Power, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966.

69 Spear, op. cit., p. 409.

70 See Mrs. Aparna Basu’s review of Z. H. Faruqi’s The Deoband School and the Demand for

Pakistan (Bombay, 1963), in The Indian Economic

and Social History Review, vol. 1, no. 3, January–March, 1964, pp. 101–103.
71 S. Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought, New York, 1959, p. 313.

72 A.L. Basham, The WonderThat Was India, New York, 1959.

73 See D.G. Mandelbaum, “Culture Change Among the Nilgiri Tribes”, American Anthropologist,

vol. 43, January–March, 1941. The use of the caste model in tribal and other frontier areas needs to
be studied. An understanding of this phenomenon will throw light on the spread of caste across the
subcontinent in historical times.
74 Radhakrishnan, op. cit., p. 312.

75 M. Galanter, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. VII, no. 2,

January 1965, pp. 133–159.

76 Basham, op. cit., pp. 240–241, 246.

77 J.E. Carpenter, Theism in Mediaeval India, London, 1926, p. 448. See also pp. 428 and 452.

78 Misra, see supra note 52, pp. 209–210.

79 Spear, see supra note 56, p. 293.

80 O’Malley, see supra note 5, p. 69.

81 Basham, op. cit., pp. 4–8.

82 Spear, see supra note 56, pp. 306–307.

83 O’Malley, see supra note 5, p 78.

84 D. D. Karve, The New Brahmins, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963. S. Natarajan has remarked that

“It is difficult in the light of existing conditions [todayl to appreciate adequately the single-
mindedness and high purpose which the social reformers brought to their work. That in itself is an
index to the distance that the country has covered in a hundred years.” (A Century of Social Reform
in India, Bombay, 1959, p. 198.)
85“Sruti is the highest authority; next in importance is smriti, or the tradition set up by human

beings; and it is authoritative in so far as it is not repugnant to the Veda from which it derives its
authority. Practices or customs (ācāra) are trustworthy if they are adopted by the cultured. Individual
conscience is also authoritative.” (S. Radhakrishnan, Religion and Society, London, 1947, p.111.)
The term “śruti” is used for Vedic literature which consists of the four Vedas and Brāhmanas,
Āranyakas, Upanishads and Sūtras. Only the Vedas are revealed by God while the others are
commentaries, and the former’s authority is therefore superior to the latter’s. Of the Vedas, the
Atharva, containing as it does magical spells and so on, is inferior in authority to the others—it was
not even recognized as a Veda till about 300 B.C. Yajur and Sāma Vedas are laicr than the first and
highest Veda, Rig. Some of the material in Yaju and Sāma Vedas is a repetition of what is in the Rig
Veda.
86 S. Natarajan, A Century of Social Reform in India, p. 34.

87 Ibid., pp. 33–34.

88 O’Malley, see supra note 5, p. 67.

89 Natarajan, op. cit., p. 117.

90 Spear, see supra note 56, p. 279.

91 J.R. Cunningham, “Education”, in L.S.S. O’Malley (ed.), modern India and the West, p. 153.

92 O’Malley, see supra note 5, p. 70.

93 Tangri, see supra note 19, p. 376.

94 Spear, see supra note 56, p. 292; see also N.K. Bose, “East and West in Bengal”, Man in India,

vol. 38, no. 3, July–September 1958, pp. 162–163.

95 C.E. Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India, p. 190, quoted by O’Malley, see supra

note 5, p. 92.
96 See Majumdar et al., An Advanced History of India, pp. 888–898; and O’Malley, see supra note 5,

pp. 88–92.
97 Spear, see supra note 56, p. 314. See also in this connection L. Dumont, “Nationalism and

Communalism”, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. VII, March, 1964, pp. 62–64.
98 Majumdar et al., op. cit., p. 981.

99 J.V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence, Princeton, 1958, pp. 180–181.

100 L. Dumont, op. cit., p. 63.

101 “Communalism in India is defined as ‘that ideology which emphasizes as the social, political and

economic unit the group of adherents of each religion, and emphasizes the distinction, even the
antagonism, between such groups’ (p. 185).” (L. Dumont, op. cit., p. 39, quoting W.C. Smith, The
Muslim League, Lahore, 1945.)
 3

SOME EXPRESSIONS
OF CASTE MOBILITY

THE FULL IMPLICATIONS of Westernization are indeed revolutionary

for India, if what has already happened is any indication. That
Westernization is indeed a fundamental process, and not something
superficial and external, is made clear by the fact that it is the Indian elite
who have taken upon themselves the great task of modernizing their
society. Indeed, it is my contention that no alien body, however powerful
and competent, could have introduced the changes which the indigenous
elite have, in the brief period since India became independent.
The foundations for these changes were laid by the establishment of
British rule over India, and the consequences, direct and indirect, which
flowed from it. In the first place, the new technology brought by the British
made possible the effective administrative and political integration of the
entire subcontinent. The building of a network of roads, the creation of a
modern country-wide bureaucracy and the steps taken toward establishing a
uniform legal system were all indispensable to administrative and political
integration. These, together with the ending of local wars everywhere, the
stamping out of thuggee, the abolition of slavery, the introduction of
tenurial reforms, the opening up of plantations for such crops as tea, coffee,
cotton, tobacco and indigo, and the development of towns and cities laid the
basis for the eventual economic development of the country. The
establishment of schools and colleges for imparting modern education, and
the institution of law courts, both being in theory open to all irrespective of
caste or religion, were striking departures from similar, pre-British
institutions. The study of Western literature, political thought, history and
law made the Indian elite sensitive to such new values as the equality of all
men (and women) before the law, and civil rights. European missionary
attacks on Hinduism, Untouchability and caste, and missionaiy-run schools,
orphanages and hospitals all played their part in the social reforms which
have been introduced in the last 140 years in India, and in creating an
ideological and moral climate favourable to Westernization.
I am aware that in the above passage I have not only oversimplified facts
but somewhat idealized them; but my aim here is only to provide a
background to the discussion of social mobility in the caste system and not
to attempt a critical evaluation of British rule.
The new opportunities—educational, economic, political—were in theory
caste-free; that is, they were open to all, and no one was banned from
having access to them by reason of birth in a particular caste or sect or
religion. Actually, however, as I pointed out earlier, they were ordinarily
more accessible to the high castes with a tradition of learning, employment
in the government, and urban residence. In addition there were, in each
region, a few castes which, although not regarded as high, became
relatively wealthy by reason of their ability to exploit certain special
opportunities that came their way during British rule. Examples of such
success are provided by the Teli or Oilman castes of Eastern India, the
Distillers in Orissa and elsewhere, the Noniyas (salt-makers) of Uttar
Pradesh, the Koḷīs of coastal Gujarat and the Khārwas of Saurāshtra.
(Bailey mentions how a Ganjam Harijan became wealthy by local standards
by engaging himself in trade in hides and skins, for which modern
communications had provided a much wider market than would have been
available traditionally. The handling of hides and skins is traditionally done
by the Untouchable castes, and here is a good example of caste providing a
monopoly.1)
When a low caste became wealthy, it usually followed this up by
Sanskritizing its style of life and ritual and claiming to be a high caste.
Noniyas, Ahīrs, Distillers and many others took this beaten track to high
status. (As I have said elsewhere, similar mobility was extremely difficult
for Untouchable castes who had become wealthy by local standards.2)
Sanskritization was able to resolve the inconsistency between newly
acquired wealth and low ritual rank. In the Indian context, it made
“passing” possible.
I would like to mention yet another consequence, perhaps much more
important from a long-range point of view, of the occasional upward
mobility of a low caste. It had what economists call a “demonstration
effect” on all low castes in the region, bringing home to them in a poignant
way that they could move out of their own unenviable position. They could,
as it were, get their own back on those who had looked down on them. It
was as though they suddenly woke up to the fact that they were no longer
inhabiting a prison.
What were the effects of the more common phenomenon of the high
castes’ obtaining the new education and, through it, prestigious and well-
paid positions including jobs in the administration? In the first place, it
increased the cultural, social and economic distance between them and the
lower castes. Second, it provided the higher with a new area for
emphasizing their distinction from the lower: the lower castes may
Sanskritize their style of life—this was not too difficult in view of there
being no legal ban on Sanskritization under the British—but Westernization
requires money, time and effort, and contact with influential people.
As far as the lower castes were concerned, Westernization became doubly
desirable—it subsumed not only things valuable in themselves but
something which the high castes had and they did not. To catch up with the
high castes, mere Sanskritization was not enough. Thus they became more
determined to obtain Western education and the fruits that only it could
yield. High-caste dominance in education and in the new occupations thus
provided the raison d’être for the Backward Classes Movement.3 It is no
accident that the Movement was strongest in peninsular India where only
one caste (in the varna sense), the Brahmins, enjoyed a preponderance in
higher education, the professions and government employment. It is also an
area where a wide social and cultural gulf obtained between the Brahmins
and others.
The desire for social mobility was articulated through caste groups. The
increase in horizontal solidarity which occurred with improvement in
communications enabled allied jātis living over a wide region to be drawn
into the mobility process. Caste associations came into existence in
different parts of the country, and each association had as its aim the
improvement of the social and economic standing of its caste. Many
published journals devoted to caste welfare, collected funds for endowing
scholarships and building hostels for students from their respective castes,
and undertook programs of reform of caste customs. These reforms were
generally aimed at Sanskritizing the style of life and ritual, and occasionally
at reducing the expenditure on weddings and funerals.
Mobility aspirations became interwoven with pre-existing rivalries
between local castes; this had the effect of further intensifying the rivalries.
In this context, the urge to be a step ahead of one’s structural neighbours
must be distinguished from a general movement toward equality. While a
caste struggled for a higher position for itself in the local hierarchy it
resented the efforts of others, in particular lower castes, to move up. Its
attitude may be summed up as, “I am equal to those who think of
themselves as my betters, I am better than those who regard themselves as
my equals, and how dare my inferiors claim equality with me?” G.
Berreman’s account of the situation in the Himalayan village of Sirkanda is
probably true of large areas of India: “In Sirkanda those low caste people
who spoke most piously against high-caste abuses were likely to be equally
abusive to their caste inferiors. However, no low caste was encountered
whose members did not seriously question its place in the hierarchy.”4
But implicit in the general struggle of castes for upward movement is the
idea of equality. It is true that the peasant who says he is as good as the
Brahmin resents the Harijan’s claim that he is as good as the peasant and
the Brahmin, but in the long run both the higher castes have to accept it.
Currently, clashes between high castes and assertive Harijans are reported
from different parts of the country, but this is part of the process of
translating rights given in the Constitution to Harijans into reality at the
village level. As more and more Harijans become educated and seek the
enforcement of the constitutional rights, local clashes are likely to increase
rather than decrease.
In the course of taking advantage of the new opportunities and improving
their position, caste groups are undergoing change in their very nature; this
has recently been the subject of some discussion.5 I shall consider this later.
But I would like to refer briefly to the common assumption in all these
writings that the traditional system was a closed one and that in it no
mobility was possible. I cannot subscribe to that view; in chapter 1, I have
tried to show that mobility was possible, though not easy, in the traditional
system, and that it did actually occur occasionally. One of the most potent
sources of mobility lay in the system’s political fluidity. Any caste that
achieved political power at the local level could advance a claim to be
Kshatriyas. Second, the king in traditional India had the power to promote
as well as to demote castes, and he occasionally exercised this power to
bestow a favour on a caste or punish it. It is presumed that the king
consulted Brahmins learned in the law before he promoted or demoted a
caste, but this meant only that the power exercised had to be subject to
some conditions. Third, the availability, in pre-British India, of land which,
with some effort, could be brought under the plough enabled families that
were dissatisfied with local conditions to move out into new areas. Burton
Stein thinks that the fear of such movement on the part of discontented
peasants acted as a check on the arbitrariness of rulers. He contrasts the
mobility characteristic of the medieval, open agrarian system with mobility
in modern times which occurs within a narrow, localized ranking system,
and argues that the divisions characteristic of the great peasant castes of
India have arisen from the former.6
Sanskritization, as mentioned earlier, enabled low castes which had
acquired wealth or political power to shed their low ritual status and be
included among the high castes. We may recall, however, that while the
traditional system allowed individual castes to move up or down, the
system itself remained unaltered. In other words, there was only positional
change, not structural change.
Traditional or pre-British India may be regarded as on the whole a
religious society, whereas modern India has experienced steadily increasing
secularization since her conquest by Britain. Religious values were both
pervasive and dominant, and the king had the final responsibility to enforce
caste distinctions as well as to arbitrate in disputes regarding caste matters.
In traditional India Sanskritization was not only of great importance for the
ambitious caste but was difficult of achievement, as there were both
religious and legal sanctions against taking over the ritual and style of life
of the twice-born castes. The British refusal to enforce the ban on
Sanskritization made it accessible in theory to everyone, though everywhere
the locally dominant castes often used the sanctions at their disposal—
boycott and physical violence—to prevent lower castes from rising. But
with the increase in spatial mobility and urbanization, and with more and
more castes participating in the new educational and employment
opportunities, fear of boycott and physical violence by the dominant caste
diminished if it did not disappear. Sanskritization came to be seen by the
lower castes as an adjunct to other and more important things, such as
education, prestigious employment and political power. They also saw that
by itself it was of extremely limited value in raising the position of a caste.
This is illustrated clearly in the Backward Classes Movement, which I shall
consider presently.

An indication of the widespread desire for mobility among the backward

castes comes from an unusual source, namely, the census operations. The
first time a nation-wide census was undertaken was during the years 1867–
1871, and on this occasion two Tamil peasant castes, Vellālas and
Padaiyāchis, wanted to be recorded as belonging to a higher varna than that
popularly conceded to them; the Vellālas protested against being included
among Shūdras and wanted to be called Vaishyas, while the Padaiyāchis
wanted to be called “Vanniya Kula Kshatriyas”. Twenty years later a book
was written, Vanniyakula Vilakkam, in support of the Padaiyāchi claim.7
This tendency on the part of castes to take advantage of the census
operations for achieving mobility became widespread with the census of
1901, when Sir Herbert Risley, the Census Commissioner, decided to
provide in the census an accurate record of the ranking of jātis in the local
hierarchy as well as the varna affiliation of each. The results could have
been predicted by anyone who had a knowledge of the dynamics of caste
system at the local level. In Ghurye’s words:
 Various ambitious castes quickly perceived the chances of raising their
status. They invited conferences of their members, and formed councils
to take steps to see that their status was recorded in the way they thought
was honourable to them. Others that could not but resent this “stealthy”
procedure to advance, equally eagerly began to controvert their claims.
Thus a campaign of mutual recrimination was set on foot. “The leaders
of all but the highest castes frankly looked upon the Census as an
opportunity for pressing and perhaps obtaining some recognition of
social claims which were denied by persons of castes higher than their
own.”8
It might be said that the historical role which Indian rulers had played as
the final arbiters of the ranking of castes within their jurisdiction, including
the ability to promote as well as demote castes, was now transferred by the
people to the new rulers; and the ranks accorded to castes in census reports
became the equivalent of traditional copper-plate grants declaring the status,
rank and privileges of a particular caste or castes.
The tendency on the part of caster to claim to be recorded in the census as
a high caste increased as the years went by, and more and more people
became aware of the existence of a new and government-sponsored channel
of caste mobility. O’Malley has recorded that at the time of the 1911 census
operations:
There was a general idea in Bengal that the object of the census is not to
show the number of persons belonging to each caste, but to fix the
relative position of different castes and to deal with questions of social
superiority. The feeling on the subject is largely the result of castes
having been classified in the last census report in order of social
precedence. This warrant of precedence gave rise to a considerable
agitation when the census operations were instituted in 1911. Hundreds
of petitions were received from different castes—their weight alone
amounts to one and a half maunds9—requesting that they might be
known by a new name, be placed higher up in the order of precedence,
be recognized as Kshatriya and Vaishya, etc. Many castes were
aggrieved at the position assigned them, and complained that it lowered
them in public estimation.”10 (Italics mine)
Over the years this tendency became so pronounced that at the 1941 census
the British Census Commissioner eliminated the column about caste.11
The method of making a claim was more or less stereotyped. The
occupation, style of life, or name of the caste group would be mentioned in
support of the claim. The similarity of caste name to the historical name of
a respectable caste or tribe would be pointed out, the myth regarding the
origin of the caste would be described, and its linkage with an epic hero, or
divine or semidivine figure, would be stressed. Thus the Hunters (Bedas) of
Mysore would claim kinship with Vālmīki, the putative author of the epic
Rāmayāna about whom there is a legend that he was a hunter; and similarly
the Shepherds (Kurubas) link their caste history with the name of the great
Sanskrit poet and playwright, Kālidāsa, who is believed to have been a
shepherd by caste. Reference would also be made to the sacred literature of
the Hindus and a few Sanskrit quotations thrown in to add strength to the
claim. In Uttar Pradesh the ambitious claimants were able to find obliging
Brahmin pandits who provided vyavasthas or rulings to the effect that the
caste in question was indeed a high one. The ruling was usually followed by
citation of ‘evidence’ of the kind I have already mentioned.
In the beginning the demand for being recorded in the census as a high
caste emanated from leaders of the caste groups concerned. This resulted in
some cases in a certain amount of confusion, since different sections of a
single caste claimed to be different varnas in different places, and the same
caste changed its claim from census to census (see Table 1). The chances of
the occurrence of such discrepancies diminished, though were not entirely
obviated, with the formation of caste sabhas or associations. Such sabhas
were not unknown previously, but the census operations of 1901 made them
more popular. There were numerous caste sabhas in several areas including
Madras Presidency in 1911, and by the time of the next census—which,
incidentally, came after the passing of the Government of India Act of 1919
—they were an all-India phenomenon.12 The caste sabhas articulated as
well as organized the new urge to mobility. They represented to the census
authorities the demand of individual castes to belong to a particular varna
and not to a lower one. The Superintendent of the 1931 United Provinces
Census, for instance, received 175 claims (13 from outside the United
Provinces), of which 34 were made through caste sabhas. (See Table 2 for
an analysis of the claims received at the 1931 census from a few North
Indian areas.) Second, the sabhas altered the style of life of their castes in
the direction of Sanskritization. This often involved the giving up of the
forbidden meat (chicken, pork and carrion beef) and liquor, and the donning
of the sacred thread; and in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the shortening of the
mourning period to correspond with that of the twice-born castes. In the
case of very “low” castes it also involved the nonperformance of a
traditional and degrading duty such as corvée or other free labour, or
carrying palanquins, or beating the tom-tom on ceremonial occasions. The
reactions of the dominant high castes to such efforts at reform on the part of
their traditional inferiors varied from indifference, on the one hand, to the
use of violence in order to enforce performance of duties, and keep the
parvenus in their place. Thus the Rājpūts and Bhumihār Brahmins of North
Bihar used violence against the Ahīrs (Cowherds) who claimed to be
Kshatriyas and donned the sacred thread.13
TABLE 1
Status Claims of Some Castes at Census

TABLE 2
Caste Claims Advanced During the 1931 Census
 1. S (Shūdra), U (Untouchable) and T (Tribal) refer to traditional
positions in the particular province.
2. Wherever a caste claimed more than one status, all the claims were
settled.
3. There were 34 claims to Brahmin status, 80 claims to Kshatriya
status, 15 claims to Vaishya status and 37 claims were new names.
Among Muslims, 9 groups took new names.
4. 148 castes made 175 claims, 23 of them making more than one
claim., a few making three.

Source: 1931 Census Report, Part I:

A.C Turner, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Vol. XVII,
pp. 529–532.
A.E. Porter, Bengal and Sikkim, Vol. V, pp. 427–428.
W.G. Lacy, Bihar and Orissa, Vol. VII, p. 263.
W.H. Shoobert, Central Provinces and Berar, Vol. XII, p. 354.

In Cuttack and Balasore, for example, the Gauras were striving to get
themselves recognized as Yaduvanshi Kshatriya. They not only assumed
the sacred thread but refused to work as palanquin-bearers. Their
attempt to discard their traditional occupation was resisted by other
communities. The Khandaits and Karans who were generally the most
influential and well-to-do among the local inhabitants led the opposition
and the rivalry ripened into actual riots at several places. Similar
situations arose at several other places.14
 Heightened self-awareness among castes and the formation of caste
sabhas resulted in increasing the “horizontal stretch” of castes. A classical
example of horizontal stretch is provided by the Ahīrs, who founded the
Gopi Jatiya Sabha in 1912, and which included, in a few years’ time,
cowherding jātis from all over North India from the Punjab to Bengal. The
Sabha published a monthly journal, Ahīr Samāchār (Ahīr News), from
Mainpuri in the United Provinces. An annual conference attracted several
thousand Ahīrs from different parts of North India. This started interdining
among different cowherding jātis.15
In short, the attempt to use the census to freeze the rank of castes had the
opposite effect of stimulating mobility, and also increased intercaste rivalry.
It is small wonder, then, that nationalist Indians began to regard the
recording of caste at the census as yet another manifestation of a sinister
design on the part of the imperialist British to keep alive if not exacerbate
the numerous divisions already present in Indian society. Their suspicions
were further strengthened by the attempt to distinguish Untouchables from
other Hindus in the 1911 census operations.16 Moreover, while the earlier
census reports recorded caste divisions not only among Hindus but also
among Muslims and Christians, the later reports recorded only the former;
this confirmed the nationalists in their worst suspicions.17
The thirties were marked by a sharp rise in nationalism. Indian nationalists
were opposed not only to the recording of caste in the census but to the fact
that areas inhabited predominantly by the tribes were excluded from
popular control in the Government of India Act of 1935.18

I shall now discuss briefly the Backward Classes Movement. Signs of the
awakening of the backward classes are to be found in every part of the
country, and one of the urgent tasks before sociologists studying India is to
obtain well-documented accounts of this movement, so important a part of
modern India’s social, ideological and political history. While the
movement was—and still is to some extent—very prominent in South India,
and the Tamil country its heart and soul, it showed itself elsewhere too,
sometimes disguised under other movements. For instance, even in Bengal,
where caste consciousness is alleged to be weak, the Yogis and
Nāmashūdras evinced a keen desire to improve their status about the
beginning of this century.19 In its later phase—around 1911—the Arya
Samāj movement of North India seems to have made a strong appeal to
“low” castes in some districts of the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. The Samāj
founded the Shuddhi movement to prevent low castes from being converted
to other religions and to reclaim those who had been already. In the Punjab,
a separate society was formed to raise the status of Untouchables through
the Shuddhi movement.20
Recent village studies confirm that the Arya Samāj did have an appeal to
Harijan castes in Western Uttar Pradesh. In Bihar and Orissa, it had a strong
appeal for low castes such as Kūrmis, Goalas and Musahārs.21 Sikhism also
provided a channel of mobility for several low castes:

The proselytizing activities of the Akāli movement induced a large

number of persons, particularly sweepers, to return as Sikhs instead of
Hindus. The members of the lower castes, artisan and occupational
groups, obviously considered that they gained in status as soon as they
ceased to be Hindus and became Sikhs. … A Māli, for instance, whose
numerical strength showed great variations in 1931, gained in prestige
by becoming a Sikh, Māli being a distinctly inferior caste. Similarly, the
Jāt in Jullunder and Hoshiārpur, if a Hindu, was looked down upon by
his Hindu Rājpūt neighbours, and so became a Sikh. On the other hand,
in the south-east of the Province a Hindu Jāt took pride in his caste and
even looked down upon a Brahmin who in that area was not a priestly
caste but cultivators. Similar influences were operative in castes such as
Tarkhāna, Lohār, Nāi, Sonār, etc.22

The Pātidārs, the great landed caste of Gujarat, have been moving up in
caste and class hierarchy in the last two hundred fifty years or so, and in
particular since the closing years of the nineteenth century. In the years
since 1947, the “low” but populous Koḷī-Bāriā castes have shown much
dynamism, and are seeking mobility through the acquisition of political
power. This is accompanied by much hostility toward their traditional
masters, the Pātidārs.
In India south of the river Godāvari—with the exception of Hyderabad
and parts of Kerala—the term “Backward” included until the 1950s, all
castes except the Brahmin; in fact anti-Brahminism provided a rallying
point for a highly heterogeneous group which included a wide variety of
castes from different linguistic areas, even Muslims, Christians and Pārsis.
The ideological center of this movement was Madras City though there
were other, secondary centers such as Madura, Kalladakurichi,
Chidambaram, Bāngalore, Kolhāpur and Poona. The composite character of
the former Madras Presidency enabled the seeds of the new ideology to
spread to the whole of South India. Old Madras included, besides the Tamil
and Telugu areas, parts of Malayālam- and Kannada-speaking areas. Ideas
could therefore travel quickly from Madras to other parts of South India.
The cultural and intellectual predominance of Madras in the life of South
India in the pre-Independence period had the effect of causing educated
groups everywhere in the South to look to Madras for leadership, just as
Western India looked to Bombay. The non-Brahmin movement of
Maharāshtra was largely, though not entirely, autonomous, the leaders in the
two areas keeping in touch with each other.23
While Brahmin dominance in certain areas is general to peninsular India,
it is particularly striking in Tamilnād. Like other Brahmins in peninsular
India, Tamil Brahmins have a tradition of scholarship, but what
distinguished the latter was the striking lead they had obtained over
everyone else, including non-Tamil Brahmins, in Madras Presidency, with
regard to English education.24 Beteille has stated that in Madras “between
1892 and 1904, out of 16 successful candidates for the I.C.S., 15 were
Brahmins; in 1913, 93 out of 128 permanent district munsifs25 were
Brahmins; and in 1914, 452 out of the 650 registered graduates of the
University were Brahmins.”26 In 1918 the Brahmins in the Presidency
numbered 1.5 million out of a total of 42 millions, but 70 per cent of arts
graduates, 74 per cent of law graduates, 71 per cent of engineering
graduates, and 74 per cent of graduates in teaching were Brahmins. Out of
390 higher appointments in the Education Department 310 were held by
Brahmins, in the Judicial Department, 116 out of 171, and in the Revenue
Department, 394 out of 679.27 It is wrong, however, to conclude from all
this that non-Brahmin castes were all economically or politically weak. Not
only did they greatly outnumber the Brahmins but many were landowning
members of rurally powerful dominant castes. According to Irschick, all
zamindārs in the Presidency were non-Brahmins,28 and Beteille has pointed
out that even in a district such as Tanjore, having the highest concentration
of Brahmin landowners, the three biggest landowners, prior to the
imposition of ceilings, were non-Brahmins.29 The dominant peasant castes
wielded considerable political and economic power at the village and tehsil
levels. In urban areas, non-Brahmins controlled trade in food-grains, cloth,
groceries and precious metals. Irschick has pointed out that in 1911 while
Brahmins owned 35 factories, the non-Brahmin castes, Balija Nāidus,
Kāpus, Komatis, Vellālas and Nātukotti Chettis together owned 91
factories.30 It is only in the context of English education and the fruits that
it yielded that the Brahmins enjoyed an overwhelming advantage over all
the others. Brahmin dominance extended also to the nationalist movement,
though nationalism was a later arrival in Madras than in Bengal or Bombay.
The Non-Brahmin Manifesto (December 1916) pointed out, for instance,
that only one out of fifteen members elected to the All-India Congress
Committee from Madras Presidency was a non-Brahmin.31 However, there
were several non-Brahmin leaders in the Madras Congress, and after the
Justice Party was formed in 1916 they came together to found the Madras
Presidency Association which, while supporting the nationalist demand for
home rule, asked for communal representation to safeguard non-Brahmin
interests.32
The opposition to Brahmin dominance did not come from the low and
oppressed castes but from the leaders of the powerful, rural dominant castes
such as the Kammas and Reddis of the Telugu country, the Vellālas of the
Tamil country and the Nāyars of Kerala. According to Irschick, “It is
important to note that these non-Brahmins, whether from the ‘up-country’
Telugu areas or from the ‘home’ Tamil areas were high caste groups,
immediately below the Brahmin in caste status, with a position of social
prestige among non-Brahmin ranks and with a relatively high English
literacy rate.”33 They could not be said to be the representatives of the
Harijans and other low castes. In fact, at the village level they were, along
with the Brahmin, the exploiters of Harijan labour.
The Backward Classes Movement from its earliest days developed a
mythology of its own. Contemporary speculations identifying the Brahmins
with Aryans, and Tamil with the original Dravidian language, were eagerly
seized on by the leaders of the non-Brahmin castes to manufacture an
elaborate theory of Brahmin Machiavellianism throughout the centuries.
The Brahmin invader had brought the evil institution of caste into India, and
had used his great prestige and power to strengthen his hold on the society
by making laws in his own favour, and worse, by shackling people’s minds
with the ideas of varna, āshrama (stages in an individual’s life), dharma
(moral law) and moksha (salvation). (The sacred writings of the Hindus,
and in particular of the law-giver Manu, are even today quoted by reformist
speakers to point out the injustices of the caste system and the iniquities
perpetrated by Brahmins. It is tacitly assumed that Manu’s writings provide
an accurate description of extant social conditions everywhere in India.)
Pristine Dravidian society, which created the glorious literature of Tamil,
was caste-free till the Brahmin came, established his hegemony over
everybody and suppressed Dravidian culture. According to Irschick:

For the Tamil non-Brahmins the rewards of exploiting their Dravidian

origin were immense. By the second decade of the twentieth century the
cultural hypothesis that Tamil culture predated Aryan Sanskritic culture
was widely known. The cultural content of this hypothesis was also
endowed with a social and political significance for by it the Aryan
Brahmins could be shown as invaders and as usurpers, who had
introduced the caste system into a society that previously had been
classless in order to enslave those whom they had conquered. To
condemn the Brahmins as strangers in the Tamil land was a handy
weapon for the non-Brahmins to beat the Brahmins with, but the
popularizing of the myth of their Dravidian origin also gave to Tamil
non-Brahmin caste Hindus both an identity which was independent of
Aryan Brahminism and a sense of cultural self-confidence which was to
play an important role in the creation of this new elite.34
 For centuries the Brahmins had systematically exploited the others; this
had enabled them to obtain their great lead in education and the new
employment opportunities, and leadership o the nationalist movement. If
the historically suppressed sections of Indian society were to obtain their
share of the new opportunities, they would have to be granted some
concessions and privileges, at least for a period. This would necessitate
discriminating against Brahmins, but it would be infinitesimal compared to
what the non-Brahmins had suffered for centuries. In other words, present-
day Brahmins should pay for their ancestors’ sins. This was roughly the
theory of “social justice”, providing the rationale for a policy of preferential
treatment of non-Brahmins and discrimination against Brahmins. The
policy was put into effect in Madras Presidency in the early nineteen-
twenties and saw its heyday in the thirties and forties.
The other important strand in the ideology of the non-Brahmin movement
is “swayam maryādé” or self-respect. Although explicitly formulated by E.
V. Ramaswamy Naicker in 1925, its seeds go back to the Satya
ShodakSamāj, founded in 1873 by Jyoti Rao Phūle, a leader from the Māli
(gardener) caste of Poona in Maharāshtra in peninsular India. The samāj
aimed at stressing the worth of the human individual irrespective of caste.
Phūle was against the employment of Brahmin priests for conducting
weddings, and to this end he greatly simplified marriage ritual.35
Ramaswamy Naicker, an ex-Congressman, broke with the Congress
“because of what he considered to be a series of attacks on him and on all
non-Brahmins within the Madras Congress Organization and formed his
own group which he called the Self-Respect Movement.”36 The movement
was pronouncedly anti-Brahmin, and encouraged non-Brahmins not to call
upon Brahmin priests to perform weddings and other rituals. Its followers
were required to use the Tamil language for political and other purposes and
to regard themselves as Dravidians and members of a sovereign,
independent state.37 The movement was anti-Brahmin, anti-North, anti-
Hindi, anti-Sanskrit and finally, anti-God. It included an attempt to rid
Tamil of long-established Sanskrit words, and to introduce the singing of
exclusively Tamil songs at public concerts (classical South Indian music
includes songs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Sanskrit). Ramaswamy
Naicker founded the Dravida Kazhagam (Dravidian Federation) in 1945,
and in 1949 a new organization, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(Dravidian Progressive Federation) was born, the immediate reason being a
split between Naicker and his gifted young lieutenant, C. Annadurai, over
the former’s marriage, when in his seventies, to a girl decades younger.
Under Naicker’s leadership the Dravida Kazhagam continued to pursue
anti-Brahminism in the social and cultural fields; this occasionally
expressed itself in assaults on individual Brahmin priests, destroying
images of Hindu deities—in particular, the elephant-headed Ganesha38—
trying to burn copies of the epic Rāmayāna, regarded by the DK and the
DMK as an expression of Aryan racialism, and tarring Hindi writing in
railroad stations and elsewhere. The DMK, like its parent DK, is an
advocate of Tamil separatism, and is also anti-North and anti-Hindi. It is
rationalist in ideology, and has been an advocate of the economic
development of the south, and of social and economic equalitarianism.39 It
is no longer anti-Brahmin; at the 1962 elections the Swatantra Party in
Madras, which has the support of many Brahmin landowners, occasionally
entered into electoral pacts with the DMK to defeat the Congress. The
DMK has penetrated the prosperous Tamil film industry, whose members,
including the founder Annadurai, are authors of film scripts having as their
themes opposition to caste and Brahmins, and regional patriotism. Its recent
advocacy of the continuance of English as the all-India link language has
won for it support not only among all castes in Tamilnād but in all other
southern states.

It is significant that while all the ingredients for a Backward Classes

Movement were present by about the beginning of this century, it was the
prospect of the transfer of political power from British to Indian hands that
enabled it to develop. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 199 had enlarged
somewhat the powers of Provincial councils and, as observed earlier, had
conceded separate electorates to Muslims, Sikhs in the Punjab, Indian
Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans. The first decade of the twentieth
century saw a sharp increase in nationalism40 as well as caste-consciousness
all over India. During the war years there was not only a striking growth of
nationalist sentiment, but also an expectation that at the end of the war there
would be a transfer of more power to Indian hands. The leaders of the non-
Brahmin movement were afraid this might be seized on by the Brahmins,
and that they might be left high and dry. They wanted to make sure they
would also benefit, and to this end they regarded communal representation
as absolutely essential. Otherwise there would be a Brahmin oligarchy
which would use its power to oppress everyone else. Some leaders of the
movement in Madras openly gave expression to such a sentiment.41 The
Maharajah of Kolhāpur, the Marātha leader of the movement in Bombay,
however, took a more nationalist stand, saying that he was for “home rule”,
but that communal (that is, caste-based) representation was necessary for at
least ten years in order to teach the non-Brahmin castes their rights.42 The
Maharajah’s position corresponded to that of the non-Brahmin leaders in
the Madras Presidency Association. But the Justices openly looked to the
British to protect them from the more immediate if not more sinister foe,
the Brahmin.43 It is indeed significant that an identical view was expressed
in distant Bengal in the Patāka, a journal of the Nāmashūdra caste: “The
British government itself has now come to the aid of the uneducated; they
have ever been the help of the poor, and the hope of the downtrodden
castes.”44 N.K. Bose notes that the Nāmashūdras had abstained from the
anti-partition agitation of Bengal in 1905, and that at the height of the
Swadeshi movement in 1907, “a deputation of representative Nāmashūdra
citizens waited upon the Lieutenant Governor and prayed for the
perpetuation of British rule.”45 It needed the inspiring leadership of Gandhi
and the Civil Disobedience Movements of the twenties and thirties to cut
across caste and regional differences and bring the Indian masses into the
nationalist stream.
During the decade 1910–1920 a section of the British in India made the
Brahmin out to be their archenemy. There was, first, the publication in 1910
of Valentine Chirol’s Indian Unrest, the main thesis of which was that
Brahminism and Western education constituted a serious threat to the
continuance of British rule in India. The second was the publication, in
1918, of the Rowlatt Report (Report of the Committee Appointed to
Investigate Revolutionary Conspiracies in India) which “showed
conclusively that revolutionary conspiracy in Bombay was ‘purely Brahmin
and mostly Chitpavan’ and that elsewhere in India the Brahmins had played
a large part in fomenting and carrying out revolutionary crime.”46 Finally,
there was the association of Brahmins, especially Madras Brahmins, with
Mrs. Besant’s Home Rule Movement (1916–1917) and the playing up of
this fact by the Justice Party in Madras to promote their interests.
One of the chief beneficiaries of the identification of the Brahmin with
nationalism was the Justice Party, which was able to obtain communal
representation for non-Brahmins in the face of serious opposition. Thanks
to communal representation and to the Congress boycott of the elections,
the Justice Party captured the polls at the elections, held under the
Government of India Act, 1919, and the leaders of the party became
ministers in charge of transferred subjects. They remained in power until
1926, when the Swaraj Party swept them out of office. But they continued
to be a force in the politics of the Presidency until the Congress won a
resounding victory at the polls in the elections of 1937 held under the
Government of India Act of 1935. The position taken by the Justice Party
revealed such a complete preoccupation with the problem of improving the
social position and increasing the power of the non-Brahmin castes that it
was not only unresponsive to nationalist sentiment but saw in home rule
only the prospect of Brahmin oligarchy. It also had a clear conception that
Western education, government jobs and political power were the crucial
means to mobility. As a Party statement put it:
We claim our social, moral and political rights, and our share of
government appointments, not because we think that government
appointments will transform the non-Brahmin communities into the
most prosperous of mankind, but because they carry with them political
power, of which as lords of the soil and inheritors of noble traditions,
they must have their legitimate share.47
From the point of view of public life, education and administration, the
most far-reaching accomplishment of the Justice Party was the introduction
everywhere in South India of the principle of giving preference to backward
castes in the matter of government jobs, and admission to engineering,
medical and science courses. A system of caste quotas was established; this
often resulted in better qualified Brahmins being rejected in favour of less
qualified non-Brahmins. The principle of “protective discrimination” or
“discrimination in reverse” became so firmly established that since 1920, in
Madras Presidency, out of every twelve posts five had to go to non-Brahmin
Hindus, two to Brahmins, two to Muslims, two to Anglo-Indians or
Christians, and one to the Depressed Classes (Harijans).48 With regard to
admission to medical and other colleges, out of every fourteen seats six
were allotted to non-Brahmin Hindus, two to Backward Hindus, two to
Harijans, two to Brahmins, one to an Anglo-Indian or Indian Christian, and
one to a Muslim. Such a distribution of seats among the communities
according to a fixed ratio continued for three decades and was declared
unconstitutional only in 1951 by the Supreme Court in the case of the State
of Madras v. Sm. Champakam Dorairajan. This decision resulted in a
constitutional amendment [article 15 (4)] which enabled the state to make
any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally
backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. “It is
important to note that the amendment does not validate the distribution of
seats on communal lines (as was done in the Madras G.O.), but only
validates reservation of seats for these weaker sections of the population.”49
In the adjoining and former princely state of Mysore, from 1921 to 1959
Brahmins could compete for only three out of every ten posts, and in 1959
the Government of Mysore passed an order reserving 75 per cent of jobs in
government, and seats in medical and engineering colleges, to the
Backward Classes (57 per cent) and Scheduled Castes and Tribes (18 per
cent). Only 25 per cent was open to general competition. The Mysore High
Court declared, in 1960, that this policy violated article 15(4) of the
Constitution.50
The Mysore Government appointed in January 1960 a committee under
the chairmanship of Dr. R. Nagan Gowda to lay down criteria for the
classification of backward classes. The Committee took “caste” as the unit
for consideration, and the backwardness, or otherwise, of a caste was to be
determined by its representation in government service and the number of
high school students per thousand of its population.51 On the basis of these
criteria, the Lingāyats were classified as a “Forward” caste while their chief
rivals for power at the state level, the Okkaligas, were classified as
“Backward”. This was first mentioned in the Committee’s interim report;
the Lingāyats promptly mounted a strong attack on the decision, but the
Committee remained unimpressed. They reiterated their earlier decision in
the final report.52 Eventually, however, the Mysore Government yielded to
pressure and restored to Lingāyats the coveted “Backward” status.53
The extent to which the two dominant castes of Lingāyats and Okkaligas
had developed a vested interest in backwardness is seen in the persistent
adherence of the Mysore Government to caste quotas in spite of strong
judicial disapproval. Thus, two years after the unfavourable verdict of the
Mysore High Court:

On July 31, 1962, the Mysore Government issued an order providing for
reservation of 68% of seats in medical and engineering colleges for
backward classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The order listed 81
“backward classes” and 135 “more backward classes”. In striking down
the order two months later the Supreme Court declared that it was “a
fraud on the Constitution”. The judgment held that the classification of
backward classes on the sole basis of caste was not permitted by article
15(4). Furthermore, the reservation was clearly excessive, as it reduced
the field of general competition to a mere 32% of the seats. The special
provision, in other words, had so weakened the fundamental rule
(equality of opportunity) as to rob it of most of its significance.54

The principle of caste quotas is also in vogue in Andhra and Kerala. Until
as recently as May 1961, 55 per cent of government jobs in Andhra were
being reserved for the Backward Classes (including Scheduled Classes and
Tribes), and such reservation was also operative in promotions to higher
levels.55 In Kerala, until 1958, 40 per cent of jobs were being reserved for
Backward communities, and 10 per cent for Scheduled Castes and Tribes.56
In the field of education 35 per cent of seats were reserved for the
Backward communities.57
I have said earlier that the non-Brahmin movement was started by the
wealthy and somewhat Westernized leaders belonging to peasant or higher
castes and that there was a marked cleavage, economic and social, between
them and the Scheduled and allied castes. Anti-Brahminism, however,
provided a rallying point though it was not always enough to hold together
the heterogeneous elements forming the non-Brahmin category. Sometime
after caste quotas had been fixed, a few castes such as the Padaiyāchis or
Vanniya Kula Kshatriyas felt that they deserved more than they had been
given. The Padaiyāchis are a dominant caste in Madras, constituting about
ten per cent of the State’s population and dominating the two districts of
North and South Arcot. They demanded that one out of every five non-
Brahmin posts be reserved for them.58 The “Depressed Classes” were also
dissatisfied. The number of castes constituting the “Depressed Classes” was
brought down in 1935 from 140 to 86, presumably by removing from the
list those who did not really belong to that category but who had been
enjoying the benefits.59
Although the Justice Party was pushed out of political life after its
crushing defeat in the 1937 elections, this did not mean the end of the non-
Brahmin movement. Irschick mentions that it “was forced in 1927 to pass a
resolution allowing its members to join the Congress in an attempt to flood
that organization in Madras with non-Brahmins.”60 With Independence and
adult suffrage, the dominant peasant castes became so powerful that all
political parties had to come to terms with them. They were well
represented in State legislatures and cabinets, and the introduction of
panchāyati rāj conferred power on them at the village, tehsil and district
levels. Political power enhances the status of the individual and his group;
anyone who has talked in recent years to Lingāyats, Okkaligas, Pātidārs, or
Kalīars in rural areas can testify to this. And political power can be
translated into economic term—not only for oneself but for one’s relations,
clients and castefolk—and can determine the future of young men and
women by obtaining for them right careers and well-paid and prestigious
jobs. This is where caste quotas are of crucial significance.
Usually, there is more than one dominant caste in a state, and conflicts
between them for political power are only to be expected. The Kammas and
Reddis of Andhra and the Lingāyats and Okkaligas of Mysore, provide
well-known examples of such conflict. From the point of view of the non-
dominant castes, however, the dominant castes have monopolized most of
the benefits available in the new system. The non-dominant castes naturally
feel frustrated and bitter. Today, in Mysore, men from non-dominant castes
style themselves as “minor” castes, and complain about the “ruthless
manner” in which the Lingāyats and Okkaligas are collaring jobs and the
licences and permits necessary for every type of entrepreneurial activity.
That this is a widespread feeling is borne out by the Nagan Gowda
Committee’s recommendation that the Backward classes be divided into
“backward” and “more backward” (excluding Scheduled Castes and Tribes)
to ensure a fair deal for the latter.61 This feeling is not confined to Mysore
but occurs also in Kerala and Madras.
The formation of linguistic states on November 1, 1956, resulted in
greatly reducing, in each state, the political power of castes speaking
minority languages. Thus today in Mysore, for political purposes, an
Okkaliga means a member of this Kannada-speaking, dominant caste, and
no longer includes the Telugu-speaking Reddi. This is ironic, for the non-
Brahmin movement in Mysore, in its early phase, as in Madras, drew its
leadership largely from Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam speakers, and not only
from Hindu castes, but also from Muslims and Christians.
The situation with regard to the “Backward Classes” in the 1950s can now
be summarized: There was a widespread desire among non-Brahmin castes
to be categorized as “Backward” in Western contexts, while the dominant
castes had developed a vested interest in “Backwardness”. It was the best
hope of securing education, especially technological and medical education,
of prestigious and well-paid employment, and of mobility in class as well as
caste systems. The minority castes felt that the dominant castes were
helping themselves to all the benefits, and at their expense; and the State
governments had either devised, or were considering devising, new
procedures to safeguard the interests of “truly backward” castes. The
conflict would have been much sharper but for the special measures in the
Constitution protecting the interests of Scheduled Castes. Without these,
social conflict between the Scheduled Castes and others, quite marked at
the village level, would have been further exacerbated by the struggle for
political power and for various privileges.
It is only fair to mention that the fifties also marked the beginning of a
different approach to the problem of backwardness, and this approach
issued from both the Central and State levels. The Backward Classes
Commission, appointed by the Government of India to determine the
criteria by which sections of the population, other than the Scheduled
Castes and Tribes, could be treated as socially and educationally backward,
submitted its report in 1955, and a majority of its members were of the view
that caste determined the extent of an individual’s backwardness. They
listed 2399 castes as backward, and recommended that these be made
eligible for benefits similar to those enjoyed by the Scheduled Castes and
Tribes. But the Chairman of the Commission, Kaka Kalelkar, in his letter
forwarding the report to the President of India,

repudiated the fundamental conclusions of his commission. He wrote

that, almost at the end of the Committee’s labours, he realized that the
remedies suggested were worse than the evils they sought to combat. …
He decided that the whole line of investigation pursued by the
Commission was “repugnant to the spirit of democracy”, since in
democracy it is the individual, not the family or the caste, which is the
unit. He recommended that the state regard as backward and entitled to
special educational and economic aid all persons whose total family
income is less than 800 rupees per year, regardless of their caste or
community. Kalelkar opposed reservation of posts for the backward
classes in the government services, which was recommended by the
Commission.62

The Government of India expressed its disapproval of the

recommendations of the Commission, and five years later, on the 14th of
August, 1961, the Home Ministry wrote to the State governments asking
them to do away with the caste criterion and adopt instead income.
At the State level, Madras took the lead in 1955 by expressing its intention
to implement gradually a policy of exempting all poor children from
payment of fees in elementary and secondary schools. It was able to achieve
its objective fully by February, 1961. In 1959 Bombay decided to exempt
all poor children in primary and secondary schools from payment of fees,
and other states such as Andhra Pradesh and Mysore followed shortly
after.63

5
I see the Backward Classes Movement of South India as fundamentally a
movement to achieve mobility on the part of groups which had lagged
behind the Brahmins in Westernization. Education, employment in the
government, and participation in the new political processes were essential
for such mobility, and education was an indispensable means for securing
the other two. It was inevitably a secular movement. The idea of equality
was inherent in it. It led to widespread rivalry between castes which were
eager to move up, and to the Self-Respect Movement, and it had to make an
assault on the Brahmin’s cultural and social dominance and exclusiveness.
In the process of participating in the modern political and other processes
subsumed under Westernization, the caste system underwent certain
significant changes which I shall briefly consider here.
The point that comes first to mind in this connection is the freeing of caste
from its traditional, local and vertical matrix. Within the local matrix the
emphasis was on the interdependence of castes or local sections of castes,
which in fact meant the dependence of several households of clients from
the servicing and artisan castes on each patron household from the
dominant, landowning castes. The coming into existence of new
opportunities, educational, economic and political, brought about an
increase in horizontal solidarity. I shall not concern myself here with how
this happened but only with its significance for mobility. A caste dispersed
over a wide area increasingly tended to ignore differences between its
sections (Leach’s “Caste Grades”).64 When I call them “different sections of
a caste” I am only noting how educated members of the caste regard them.
Indeed, I suspect that in the case of the big peasant castes, different
members would differ in their estimate of who belonged to their caste and
who did not. For instance, in a caste such as the Okkaligas of Mysore-
Mandya districts, an elderly, rural and illiterate member may not regard the
Nonaba, Hallikāra, Hālu and Morasu divisions as Okkaligas at all. As far as
he is concerned, his effective social space would be Okkaligas living in an
area within a radius of about twenty-five miles. But an Okkaliga lawyer or
doctor would regard all the divisions as Okkaligas, and he might give his
daughter in marriage to the son of an urbanized and educated Okkaliga
from distant Shimoga in the west. Clearly, a class element is involved here,
but that horizontal integration is taking place is beyond dispute, and a
critical factor in such integration is the increased politicization of Indian
society.
Previous students of caste such as Risley have drawn attention to the
“fissiparous nature of caste”.65 In traditional India, fission seems to have
been the dominant process, whereas today the trend has been reversed and
fusion has replaced fission. And as Beteille has pointed out, fusion does not
take place arbitrarily but takes into account traditional alignments. He also
comments that such fusion “is not infrequently associated with a widening
of cleavages, particularly in the political sphere, between the larger
segments.”66
I have called this “horizontal integration”, but the term “horizontal” is not
quite accurate as the units involved do not really regard themselves as
equal, and each has a feeling that it is superior to the others. It would be
more accurate to say that structurally neighbouring units become part of a
single large entity. In most cases the larger entity is still in the process of
emerging, and the Westernized elite from the various units are bringing
these different units together.
In the absence of empirical investigation it is not possible to say whether
the increase in horizontal solidarity has occurred equally with all castes or
has been greater in some than in others. It is certainly occurring among the
high castes, including the dominant peasant castes. The Scheduled Castes
have come together for political purposes, but it is not known how far this
has been followed up by the widening of the social and cultural fields. The
artisan and servicing castes are usually numerically weak and are nowhere
prominent in state politics. It is not unlikely that they have been least
influenced by the modern tendency toward increasing horizontal solidarity.
The subject of the referents of caste has recently been discussed by F.G.
Bailey and Beteille.67 Beteille has stated:
The fact that cas̀te is a segmentary system means (and has always
meant) that people view themselves as belonging to units of different
orders in different contexts. A Smārtha sees himself as a Smārtha in
relation to a Srī Vaishnava, and as a Brahmin in relation to a non-
Brahmin. There is no reason to believe that this is a new phenomenon.
What is new is the focus which has been given by party politics to wider
entities partly at the expense of narrower ones.68
It is true that political forces—much wider, however, than party politics—
have played a part in stimulating horizontal solidarity, but they are not the
only ones. Urbanization, increased spatial mobility, Westernized style of
life, and modern ideology have also played their part. With specific
reference to endogamy, so crucial to the identification of a caste, the
institution of dowry has forced people to look for bridegrooms beyond the
traditional unit. The huge sums demanded as dowry, and in many cases, the
institution itself, are a product of increased monetization, and Western
education and the job opportunities which it has opened the door to. The
“matrimonial” advertisements in Indian newspapers show how urban,
Westernized Indians are willing to overlook traditional barriers in their
anxious search for a suitable spouse.
The castes of modern India perform several functions such as providing
hostels, cooperative housing and banks, and they act as interest groups in
the political arena. They offer a sharp contrast to the role caste groups
played in the traditional context of village and region. The interdependence
characteristic of castes in the local, village economy and society—and it is
well to remember that behind this interdependence lay the coercive power
of the dominant caste and the chief—has given way to competition for
power between rival groups. Kathleen Gough regards such activity as one
among many symptoms of caste disintegration, and to Leach it is behaviour
in “defiance of caste principles.”69 Bailey considers the emergent entities “
‘castes’ in a loose way [though] they are not operating in a caste system.”70
Nur Yalman71 and Beteille72 also regard these entities as castes, and
Beteille stresses the continuity between the different levels of the
segmentary system that is caste.
If the traditional village community or chiefdom is regarded as the norm,
then the new alliances being forged between “caste grades” or cognate jātis,
and the keen competition for political power and economic benefits, seem
to constitute a new phenomenon, even though they continue to perform
certain traditional functions such as defining the endogamous field. These
changes in caste could not, however, have come into existence without one
hundred fifty years of Westernization, and when I say Westernization I refer
to the entire gamut of forces included in the term. The emergence of the big
and powerful castes, the great occupational heterogeneity within each of
them, the keen competition between castes for political and economic
power, the spread of equalitarian ideology, and increasing political and
social mobilization—all suggest that changes of a fundamental kind are
occurring. It cannot be described as a simple movement from a closed to an
open system of social stratification. For one thing, as we have seen earlier,
the traditional system was not entirely closed, and mobility was possible for
both groups and individuals. For another, though the scope for individual
and familial mobility has increased strikingly since Independence, caste
continues to be relevant in subtle and indirect ways, in such mobility.

NOTES
1 F.G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier, pp. 159, 163.

2 M.N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India, p. 59.

3 See section II of the Reading List for books and articles on the Backward Classes Movement.

4 G.D. Berreman, “Caste in India and the United States”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. LXVI,

no. 2, September I960, p. 125.

5 F.G. Bailey, “Closed Social Stratification”, European Journal of Sociology, vol. IV, 1963, pp. 107–

124; and A. Beteille, “Closed and Open Social Stratification in India” (to be published).
6 B. Stein, “Social Mobility in Medieval South Indian Hindu Sects”, in J. Silverberg (ed.), Social

Mobility in Caste in India, special issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History. See supra
chap. 1, note 27.
7 Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, vol. VII, p. 366, and vol. VI, p. 1.

8 See G.S. Ghurye, Caste and Class in India, pp. 169–170.

9 A maund is a traditonal Indian weight varying from area to area. The standard maund is equal to

100 lb (troy) or 82 2/7 lb (avoirdupois).

10 Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Sikkim Census Report, 1911, p. 440.

11 Donald E. Smith, India as a Secular State, Princeton, 1963, p. 304.

12 Madras Census, 1911, p. 178; Census of India Report for 1921, pp. 231–232.

13 Census of India Report for 1921, pp. 231–232.

14 Bihar and Orissa Census Report, 1931, pp. 267–268.

15 Census of India Report for 1921, pp. 231–232.

16 S. Natarajan, A Century of Social Reform, p. 119.

17 Ibid., p. 118.

18 See, for instance, J.H. Hutton, “Primitive Tribes”, in L.S.S. O’Malley (ed.), modern India and the

West, Oxford, 1941, pp. 443–444; and G.S. Ghurye, The Aborigines, So-Called and Their Future,
Poona, 1943, pp. 111–154.
19 N.K. Bose, “Some Aspects of Caste in Bengal”, in Milton Singer (ed.) op. cit., pp. 199–201.

20 Census Report for the Punjab, 1911, p. 149 and Census Report for India, 1911, pp. 123–124.

21 Pauline M. Mahar, “Changing Religious Practices of an Untouchable Caste”, Economic

Development and Cultural Change, vol. VIII, no. 3, April, 1960, pp. 279–287.
22 Punjab Census Report, 1931, pp. 293–294.

23 M.N. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India, p. 25 n.

24 In 1911, 35.75 per cent of Tamil Brahmin males were literate in an Indian language while 11.07

per cent were literate in English. Next to them were Telugu Brahmins with 33.93 and 7.34 per cent
respectively. Of the non-Brahmin castes, the Nāyars led the others with 20.16 and 1.43 per cent
respectively, followed in order by the Tamil Vellāla with 12.09 and 1.04, the Telugu Balija Nāidu
with 10.33 and 1.29, the Kamma with 6.12 and 0.1, and Kāpu with 4.46 and 0.11 per cent. (From E.
Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India—the Non-Brahmin Movement and Tamil
Separatism, p. 12.)
25 A munsif is a subordinate civil judge.

26 A. Beteille, “Caste and Politics in Tamilnad” (to be published).

27 E. Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India—the Non-Brahmin Movement and Tamil

Separatism, p. 113.
28 Ibid., p. 13.

29 Beteille, see supra note 26.

30 Irschick, op. cit., p. 14.

31 G.V. Subba Rao, Life and Times of K. V. Reddi Naidu, Rajahmundry, 1957, p. 19.

32 Irschick, op. cit., p. 14.

33 Irschick, “The Brahmin Non-Brahmin Struggle for Power in Madras”, p. 1. (Mimeographed.)

34 Ibid., p. 3.

35 Ghurye, see supra note 8, p. 178.

36 Irschick, “The Integration of South India into the National Movement”, pp. 12–13.

(Mimeographed.)
37 R. Jayaraman in his review of T.M. Parthasarathy’s History of D.M.K., 1916–1962 (Madras,

1963), Economic Weekly, September 26, 1964, pp. 1555–1556.

38 Ramaswamy Naicker, it is interesting to note, was influenced by the American agnostic Robert

Ingersoll. “Ingersoll’s attack on the Bible and Christianity inspired similar arguments against the
Puranas and Hinduism.” (India as a Secular State, p. 157.)
39 Srinivas, see supra note 23, p. 22.

40 Sir Percival Griffiths, The British Impact on India, London, 1952, pp. 295–296.

41 Irschick, see supra note 27, pp. 55-56.

42 Ghurye, see supra note 8, p. 179.

43 Irschick, see supra note 27, p. 55.

44 Bose, see supra note 19, p. 200.

45 Ibid.

46 Irschick, see supra note 27, pp. 118–120.

47 Irschick, “The Brahmin Non-Brahmin Struggle for Power in Madras”, p. 4.

48 G.O. no. 1129 dated December 15, 1928 (Public Service Department).

49 Smith, see supra note 11, p. 122.

50 S.H. Partha and others v. State of Mysore and others, Mysore Law Journal, 1960, p. 159 (quoted

in Donald E. Smith, op. cit., p. 318).

51 These criteria were adopted even though statistics regarding the strength of castes are not beyond

doubt, and it is not easy to say whether a subcaste is part of a large caste such as Lingāyat or Okka-
liga.
52 Mysore Backward Classes Committee: Find Report, Bāngal̇ore, p. 20.

53 Srinivas, see supra note 23, p. 2.

54 The Hindu, September 30, 1962 (quoted in Donald E. Smith, op. cit., p. 320).

55 Smith, op. cit., p. 318.

56 Srinivas, see supra note 23, p. 3 n.

57 Srinivas, “Pursuit of Equality”, Times, London, January 26, 1962 (The Times Survey of India).

58 G.O. no. 247 dated February 4,1939.

59 G.O. no. 1949 dated December 6,1938 (Public Service Department).

60 E. Irschick, “The Integration of South India into the National Movement”, p. 13. A similar

phenomenon occurred in Maharashtrian politics. See M. Patterson, “Caste and Politics in

Maharashtra”, p. 1066.
61 Mysore Backward Classes Committee: Final Report, p. 20.

62 Smith, op. cit., p. 317.

63 Ibid., p. 321.

64 E.R. Leach, “Introduction: What Should We Mean by Caste”, in Aspects of Caste in South India,

Ceylon and North-West Pakistan, Cambridge, 1960, p. 7.

65 Quoted by Hutton, Caste in India, Oxford, 1963, p. 51.

66 A. Beteille, “A Note on the Referents of Caste”, European Journal of Sociology, vol. V, 1964, p.

134.
67 F.G. Bailey, “Closed Social Stratification”, European Journal of Sociology, vol. IV, 1963, p. 123;

and Beteille, see supra note 66.

68 Beteille, see supra note 66, p. 133.

69 Leach, see supra note 64, p. 7.

70 Bailey, see supra note 67, p. 123.

71 N. Yalman, “The Flexibility of Caste Principles in a Kandyan Community”, in supra note 69, pp.

87, 106.
72 Beteille, see supra note 66, p. 133.
 4

SECULARIZATION

BRITISH rule brought with it a process of secularization of Indian social

life and culture, a tendency that gradually became stronger with the
development of communications, growth of towns and cities, increased
spatial mobility, and the spread of education. The two World Wars, and
Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaigns, both of which socially
and politically mobilized the masses, also contributed to increased
secularization. And with Independence there began a deepening as well as a
broadening of the secularization process as witnessed in such measures as
the declaration of India as a secular state, the Constitutional recognition of
the equality of all citizens before the law, the introduction of universal adult
suffrage, and the undertaking of a program of planned development.
We have seen earlier that Sanskritization is also spreading, and it may
seem paradoxical that both it and secularization are simultaneously gaining
ground in modern India. Of the two, secularization is the more general
process, affecting all Indians, while Sanskritization affects only Hindus and
tribal groups. Broadly, it would be true to say that secularization is more
marked among the urban and educated groups, and Sanskritization among
the lower Hindu castes and tribes. It is necessary, however, to reiterate that
one of the results of a century of Westernization—secularization is
subsumed under Westernization—is a reinterpreted Hinduism in which
Sanskritic elements are predominant.
 The term “secularization” implies that what was previously regarded as
religious is now ceasing to be such, and it also implies a process of
differentiation which results in the various aspects of society, economic,
political, legal and moral, becoming increasingly discrete in relation to each
other. The distinction between Church and State, and the Indian concept of
a secular state, both assume the existence of such differentiation.
Another essential element in secularization is rationalism, a
“comprehensive expression applied to various theoretical and practical
tendencies which aim to interpret the universe purely in terms of thought, or
which aim to regulate individual and social life in accordance with the
principles of reason and to eliminate as far as possible or to relegate to the
background everything irrational.”1 Rationalism involves, among other
things, the replacement of traditional beliefs and ideas by modern
knowledge.
It would probably be safe to assume that Hindus were more affected by
the secularization process than any other religious group in India as, first,
the concepts of pollution and purity which are central as well as pervasive
in Hinduism were greatly weakened as a result of the operation of a variety
of factors already mentioned. Moreover, the fact that Hinduism lacks a
central and nation-wide organization with a single head, and that it is
largely dependent for its perpetuation on such social institutions as caste,
joint family and village community—institutions which are changing in
important respects—renders it peculiarly vulnerable to the forces of
secularization. Different sections among Hindus are affected in different
degrees by it, and generally speaking, the new elite are probably much more
affected by it than everyone else. In my discussion of secularization I shall
be referring principally to the new elite in Mysore, though it is probable that
my remarks also apply with some variations to the elite in other parts of the
country. I shall consider first the effects of secularization on ideas regarding
pollution and purity, then the changes in the lives and position of priestly
Brahmins and finally, the implications for Hinduism of changes in caste,
village community and joint family.
No student of Hindu religious behaviour can afford to ignore the concepts
of pollution and purity.2 Terms exist for pollution and purity in every Indian
language, and each of these terms has a certain amount of semantic stretch
enabling it to move from one meaning to another as the context requires.
Thus pollution may refer to uncleanliness, defilement, impurity short of
defilement and indirectly even to sinfulness, while purity refers to
cleanliness, spiritual merit and indirectly to holiness.
The structural distance between various castes is defined in terms of
pollution and purity. A higher caste is always “pure” in relation to a lower
caste, and in order to retain its higher status it should abstain from certain
forms of contact with the lower. It may not ordinarily eat food cooked by
them, or marry or have sex relations with them. Where one of the castes is
very high and the other very low, there is a ban on touching or even getting
very close to one another. A breach of rules renders the higher caste
member impure, and purity can only be restored by the performance of a
purification rite and, frequently, also by undergoing such punishment as the
caste council decides upon. Sometimes, however, the offence is so serious
—as, for instance, when a Brahmin or other high-caste woman has sex
relations with an Untouchable man—that the former is permanently
excommunicated from her caste. The concepts of pollution and purity are
important not only in a static but also in a dynamic context: traditionally,
when a caste group or its section wanted to move up it would Sanskritize its
style of life and stop accepting cooked food from those castes with which it
had previously inter-dined.
Corresponding to the caste hierarchy are hierarchies in food, occupation
and styles of life. The highest castes are vegetarians as well as teetotalers,
while the lowest eat meat (including domestic pork and beef) and consume
indigenous liquor. Consumption of the meat of such a village scavenger as
the pig pollutes the eaters, while the ban on beef comes from the high place
given to the cow in the sacred texts of Hinduism. Among occupations, those
involving manual work are rated lower than those which do not. Manual
occupations may involve the handling of dirty or polluting (for example,
human waste matter) objects, or engaging in butchery which is regarded as
sinful. At the lowest level of the caste system are occupations that are sinful
or polluting or both.
Not only caste but also kinship is bound up with pollution ideas. Thus,
birth as well as death results in pollution for specific periods for members
of the kinship group, death pollution being more rigorous than birth
pollution. Within the kinship group, the mourning period is longer for the
closest relatives, such as widow, widower and sons, and the taboos are also
more elaborate. The onset of puberty for a girl was traditionally marked by
confining her to a room for several days, at the end of which time there was
a purificatory bath and ritual. A woman was considered polluting during her
monthly periods. Traditionally, women kept away from all activity and
contact with other members of the household for three days during their
periods. All bodily waste matter, with the exception of sweat, was regarded
not only as dirty but as polluting. This is one of the reasons why a bath was
a condition precedent to prayer; and while praying or performing ritual, the
subject had to exercise sphincter and bladder control. Restraint on sex was
also imposed on religious occasions, including pilgrimages to such shrines
as the Mādeshwara temple in Kollegal tāluk in Mysore district and the
famous temple to Shāsta in southern Kerala.
The daily routine was also permeated with ideas of pollution and purity. A
person’s normal condition was one of mild impurity, and he exchanged this
for short periods of purity or serious impurity. He had to be ritually pure not
only while praying but also while eating (see in this connection pp. 53–54).
In order to be pure, he had to have a bath, change into ritually pure clothes,
and avoid contact even with other members of his family who were not in a
similar condition. During certain festivals and the shrāddha (annual
ceremony for dead father or mother) the subject had to abstain from even a
drink of water till the ritual was over.
Traditionally, a man did not shave himself. He was shaved by a member of
the barber caste, and the barber’s touch as well as shaved hair were both
polluting. After he was shaved, he was not allowed to touch the bathroom
vessels, but someone poured water over him while he sat on the bathroom
floor. Only when he had been thoroughly drenched, and had gargled his
mouth with water, was he allowed to touch the vessels. The place where the
tonsure had been performed was purified with cowdung. There was some
resistance initially to the use of the safety razor among the high castes, as its
use involved pollution. The institution of the daily shave also violated the
ban on shaving on certain days of the week, and other inauspicious days.
The safety razor enabled a man to shave when and where he liked. I
remember that once during my field work in Rāmpura I shaved after I had
had my morning bath and the Peasant headman mildly reproved me for it.
(His granddaughter, then about ten, was critical of my indifference to
pollution.) In his own house, the safety razor had been tabooed, and when
his graduate son came on an occasional visit from Mysore, he was allowed
to use the razor only in an adjoining building used for guests.
Women, especially widows, and elderly men are generally more particular
about observing the rules of pollution than others. The upper castes are
more particular than the lower Brahmins are the most particular among the
former, and among Brahmins priests outdo the laity. Indeed, Brahminical
preoccupation with purity-pollution ideas and ritualism is the subject of
much joking if not criticism. Traditional Brahminical life requires not only
leisure but also an absence of spatial mobility. Travel subjects orthodox
Brahmins to great hardship and privation.
Just as notions of uncleanliness and even sinfulness lie close to pollution,
so do cleanliness, spiritual merit and holiness lie close to purity. While all
baths purify the bather, bathing in a sacred river cleanses him, in addition,
of sin (pāpa), and earns him punya or spiritual merit. A daily bath in a
sacred river (punya snāna), worshipping in a temple, listening to the
narration of religious stories (harikathā kālakshepa), singing devotional
songs in company with other devotees (bhajan), keeping the company of
religious persons (satsanga), frequent fasting (upavāsa), prayer and
meditation (prārthana, dhyāna)—these constitute the essence of a religious
life as distinguished from a life devoted to secular concerns.
The notion of pollution and purity has both weakened and become less
pervasive in the last few decades as a result of the forces already
mentioned. It may be noted here that the popularity of travel and teashops is
not confined to city folk but extends to villagers as well. When I began my
field work in Rāmpura in 1948 villagers were surprised to find me walking
to neighbouring villages. Why did I walk when there were buses? When I
revisited the village in 1952 I found bus travel had greatly increased in
popularity, and the headman himself had invested money in buses.
Urban life sets up its own pressures, and a man’s daily routine, his place
of residence, the times of his meals, are influenced more by his job than by
caste and religion. This is all the more true when the city he lives in is a
highly industrialized one such as Bangalore or Bhadrāvati, and not like
Mysore, which derived its importance from being the traditional capital of
the state until November 1, 1956, when it became part of a larger Kannada-
speaking state. Even more influential is the fact that immigrants from the
villages to cities are freed to some extent from caste and kin pressures, and
must instead conform to the norms of work-mates and neighbourhood
groups. I am not arguing that urban living leads to a total abandonment of
the traditional way of life; in fact, it is a commonplace of observation that
behaviour varies according to context, and people are not always worried
by inconsistencies in it. A Nāyar informant told Kathleen Gough, “When I
put on my shirt to go to the office, I take off my caste, and when I come
home and take off my shirt, I put on my caste.”3 On a long-term basis,
however, such contextual variation usually paves the way for the eventual
overall secularization of behaviour. Thus, for instance, in Mysore in the
early 1930s priestly (vaidika) Brahmins did not patronize coffee shops,
even coffee shops where the cooks were Brahmins. Elderly lay (loukika)
Brahmins also did not like to visit them; on those infrequent occasions
when they did, they sat in an inner room specially reserved for Brahmins
and ate off leaves instead of pollution-carrying aluminium and brass plates.
Now very few coffee shops have rooms reserved for Brahmins—in fact,
such reservation would be against the law. The most popular coffee shops in
the city have a cosmopolitan clientele, and few customers bother about the
caste of cooks and waiters. Even women occasionally visit them, and there
are “family” cubicles where they can eat in privacy.
The more educated customers show concern about cleanliness in coffee
shops and not about caste. Many of them prefer Westem-style “coffee
houses” as they appear to be cleaner, quieter and serve novel items. Often
these “coffee houses” serve both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods, and
Brahmin youths are found experimenting with omelettes and other
forbidden foods.
As a result of the spread of education among all sections of the
population, traditional ideas of purity are giving way to the rules of
hygiene. Purity and cleanliness are often at loggerheads; I have heard many
an educated Brahmin expressing his disgust at the dirt and unhygienic
character of “pure” clothes worn by the orthodox. Brahmin cooks are often
found wearing or using for handling hot vessels, dirty clothes which have
been rinsed but not cleaned with soap or sterilized. The unsanitary
conditions prevailing in pilgrim centers is a frequent subject of conversation
among educated Hindus, who are more conscious of the drains flowing into
the Ganges than of the river’s holiness. This is not, however, the only
tendency; educated Hindus are also found rationalizing traditional
behaviour. Purity, according to them, is nothing more than hygiene, and it
was brought within the field of religious behaviour only to make people
more particular about it.
Any consideration of changed attitudes toward pollution must note the
great popularity of education among Brahmin women in Mysore.4 In the old
days, women were extremely particular about pollution, and the kitchen
was the heart of the pollution system. The modern educated housewife, on
the other hand, is much less particular about pollution and more conscious
of hygiene and nutrition. Many observe rules of pollution only when they
are living with their parents or in-laws. They become lax about the rules
when they form separate households; a punctilious observance of pollution
rules is not easy when there is only one adult woman in the house, unlike in
a traditional joint family. Even in the latter, pollution rules are observed
more strictly when there are old women who are widows and whose lives
are centered in the kitchen and in the domestic altar (usually located in or
near the kitchen).
Another and a potent source of criticism of orthodox Hinduism’s
obsession with pollution and ritualism lay in the nineteenth century
movement to reinterpret traditional religion. It was essentially a puritanical
movement in which an attempt was made to distinguish the “essence” of
Hinduism from its historical accretions. Ritualism and pollution rules were
interpreted as extrinsic to true religion, and as even wrong, while devotion
and simplicity were of the essence. There was support for such a view in the
Bhagavad Gita and in the lives of the saints.

2
Another area which has been affected by the secularization process is life-
cycle ritual. There has been an abbreviation of the rituals performed at
various life-cycle crises, while at the same time their purely social aspects
have assumed greater importance than before. Ceremonies such as name-
giving (nāmakarana), the first tonsure (chaula) and the annual ritual of
changing the sacred thread (upākarma) are beginning to be dropped.5 For
girls, the attainment of puberty is no longer marked by the elaborate ritual
that characterized it a few decades ago. The shaving of a Brahmin widow’s
head, as part of the funeral rite for her dead husband, has also largely
disappeared, and among the educated, widow marriage is no longer strongly
disapproved.
Rituals are not only omitted or abbreviated but are also telescoped with
others, though this seems to be rarer than the other two phenomena. Thus
the wedding ritual may be combined with the donning of the sacred thread
at the beginning of the ceremony, and with the consummation ritual
(garbhādana) at the end. In fact, only funeral ritual and the annual
shrāddha continue to be performed with the same strictness as before,
though even here changes seem to have occurred with respect to the kin
groups participating in the ritual. The scattering of agnates over a wide area
is one of the factors responsible for this change.
The manner in which the wedding ritual has been abbreviated is
interesting. Formerly, a full-blown Brahmin wedding would last between
five and seven days. Now, however, much of the non-Sanskritic and folk
ritual, traditionally the exclusive preserve of women, is being dropped.
There is even an increasing tendency to compress Sanskritic ritual into a
few hours on a single day. The crucial religious rituals such as kanyādāna
(gift of the virgin) and saptapadi (seven steps) are witnessed only by the
concerned kindred, while the main body of guests attends the secularly
important wedding reception. At the latter the bridal couple sit on a settee at
the back of a hall, both in their best clothes, the groom generally sporting a
woollen suit, usually a gift from his father-in-law. The guests are introduced
to the couple after which they sit for a while listening to the music and then
depart, taking with them a paper bag containing a coconut and a few betel
leaves and areca nuts. The reception is a costly affair as both the price of
coconuts and the fees of musicians are high during the wedding season. But
the number of guests, their social importance, the professional standing of
the musician hired for the occasion, the number of cars parked on the street
outside the wedding house, the lights and decorations, and the presents
received by the bridal couple are all indicators of the status and influence of
the two affinal groups in the local society. Invitations are extended to
ministers and other prominent politicians, to high officials and various local
worthies to develop, strengthen and exhibit links with these important
people. The wedding reception is a recent institution—the word “reception”
has passed into Kannada—and its great popularity is one of the many
pointers to the increased secularization of Brahminical life and culture.
Another evidence of increased secularization is the enormous importance
assumed by the institution of dowry in the last few decades. Dowry is paid
not only among Mysore and other South Indian Brahmins, but also among a
number of high-caste groups all over India. The huge sums demanded as
dowry prompted the Indian Parliament, in 1961, to pass the Dowry
Prohibition Act (Act 28 of 1961). So far the Act has not had much success
in combating the institution.
The interesting feature of dowry among Mysore Brahmins—and this is
probably true of several other groups as well—is that engineers, doctors and
candidates successful in the prestigious Indian Administrative Service seem
to command much bigger payments than others.
The amount of time spent on daily ritual has been steadily decreasing for
Brahmin men as well as for women. Ingalls has stated, “The head of the
family might spend five hours or more of the day in ritual performances, in
the samdhya or crepuscular ceremony, in the bathing, the offerings, the fire
ceremony, the Vedic recitations. The Brahmin’s wife or some other female
members of his family would devote an hour of the day to the worship of
the household idols.”6 In order to be able to spend five hours every day in
performing ritual, a man had to have an independent source of income or
have priesthood as his occupation. Traditionally, Hindu kings at their
coronation made gifts of land and houses to pious Brahmins, as well as on
other occasions such as birth, marriage and death in the royal family. Such
acts conferred religious merit on the royal house. However, as Brahmins in
Mysore became more urbanized and as Western education spread among
them, they found it increasingly difficult to lead a life devoted to ritual,
prayer, fasting and the punctilious observance of pollution rules. Milton
Singer has recorded a similar process among Brahmins in Madras:

That is to say, they found in their new preoccupations less time for the
cultivation of Sanskrit learning and the performance of the scripturally
prescribed ritual observances, the two activities for which as Brahmins
they have had an ancient and professional responsibility. They have not,
however, completely abandoned these activities and to some extent they
have developed compensatory activities which have kept them from
becoming completely de-Sanskritized and cut off from traditional
culture.7

The sharp rise in the age of marriage of Brahmin girls enabled them to
take advantage of opportunities for higher education, and this resulted in a
breach in the crucial locus of ritual and purity—the kitchen.8 Traditionally,
a young Brahmin girl worked in and around the kitchen with her mother
until her marriage was consummated and she joined her affines. All that
was required of her was knowledge of cooking and other domestic chores,
the rituals that girls were expected to perform, knowledge of caste and
pollution rules, and respect for and obedience to her parents-in-law and
husband and other elders in the household. Education changed the outlook
of girls and gave them new ideas and aspirations. It certainly made them
less particular about pollution rules and ritual, though as long as they lived
with their affines they could not completely ignore them.
Very few urban Brahmin parents would now deny that education is a
necessity for girls, though they would certainly differ as to how much
education is desirable. Aileen Ross, who recently made a field study of the
urban family in Bangalore, sums up the position as follows:

On the whole this study shows that most young Hindu girls of the
middle and upper classes are still educated with a view to marriage
rather than to careers. However, a number of parents were anxious to
have their daughters attend universities. Perhaps one of the main reasons
for this new trend is that, with the change from child to adult marriage,
the leisure time of girls must now be filled in up to nineteen or even
twenty-five years. And college is one way of “keeping them busy” until
 marriage. Another reason mentioned by interviewees was that the
difficulty of finding suitable mates for daughters sometimes forces
parents to prolong their education further than they had first intended.9

Many girls, then, enter careers apparently not because they want them, but
because there is nothing else to be done until their parents find them
husbands. But it is a fact that a large number of women are employed today
in the cities as teachers, clerks, doctors, nurses, welfare workers, and from
the point of view of the traditional society, this is indeed revolutionary. It is
only to be expected that women’s education will bring about radical
changes in domestic social life and culture. Ross concludes from her study
of educated women in Bangalore that “women of the household will
gradually cease to be the strong backbone of family tradition and caste
customs.”10 This does not, however, mean that there is a complete
breakaway from tradition; while hours may not be spent in ritual, there is
usually a domestic altar where lamps are lit and prayers said. Freedom from
pollution does not go so far that educated Brahmin women eat in the homes
of all other castes, let alone Harijans. While the endogamous circle has
widened and subcaste barriers are crossed—for example, a Mandya Srī
Vaishnava Brahmin may ignore all subdivisions among Srī Vaishnava
Brahmins—marriages between Brahmins and other castes such as
Okkaligas or Lingāyats are few and far between. While the Brahmin dietary
may be enlarged to include the traditionally banned eggs, meat-eating is still
rare.
The religious beliefs and practices of educated Hindus are only now
beginning to be studied. Apart from the intrinsic importance of the subject,
no study of the processes of Westernization can afford to neglect changes in
religion.
Secularization, even politicization, is an important tendency in urban
religion, though not the only one. For instance, the famous Dasara or
Navarātri festival which was bound up with the royal family of Mysore, and
celebrated with great pomp and pageantry, has changed its character with
the merger of the former princely state into new and enlarged Mysore. The
rise to power of the dominant Lingāyat caste in state politics, and increased
regionalism, have both found expression in the festival commemorating the
birth of Basava, founder of the Lingāyat sect, becoming more popular since
the early fifties. The festival lasts several days, and is celebrated in all the
big towns and cities that have Lingayat concentrations. Deepavāli (festival
of lights), Sankrānti (harvest and cattle festival), Ugādi (New Year) and
Rāma Navami (birthday of Rāma) are common to most Hindu groups in the
state, while others such as Gokulāshtami and Shivarātri (Night of Shiva)
have a predominantly sectarian character. The Rāma Navami has become,
throughout South India except Kerala, an important “cultural” occasion,
concerts of classical South Indian music being held in all cities during the
nine days of the festival period. The popularity of South Indian classical
music has increased greatly in the last two or three decades, and music
lovers, whether religious or not, look forward eagerly to the Rāma Navami.
The concerts are well attended, and open to all who can afford the price of
admission. But while there is no doubt that the festival has undergone some
secularization, classical South Indian music is essentially devotional, and
the great composers whose songs are sung at the concerts were all very
devout men. As Singer has rightly observed, “There is no sharp dividing
line between religion and culture and the traditional culture media not only
continue to survive in the city but have also been incorporated in novel
ways to an emerging popular and classical culture.”11
In recent years, temples have shown considerable activity, and have
organized harikathas (the narration of religious stories by experts in the art)
during Dasara, Rāma Navami and other occasions. The harikathas continue
for several days, sometimes even for several weeks, and attract large
audiences who spill over from the temple yard to the roadside, listening to
the story and song. Sound amplifiers are regarded as essential at these
narrations.
Pious individuals with a flair for entrepreneurial activity organize Vedic
sacrifices (yajnya) which involve a large investment of money, time and
energy, and which go on for several days. The sacrifice may, for example,
be to end a drought or for the “welfare of mankind” (lōka kalyāna). Another
popular activity is to undertake to write the name of Rāma or some other
deity a billion times, and then celebrate the occasion with a big sacrifice.12
Hundreds of volunteers are enrolled for writing the name, huge sums of
money are collected, elaborate arrangements are made for the
accommodation of devotees who wish to witness the celebration, and
attèmpts are made to involve important people including ministers and
members of the state legislatures in this activity. Local newspapers give
much space to describing the final phase of the celebration, the number of
people who had gathered, the arrangements made for their comfort, the
ritual and, of course, the speeches.
Pilgrimages are very popular and enable large numbers to satisfy their
religious aspirations as well as to see the country tourist buses cater to both
these needs, as they include shrines as well, as objects of tourist interest in
each tour. The social and religious horizons of the people have widened
considerably; the peasants of Rāmpura village now regularly visit the
famous Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh, whereas before World War II
they only visited shrines which were nearby. The richer peasants in
Rāmpura have visited the big pilgrimage centers in South India, such as
Rāmeshwaram, Madurai and Shrīrangam. The urban-educated manage to
visit at least once the great pilgrimage centers of Banaras, Allahābād and
Hardwār in the far north. A well-known South Indian travel agency runs
special pilgrim trains for their benefit.
Educated pilgrims are not indifferent to good accommodation, nor to food
at the centers they visit. They also do a certain amount of sightseeing and
shopping on the side. Sometimes this is given as evidence that the religious
motive has become extremely weak, if not totally absent in modern
pilgrimages, and that these only provide a good excuse for travel and
“patriotic sightseeing”. This assumes among other things that the only
motive in traditional pilgrimages was the religious one—which, indeed, is
questionable. For traditional pilgrimage centers were also shopping centers,
and orthodox women who returned from pilgrimages waxed eloquent about
the sights they had seen, the abundance or scarcity of vegetables and fruit,
and the local price of milk and ghee.
The Brahmins of Mysore—like other Dravidian-speaking Brahmins in
South India—are all traditionally followers of one or another of the three
well-known sects: Smārthas (pure Monists), Srī Vaishnavas (qualified
Monists) and Mādhvas (Dualists). Each sect has a few monasteries (mathas,
each presided over by a head (mathādhipathi or swāmi), and traditionally
the monastic head exercised control over the conduct of his flock. Members
had to be initiated into the sect by the monastic head, and when the latter
visited their town or village they showed the respect due him by performing
the “pāda puja” (worshipping his feet and drinking the water used in the
worship). The monastic head was the final authority in all religious matters,
including caste disputes, and a follower could appeal to him against a
decision of the caste council excommunicating or otherwise punishing him.
This power of the monastic head has fallen into disuse. Even the
purificatory ritual (prāyaschitta) which a returnee from a trip abroad used to
undergo has lapsed, owing to the popularity of foreign travel and the
increased secularization of Brahmins. But while the power of the monastic
heads has eroded greatly, they still command the respect and loyalty of their
followers. In recent years contact between monastic heads and the laity
seems to have increased. The state governments passed land reform and
other legislation which hit the monasteries hard economically, and which
have made inroads into their religious autonomy; this has resulted in the
monastic heads making greater efforts than before to cultivate their
followers.13 Many educated people now turn to heads of their sects for
spiritual and other guidance.
New cults, built around saints, either alive or recently deceased, have
come into existence in recent years. Saibāba, a saint of modern India whose
tomb is in Shirdi in Maharāshtra, has a large following in South India, and
there are Saibāba prayer groups in several South Indian cities. Shirdi is a
favourite place for pilgrimage. The shrine of Ramana Maharishi at
Tiruvannāmalai in Madras state is also visited, though his cult is not as
popular as the Saibāba cult. Among the living gurus or teachers, Swāmi
Chinmayānanda is very popular and his lectures attract large audiences. The
Rāmakrishna Mission also provides a focus for the religious interests of
many people. The rise of new cults and the functions they fulfil are subjects
that need to be studied systematically.
Singer has commented that “The effect of mass media ... has not so much
secularized the sacred traditional culture as it has democratized it.”14
School textbooks contain incidents from the Hindu epics and Purānas, the
lives of regional saints, and extracts from old poets whose themes are
almost always religious or moral. Journals and books contain much
religious matter, and the popular children’s story magazine Chandamāma
exploits the inexhaustible mine of the epics, Bhāgavata, the Purānas and
others, for stories for children.15 The All-India Radio broadcasts devotional
music every morning and, occasionally, harikathas.16It also marks the big
festivals by special programs which again draw on the traditional culture of
the Hindus. The themes of many films are drawn from the epics, although
“social themes” and romantic stories are not unimportant. The Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (Dravidian Progressive Federation) writers’ use of
films to conduct propaganda against caste and traditional religion is not
without its effects. Tamil films are popular in Mysore, it being common for
them to run for several weeks in the big towns and cities. Occasionally the
themes are drawn from regional history and the lives of regional saints. But
whatever the theme—mythological, historical or social—every film is long,
has songs and dances, and comic and romantic interludes. Democratization,
whether through films or the All-India Radio or in popular books and
journals, brings about radical changes in the content of traditional culture.17
The highbrow and the purist would call it vulgarization, but what is
interesting to note is that it involves an appeal on the one hand to
particularistic loyalties such as region, language, sect and caste, and on the
other to the universal attraction of sex, dance and song.

I discussed earlier how the orthodox elements in Hindu society were put
continuously on the defensive ever since the early years of the nineteenth
century when European missionaries began attacking Hinduism for its
many ills and shortcomings. While the new Hindu elite deeply resented
such attacks, they were themselves sufficiently Westernized to be able to
take a critical view of their religion. Thus began a long era of reform of
Hindu society and religion, and of reinterpretation of the latter. The path of
the reformers was far from smooth; in fact, they were martyrs to the cause
of modernization of Hindu and Indian society and culture. They and their
families had to endure the criticism of kinsfolk, castefolk and others whose
opinions they were sensitive to. Some were even thrown out of caste. As
already noted, the revolutionary changes that have occurred in Hinduism in
the last one hundred fifty years—to which the reformers contributed so
significantly—make it very difficult for Hindus today to understand the
difficulties faced by their forbears.
The orthodox elements among the Hindus, the foremost among them
being priestly Brahmins (vaidikas), steadily lost prestige in the face of
growing secularization and Westernization of Hindu life and culture. They
were for a long time out of sympāthy with, if not entirely critical of, the
attempts to reform Hindu religion and society. Those among the vaidikas
who had a reputation for Sanskrit learning continued to command the
respect of the people, but with the institution of Sanskrit teaching in modern
schools and colleges they began to lose their valued monopoly over the
language. Sanskrit learning became open, in theory at least, to everyone
irrespective of caste and religion. The development of the disciplines of
comparative philosophy, archaeology, numismatics and history provided a
broad chronological framework for Sanskrit literature, and freed it from
much myth and legend. Those Pandits who did not take note of these new
developments began to be regarded as intellectual anachronisms. And the
last few decades have seen the rising prestige of technology, engineering,
medicine and the sciences generally, while the other subjects, the
humanities in particular, have lost much of their prestige. Students with the
highest grades seek admission to courses in the prestigious subjects.
Initially, parents were motivated by the economic security and high income
available to doctors and engineers, but now prestige—the student’s as well
as the family’s—seems to be equally important.
The Brahmin priests fought a continuous rearguard action against
secularization of the life of lay (loukika) Brahmins. The Brahmins in
Mysore state are among the most urbanized and educated of the local
Hindus.18 Thanks to their early and great lead in education, they secured a
large share of the high administrative posts, and dominated the professions.
As their style of life gradually underwent change, a conflict arose between
them and the priests. Many wore Western clothes, they met people from
many castes and religions in the course of their work, and they did not
perform the various daily rituals as scrupulously as before. Many had their
heads cropped, and this went against the Vedic rule which required them to
keep the shikhā (a long tuft of hair at the top of the skull)19 just as the habit
of the daily shave violated certain other rules. These deviations—along with
the tendency to drop the painting of caste marks on the forehead, and to sit
down to meals in secular clothes—drew the wrath of the priests. Even more
serious were violations of the rules regarding food and drink, and the
marrying of girls after they had attained puberty. The people who did these
things had power and prestige, but more humble folk imitated them in
course of time. The priests lacked the courage—except during the early
years of British rule—to throw their powerful patrons out of the caste, and
as secularization spread among Brahmins, the priests had no alternative but
to bow to the inevitable. Meanwhile, the style of life of the priests
themselves became Westernized to some extent. Many even acquired a
nodding acquaintance with English and were proud of displaying it.
Regrettably, there have been no studies of occupational changes among
different generations of priestly families. But evidence already available
shows that in both Bangalore and Mysore cities intergenerational
occupational changes have been highest among Brahmins. Noel Gist, who
studied intercaste differences in Mysore and Bangalore cities in 1951–1952,
has reported that intergenerational occupational differences were highest
among Brahmins as compared with other caste categories. In Mysore city,
for instance, 82.7 per cent of household heads had occupations different
from those of their fathers, and 76.8 per cent of their own sons had departed
from paternal occupations. For the nonBrahmin group, the percentages of
deviation were 55.7 and 49.4 respectively, while for the Scheduled Castes
they were 44.8 and 56.8.20 Gist’s sample does not distinguish between
priestly and lay Brahmins, but there is no reason to assume that the former
were exempt from processes which affected the latter. From my own
experience, I can recall many of my contemporaries in Mysore who came
from priestly and orthodox families, but who chose secular careers.
In a word, then, the gradual erosion of priestly authority and prestige, and
the secularization of priests, have brought about a situation in which priests
lack the confidence to take any initiative in religious or social reform. They
do not have the intellectual equipment or the social position to undertake a
reinterpretaticn of Hinduism that would suit modern circumstances. Since
the beginning of the nineteenth century, such reinterpretation has come
from the Westernized Hindu elite. The fact that this elite has been anti-
ritualistic, as well as inclined to frown upon popular sacrifices, beliefs and
practices, has stripped Hinduism of a great deal of its content.
The situation depicted above highlights the fact that, unlike the Biblical
religions, Hinduism is without a universal organization and a hierarchy of
officials whose function it is to interpret it in the context of changing
circumstances. While it is true that some Hindu sects—such as the
Smārthas, Srī Vaishnavas and Mādhvas, the Lingāyats and several others—
have elaborate organizations headed by pontiffs, these pontiffs have
authority only within their sects or divisions within sects, and not for
Hinduism as a whole.

Another characteristic of Hinduism has been its extraordinary reliance on, if

not inseparability from, the social structure. The three main elements of the
social structure are caste, village community and family system. In Hindu
India the political head, the king, was also the head of the social system,
including caste. The relation of Hinduism to the state changed with the
Muslim conquest of large parts of India. Some Muslim rulers were tolerant
of Hinduism, while others who were not sought to convert infidels to the
true faith and imposed jiziya or poll tax on non-Muslims. The British in
their turn observed, on the whole, a policy of neutrality toward all religions,
though the Church of England in India was supported from Indian revenues,
and European missionaries enjoyed a favoured position thanks to the
religious, cultural and racial links between them and the British rulers. It
was only in the “native states” ruled by Hindu princes—such as Nepal,
Travancore, Cochin, Mvsore, Baroda, Jaipur and Kashmir—that royalty
discharged some of the functions traditionally expected of it with regard to
caste and appointment of monastic heads. The Hindu kingdom of Nepal
was, and is, far more traditional in character than Hindu kingdoms
elsewhere in the subcontinent, and today Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom
in the world: “Until recently, the penal code of Nepal was based on the
Shastras, and social, religious and criminal offences were dealt with by
identical procedures. Brahmins were immune from capital punishment, and
the crime of killing a cow could bring the death penalty.”21
If we are to understand future trends, the absence of a central organization
for Hinduism, as well as lack of support from the political authority for
maintenance of Hindu religion and social structure, must be viewed along
with the radical changes occurring in the three institutions of caste, village
community and family system. I have already dealt with the changes
occurring in caste and shall not repeat them here. I shall merely point out
that as a result of increased secularization and mobility and the spread of an
equalitarian ideology, the caste system is no longer perpetuating Values
traditionally considered to be an essential part of Hinduism.
The changes that have occurred in the Indian village community have
resulted in its more effective integration with the wider economic, political,
educational and religious systems. The vast improvement in rural
communications that has taken place in the last few decades, especially
since World War II, the introduction of universal adult franchise and self-
government at various levels from the national to the village, the abolition
of Untouchability, the increased popularity of education among rural folk,
and the Community Development Program—all these are changing the
aspirations and attitudes of villagers. The desire for education and for a
“decent life” is widespread and vast numbers of people are no longer
content to live as their ancestors lived. Villages in India today are very far
indeed from the harmonious and cooperative little republics that some
imagine them to be; it would be more accurate to describe them as arenas of
conflict between high castes and Untouchables, landlords and tenants,
“conservatives” and “progressives” and finally, between rival factions.
Everywhere social life is freer than before, as pollution ideas have lost some
of their force. Secularization and politicization are on the increase and
villagers ask for wells, roads, schools, hospitals and electricity.22
It is easy, however, to exaggerate the increase in the secularization of
village life. It is true that the unit of endogamy has widened somewhat, but
this is more true of the higher castes than of others. The widening is,
moreover, along traditional lines; a crude way describing the situation
would be that while barriers between sub- sub-subcastes or sub-subcastes
are beginning to break down, marriages spanning wide structural or cultural
gaps are rare. That is, Peasants are not marrying Shepherds or Smiths or
Potters, but different Peasant subcastes speaking the same language are
coming together. (However, alliances involving structural and cultural leaps
occur occasionally among the new elite in the big cities.) Inter-dining
among castes is slightly more liberal than before, but only slightly. All the
“touchable” castes will unite against Harijans who want to exercise their
constitutional right of entering temples and drawing water from village
wells.
The processes which have affected caste and the village community have
also affected the family system. This has happened at all levels and in every
section of the society, but more particularly among the Westernized elite,
that is, the upper castes living in the laiger towns and cities. The traditional
system of joint families assumed the existence of a sufficient quantity of
arable land and a lack of spatial mobility and diversity of occupations.23
The idea of selling land in the open market, which became popular during
British rule, also contributed to the mobility of people. The development of
communications, the growth of urbanization and industrialization, and the
prestige of a regular cash income from employment in an office, factory or
the administration, dispersed kin groups from their natal villages and towns.
Yet it would be a gross oversimplification to suggest that the Indian family
system has changed or is changing from the joint to the nuclear type. The
process is extremely complicated, and there are not enough studies of
changes in family patterns in different regions and sections of the society.
Enumeration of the size of households or even their kinship composition is
not enough, as an urban household may be perfectly nuclear in composition
while kinship duties, obligations and privileges overflow it in many
important ways. Many an urban household is only the “satellite” of a
dominant kin group living in a village or town several hundred miles away.
The Indian family system, like caste, is resilient, and has shown great
adaptability to modern forces. It is still true, however, that significant
changes have taken place in the family system of the Hindus, and these
processes are not clearly discernible among the new elite groups. It is
among them that there is great spatial mobility, and members who establish
separate households in the large cities certainly live in a cultural and social
environment significantly different from that obtaining in a traditional joint
family in a small town or village. The urban household often lacks those
elders who not only are tradition-bound but also have knowledge of the
complex rituals to be performed at festivals and other occasions. Their mere
presence exercises a moral influence in favour of tradition—as was
vouched for by my Andhra Brahmin Communist informant, who said that
he changed into pure clothes at meals “because of his grandmother”. The
education of women has produced a situation in which young girls do not
have the time to learn rituals from their mothers or grandmothers, and the
small households in big cities frequently lack the old women who have the
knowhow and the leisure. The educated wife has less of the traditional
culture to pass on to her children, even should she want to.24 Still more
significant is the fact that elite households have become articulators of the
values of a highly competitive educational and employment system. Getting
children admitted to good schools, supervising their curricular and
extracurricular activities, and worrying about their future careers absorb the
energies of parents.25
These changes in family system occurring among the new elite groups are,
however, somewhat offset by other forces. In large cities such as Bombay,
Delhi, Calcutta and Madras, voluntary associations tend to be formed on the
basis of language, sect and caste, and these make up in some ways for the
loss of a traditional social and cultural environment. In a city such as Delhi,
for instance, practically every linguistic group of India has voluntary
cultural or other organizations which try to recreate for the speakers of each
language their home environment. Concerts are held, plays are staged,
harikathas are organized, regional festivals are celebrated, and regional
politicians and other celebrities are welcomed. There is also a certain
amount of residential clustering on the basis of language, and this is
achieved even in housing projects built by the Government of India and
which ostensibly do not recognize regional claims in allotting flats and
houses! A homesick South Indian or Bengāli likes to rent an apartment in
an area where other South Indians or Bengāl is live, and soon there come
into existence shops selling the spices, pickles, vegetables, household
utensils and cloth he was used to in his home area. The social network of an
educated, white-collar South Indian or Bengāli who is living away from his
linguistic area does include many people who speak a different language,
but those who speak his language will perhaps preponderate in it. To obtain
a seat in a school or college or a job for a relative or fellow townsman, he
may have to approach a Hindi or Punjabi speaker, but he does this usually
through intermediaries who speak his own language.26
Nevertheless, the traditional environment that is recreated in a big city
differs significantly from the environment that has been left behind. It is a
freer, more cosmopolitan and streamlined version, and it lacks the rich
detail, complexities, rigidities, nuances and obligatoriness of the traditional
environment. Besides, it caters more to the parental generation of
immigrants than to the offspring generation. The latter do not think of their
parents’ natal region as “home”, and many of them dislike visiting it even
for brief periods. Their participation in the local culture and institutions is
far greater than their parents . Occasionally, marriages cutting across the
linguistic and caste barriers occur between them and local folk.
The processes of secularization and politicization have also affected
monasteries and monastic heads. I have in mind not monastic or other
organizations which came into existence during British rule (for example,
Rāmakrishna Mission, Arya Samāj and Sanātan Dharma Samāj) but
traditional and pre-British monasteries such as those of the Smārthas, Srī
Vaishnavas, Mādhvas and Lingāyats. Gradually the feeling has grown
among educated Hindus that the wealth and prestige of these organizations
should be used for promoting education and the social welfare of the
people; this is one of the reasons why acts passed by state legislatures
giving the government considerable powers over the administration of
temples and monasteries have not evoked more opposition. The Lingāyats,
a highly organized sect, have shown much sensitivity to this new demand,
and Lingāyat monasteries operate their own hostels, schools and colleges.
Land legislation has everywhere abolished concession tenures such as
zamindāri, jāgīrdāri, inām and jodi. Those who enjoyed such tenures have
been paid compensation and the land has been sold to former tenants and
lessees. (Lands which were under the “personal cultivation” of zamindārs
were exempt from such legislation and, as could be expected, many of them
took advantage of legal and even extralegal, loopholes to retrieve as much
land as they could.) In many states, land held by temples was also affected
by this legislation:
 In Orissa, the High Court upheld the compulsory acquisition by the
state, with the payment of compensation, of lands which had been
dedicated to a Hindu deity (Chintamoni v. State of Orissa, A.I.R., 1958,
Orissa, p. 18). In Mysore, the Religious and Charitable Inams Act of
1955 empowered the government to resume lands which had been
assigned by the maharaja to religious institutions; as compensation the ,
state now makes an annual payment to the institutions. A number of
state legislatures are presently in the process of fixing ceilings on land
holdings. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Assam and West
Bengal have agreed to exempt temple lands from these ceilings. In some
of the other states, especially in South India where some of the
wealthiest temples are found, a maximum has been fixed for temple land
holdings, although higher than that for individual landowners.27

Those educated Hindus who did feel such legislation to be unfair

criticized the government sharply and monastic heads saw in them a
valuable ally against an ever-encroaching state. The reduced resources of
monasteries caused some of the heads to
turn to their followers for money. They began to undertake tours to raise
funds and cultivate the laity and these activities were reported in the press,
vernacular as well as English. The monastic heads not only continue to
enjoy the esteem of the people but are cultivated by many politicians and
they in turn appreciate the usefulness of having friends in political parties
and legislatures. Studies of the changing role of monastic heads and other
religious figures in modern Indian life would be a valuable contribution to
the literature on secularization.
The process of secularization began with British rule and has become
increasingly wider and deeper with the passage of years. But it is neither the
only process during this period nor has it been always a pure and unmixed
one. For instance, nationalism, a secular phenomenon, became enmeshed
with Hinduism at one stage. Hinduism has assumed a political form in the
Rāshtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Jan Sangh. The move to
abolish Untouchability owed as much to a realization of the inhumanity of
the institution as to an appreciation of the political loss that would result
from the conversion of Harijans to another religion. The term
“communalism”, which is an Indian contribution to the English language,
testifies to this tendency of religion to become mixed up with politics.
Sanskritization is not only spreading to new sections and areas, it is also
increasing among groups which are considered to be already Sanskritized in
their style of life. The spread of Sanskritization is aided by mass media and
by such secular processes as the increased popularity of education and
greater mobility, spatial as well as social. The idea of the equality of all men
before the law, and the abolition of Untouchability, are throwing open a
culture which was the monopoly of small traditional elites to the entire
body of Hindus.28 The effects of some acts of legislation, such as the
introduction of prohibition of the consumption of alcoholic drinks in many
states, and the banning of the sacrifice of birds and animals in Hindu
temples, are such as to make the government an unwitting but powerful
agent of Sanskritization.

The significant changes occurring in the triad of institutions— caste, family

system and village community—have resulted in Hinduism becoming, to
some extent, “free floating”. But this again is only a part of the story. New
agencies have emerged to provide a structure for reinterpreted Hinduism.
These agencies are still somewhat fluid and emergent. They are, on the one
hand, such new institutions as the Rāmakrishna Mission and Arya Samāj
and, on the other, old sects and monasteries which are trying to adjust
themselves to the new circumstances, and in that process are undergoing
change.
Other traditional institutions such as bhajans (groups of people who meet
periodically for singing hymns and worshipping a deity or saint), harikathas
and the cults of saints are also contributing to the evolution of a new
structure. Milton Singer has described in detail how the Rādhākrishna
bhajans function in Madras today, and he thinks that their popularity has
increased in recent years.29 Bhajans are an all-India phenomenon, and were
developed as an institution by the saints who sought salvation (moksha)
through the pursuit of the bhakti mārga or the path of devotion.30 Bhajans
are popular in both rural and urban areas and among all classes of Hindus.
The relative freedom of bhajans from ritual,31 their great aesthetic and
emotional appeal and their ability to cut across caste distinctions, are some
of the reasons for their popularity with urban and educated Hindus.
Although bhajan groups are sometimes organized around the’ worship of
a saint, the cult of saints is not always associated with bhajans, and
devotees may worship saints individually in the privacy of their homes. An
occasional pilgrimage to the saint’s āshram (hermitage) if he is alive, or to
his tomb if he is dead, is also customary. The cult of saints is an old
institution which has continued to modern times. Sects have occasionally
emerged from such cults. Allegiance to a sect may be hereditary, entire
lineages and subcastes being thus marked off from others, or it may be
purely voluntary as in the case of modern saints. Where allegiance is
voluntary it usually ignores caste, region and even religion. Saibāba, for
instance, is a Muslim saint worshipped by a large number of Hindus, many
of whom are educated. Pictures of the saint are kept and worshipped, and
the writings by or about the saint are read and discussed. Most Hindus are
articulate about their religious observances and beliefs and theological
discussions are freely entered into by people who meet for the first time in
trains, on buses or in hotel lobbies.
Organizations which profess to propagate Indian culture and thought also
propagate Hinduism. The classical literature and thought of India are all
Hindu, Buddhist and Jain, and books which popularize classical thought
cannot help spreading a body of ideas shared by these three faiths. It is
difficult indeed to draw a sharp line between the cultural and the religious
in a country such as India, which has a long and recorded history, and
where religion has been pervasive.32 Indian music, painting, sculpture and
dance draw greatly on Hindu religion, iconography and mythology. An
interesting development in the twentieth century is the emergence of Indian
dance and ballet divorced from the traditional contexts of temple and
festival, as purely aesthetic forms.
The government, too, is playing an important role in modernizing
Hinduism through legislation and other means. It is doing this in spite of the
fact that the Constitution declares India to be a secular state. I have already
referred to the outlawing of Untouch-ability. Changes have also been
introduced in Hindu personal and family law: bigamy is punishable by law;
divorce and intercaste and widow marriage are permitted; and widows and
daughters have been given shares in ancestral immovable property. The
administration of Hindu temples and monasteries is being radically altered
by legislation undertaken by the states.33 The first of such attempts was
embodied in the Madras Religious Endowments Act of 1927, and under it
the government appointed a Board of Commissioners headed by a president
to supervise the administration of Hindu endowments. This gave way in
1951 to the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act,
under which was created a new department of government headed by a
Commissioner. “The task of supervising temples and mathas thus passed
from a regulatory commission to an executive department directly under a
cabinet minister.”34 This Act, which conferred great powers on the
Commissioner, was challenged in the courts and the Supreme Court
declared some of its provisions invalid. A new act was passed in 1959 with
a view to meeting the objections of the court, and while it curtails some of
the powers of the Commissioner vis-a-vis mathas and denominational
temples, “the whole system of control over temples belonging to the general
Hindu public, with vast powers vested in the Commissioner, has remained
intact. As has been mentioned, these temples constitute the great majority of
the Hindu religious institutions.”35
 Other states such as Mysore, Bombay, Bihar and Orissa have also passed
legislation, though not so far-reaching as in Madras, controlling the
administration of Hindu religious endowments. In 1960 the Government of
India appointed a Hindu Religious Endowments Commission, under the
chairmanship of Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyer, to examine the administration
of Hindu religious endowments and suggest measures for its improvement.
The Commission’s report, submitted in 1962, urged the speedy enactment
of legislation providing for governmental supervision of temples in states
which did not already have such legislation, namely, Assam, West Bengal,
Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, and the setting up of institutes to provide priests
with instruction in Sanskrit, scriptures and ritual, and of theological
colleges for the study of religion along with the humanities. Moreover, the
Commission recommended that the Government of India give consideration
to enacting uniform legislation regulating endowments for all communities.
(Bombay state already has such legislation in the Bombay Public Trusts
Acts of 1950.)
Legislation undertaken by several states, ostensibly to ensure that
endowment funds are not misspent, has resulted in establishment of
government departments which determine how Hindu temples and
monasteries are to be run and how their money is spent.36

Thus funds from the famous temple at Tirupathi (regulated by special

legislation) have been used to establish a university, schools,
orphanages, hospitals, etc. Throughout South India, Tirupathi has
become the symbol and the model of the new Hinduism which
transforms the offerings of individualistic piety and devotion to God
into social institutions, dedicated to the service of man. Hinduism is
being infused with a modern outlook and a new sense of social
responsibility. This is a religious reformation of a fundamental nature.
But as the agency of this reform is to a large extent the state, it should
not be surprising if devout Hindus object to the liberties being taken
with their religion.37

Thus the state has become an important means of reinterpretation of

Hinduism in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and this in spite of
India’s proclaimed policy of being a secular state. The state, though most
important, is not the only organization performing this function, as I have
pointed out earlier. Political parties such as the Hindu Mahāsabha and the
Jan Sangh, and “cultural” organizations such as the militant Rāshtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, become agencies for the perpetuation and
reinterpretation of Hinduism. In a word, Hinduism is becoming
increasingly, though very slowly, dissociated from its traditional social
structure of caste, kinship and village community, and is becoming
associated with the state, political parties and organizations promoting
Indian culture. Traditional institutions such as monasteries and temples,
cults of saints, bhajan groups, and pilgrimages have shown resilience and
adaptability to new circumstances. Mass media such as the films, radio,
books and newspapers are playing their part in carrying Hinduism to all
sections of the Hindu population, and in the very process of such
popularization are reinterpreting the religion.38

NOTES

1 Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. XIII, p. 113.

2 For a discussion of the concepts of pollution-purity, see Chapter IV of my Religion and Society

Among the Coorgs of South India; and L. Dumont and D.F. Pocock (eds.), Contributions to Indian
Sociology, vol. Ill, Paris, 1959.
3 Personal communication to the author.

4 In a study undertaken in 1963–1964 of girl students in two colleges in Mysore city, it was found

that in the pre-university and B.Sc. classes, 803 out of a total of 1423 in one, and 113 out of 128 in
the other, were Brahmins. The former is an exclusively girls’ college run by the Government of
Mysore, while the latter is a coeducational college run by a private body. I owe these figures to the
courtesy of Miss. M.N. Chitra, Department of Sociology, Delhi University.
5 It would be interesting to find out what percentage of Mysore Brahmins between the ages of 15 and

40 wear the sacred thread and try to correlate the results with other social indices such as education,
occupation, income and spatial mobility. Thirty years ago practically everyone in that age group
would have been found wearing it, and some even performing the daily ritual of sandhya.
6 D. Ingalls, “The Brahmin Tradition”, in Milton Singer (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and

Change, p. 6.
7 M. Singer, “The Great Tradition in a Metropolitan Center: Madras”, in Milton Singer (ed.),

Traditional India: Structure and Change, p. 176.

8 See, in connection with the education of women and its effects on family life, Aileen D. Ross, The

Hindu Family in Its Urban Setting, Toronto, 1961, pp. 208–231.

9 Ibid., p. 229.

10 Ibid., p. 232.

11 Singer, see supra note 7, p. 173.

12 This is perhaps derived from “the cult of nāma-siddhānta, recital of God’s name as the most

potent means of salvation ... developed by saint-authors of the eighteenth century, like Srīdhara
Venkatesa and Bodhendra.” (V. Raghavan, “Methods of Popular Religious Instruction in South
India”, in Milton Singer (ed.), op. cit., p. 136.) T.B. Naik in his essay, “Religion of the Anāvils of
Surat”, in the same book, mentions the existence of the cult of nāma-siddhānta in Gujarat also:
“Blank notebooks are sold too, each page of which is full of small squares; in each square a god’s
name has to be written. There are books for 51,000 names, 125,000 names and so on, sold on a
nonprofit basis by an organization called the Rāmnām Bank (the bank specializing in Rāma’s name),
c/o Pandit Sevashram, Mani Nagar, Ahmedabad” (p. 186).
13 Singer, see supra note 7. p. 176, and D.E. Smith, India as a Secular State, pp. 245–259.

14 Ibid., p. 173.

15 I am excluding from consideration the publications of monasteries and other religious

organizations such as the Rāmakrishna Mission. The Lingāyat monasteries are very active in
publishing as in other fields. According to William McCormack, Lingāyats publish six magazines
and there are about two hundred pamphlets and twenty-five scholarly publications. See his article,
“The Forms of Communication in Vīraśaiva Religion”, in Milton Singer (ed.), op. cit., pp. 126–127.
16 “Dharwar radio station began broadcasting in 1949, and though hardly a sectarian institution, the

station does present many programs of religious interest to Vīraśaivas. The birthday of Basava was
celebrated by special program in 1957, which occupied most of the evening broadcast time. Villagers
with access to radio sets try not to miss the bhajan programs, which are labelled simply ‘For
Villagers’ in the station program guides. Vacanas [aphoristic preachings in Kannada of Lingāyat
saints] sung in the style of classical music are the most common of the sectarian broadcasts. The
Dharwar and Bangalore stations have many vacana records and vacana programs occur on the
average once in two days from each of the two Kannada broad-casting stations. Radio dramas are
occasionally produced which narrate the lives of Vīraśaiva saints, as for example, Akkamahādevi.”
(Ibid., p. 128.)
17 See in this connection McKim Marriott’s “Changing Channels of Cultural Transmission”, in V.F.

Ray (ed.), Intermediate Societies, Social Mobility and Communication, 1959, pp. 66–74.
18 See N. Gist, “Caste Differentials in South India”, in American Sociological Review, vol. 19, No. 2,

1954, p. 134.
19 "The devout Hindu also wears on his head the little lock of hair, the śikhā, sometimes knotted,

sometimes merely a tuft of hair slightly longer than the rest, which the Tantric devotee regards as the
orifice of the spirit, the point at which the spirit entered at initiation (before initiation one is as good
as dead) and leaves at death. The śikhā is the repository of the spirit because all spiritual energy lies
there. An old Vedic text runs, ‘Void is he if he is not covered and is clean shaved; for him the śikhā is
the cover (protection).’ The śikhā is regarded as the symbol of a Hindu’s resolve to face life
unmoved.” (S. Bhattacharyya, “Religious Practices of the Hindus”, in Kenneth Morgan (ed.),
Religion of the Hindus, New York, 1953, p. 165.
20 Gist, op. cit., pp. 128–129. A similar situation obtains in Bengal: “In the case of castes like

Brahmin or Vaidya, the departure from traditional occupation has been very high indeed; while there
has been a corresponding concentration, not in agriculture or industries, but in ‘higher professions,’
like medicine, law, office work of various kinds, or landowning or land management.” (N.K. Bose,
“Some Aspects of Caste in Bengal”, in Milton Singer (ed.) Traditional India: Structure and Change,
p. 198.)
21 Smith, op. cit., p. 299.

22 But it is obvious that India has a long way to go. See in this connection R. Bendix, Nation-

Building and Citizenship, New York, 1964, pp. 248–263.

23 F.G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier, Bombay, 1958, pp. 9–10 and 91–93.

24 Aileen Ross found that in Bangalore city in South India, “the type of family structure, however,

had a decided relation to the rate of change. The majority of the 141 interviewees, for example, who
said that they no longer followed the family customs they had learned as children came from nuclear
families, whereas about one-third of those coming from joint families said that they still followed the
traditional family customs wholly or in part. Interviewees who had been brought up in orthodox
homes or in closely knit joint families, also felt that they had changed less from the customs learned
as children than those who had grown up in ‘progressive’ homes.... Age, marital status and number of
generations in city were other important variables which seemed to effect family change.” (The
Hindu Family in Its Urban Setting, Toronto, 1962, p. 281.)
25 Ibid., p. 225.

26 This happens at all levels, including those who are barely literate. When I was teaching at the

M.S. University, Baroda, a Marāthi-speaking peon in the University who knew me well requested me
to recommend his cousin for a job in a big pharmaceuticals firm in Baroda. I told him that I did not
know anyone there. He then reminded me that the works manager of the firm came from my part of
the country! The systematic study of the role of kin, caste and local networks, and of the links
between these networks in the urbanization process, is an important area of research.
27 Smith, op. cit., p. 244 (n. 13).

28 J.N. Farquhar comments on the paradox of the Sanātan Dharma Sabha selling cheap editions of

the Vedas to all Hindus, irrespective of caste: “Yet this most orthodox movement, backed by the
heads of all the greatest Hindu sects, sells copies of any part of the Vedas to any one who cares to buy
them, and encourages their study, no matter what a man’s caste may be.” (Modern Religious
Movements in India, New York, 1915, p. 322.)
29 M. Singer, "The Rādhakrishan Bhajans of Madras City”, in History of Religions, vol. 2. No. 2,

1963, p. 184, and see supra note 7, p. 149.

30 See V. Raghavan, supra note 12, pp. 136–137.

31 Some bhajans do, however, involve performing elaborate ritual. See Singer, “The Rādhakrishna

Bhajans of Madras City”, pp. 194–196.

32 For a discussion of the relation between Indian culture and Hinduism in the context of

independent India’s policy of a secular state, see Smith, op. cit., pp. 374 ff.
33 Ibid., pp. 245 ff.

34 Ibid., p. 245.

35 Ibid., p. 250.

36 Ibid., pp. 245–257.

37 Ibid., p. 254.

38 See Marriott, supra note 17.

 5

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE

STUDY OF ONE’S OWN SOCIETY

IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS I have tried to analyze some aspects of

social change in modern India. I shall now consider briefly some
methodological issues which stem out of the study of one’s own society,
particularly when that society is undergoing rapid transformation. In order
to do this I shall have to refer to myself and my work, and embarrassing as
this is I hope that the exercise will clarify for me, and perhaps for others
also, certain problems which anyone engaged in the study of his own
society has to face. It may also induce some of my colleagues to make a
similar effort, so that the net result might be greater objectivity in the work
we are engaged in, work which an increasing number of scholars from the
developing countries are likely in the near future to be engaged in.
One of the things that strikes me as I look back on the reception accorded
my work outside my country is the repeated reference to my being an
Indian sociologist engaged in the study of my own society. One view was
that it gave me a great advantage; according to another, my description as
well as interpretation was better when I forgot that I was a social
anthropologist; and a third view raised the methodological question, “Just
how far can any sociologist understand his own society?” Radcliffe-Brown
took the first view when he wrote in the Foreword to my book on the
Coorgs, “This book by a trained anthropologist, who is himself an Indian,
and who has therefore an understanding of Indian ways of thought which it
is difficult for a European to attain even over many years, gives us a
scientifically valuable and objective account of the religious behaviour of a
particular Indian community.”1
The Times Literary Supplement reviewer took the second view: “… is a
Brahmin as well as an anthropologist and he looks at the Coorgs from both
angles. Perhaps he is at his best when he ceases to feel that he must write in
the language of social anthropology and allows his other self, the cultured
Indian townsman, to describe and interpret the life of some of the peasantry
of his country.”2
The third view is forcefully expressed in a review by E.R. Leach of my
Caste in Modern India:
“For Professor Srinivas there are aspects of Hinduism in general and
Brahminism in particular which he knows from the inside but which
even the most erudite European can never learn. But is this an advantage
or a disadvantage from the viewpoint of sociological analysis?
One of Professor Srinivas’ most notable contributions to Indian
sociology has been his development of the concept of "sanskritization”,
the basic theme of which is that there is a long term tendency for caste
groups which are low in the social hierarchy to imitate the style of life of
high caste Brahmins, thus introducing a certain fluidity into the total
hierarchy of castes. That such fluidity exists has been clearly
demonstrated, but that it should be seen as arising from an emulation of
the Brahmins seems to me odd—a specifically “Brahminocentric” point
of view! If Professor Srinivas had been of Shudra origin, would this have
coloured his interpretation?3

My Indian colleagues from outside South India have pointed out to me

that my preoccupation with pollution-purity, ritual, Sanskritization, caste
and the Backward Classes Movement arises from my being a South Indian.
They are of the view that the cultural and social distance between the
Brahmin and the others is greater in the South, and that pollution ideas have
received greater elaboration there, and finally, that the Backward Classes
Movement is characteristic only of the South. One North Indian colleague
is emphatic that he could not have located sanskritization in Bengal while
he could not have missed it in Tamilnād. According to him, the
Sanskritization of the spoken language is conspicuous in the Dravidian-
speaking areas as it results in the juxtaposition of words and speech forms
from two different language families. In areas where one or the other of the
Indo-Aryan languages prevails, increased Sanskritization does not produce
a similar anomaly.
Sanskritization as a term appears for the first time in my Coorg book, but
the seeds of the idea probably go back to my master’s degree thesis,
Marriage and Family in Mysore, published in 1942 (and now, fortunately,
out of print).4 It was based primarily on a study of earlier published work
on Mysore. Even such a callow researcher as I was at that time could not
help noticing that non-Brahmin institutions were “liberal” while those of
the Brahmins were not, and generally, that the lower the ritual position of
the caste the more liberal were its institutions. More importantly, the
upward movement of a caste was marked by, among other things, the
banning of divorce and widow marriage: "We may even go so far as to say
that the farther removed a caste is from the Sanskritic influence the less
respect does it pay to these ideals. But imitation of the higher castes has set
in, and soon Kannada society as a whole (with the exception of the highest
castes among whom the old ideals are cracking up) will be swinging in the
direction of these ideals.”5
When I was doing fieldwork among the Coorgs of South India I was
essentially interested in the reconstruction of their traditional culture, and
this resulted in my being myopic toward the changes which Coorg society
was undergoing. It was only in oxford, and at the suggestion of Radcliffe-
Brown, that I looked at my material on Coorg ritual from a “structural-
functional” point of view. I could then not help concluding that Coorg
religion was a variant of Hinduism, the latter consisting of several levels
which I labelled “local”, “regional”, “peninsular” and “All-India”. All-India
Hinduism was synonymous with Sanskritic Hinduism. Coorg customs had
undergone a process of Sanskritization over the centuries, the two most
important agents of the process being Lingāyats and Brahmins. An
awareness of the influence of Lingāyatism on the life style of the Coorgs
was an important factor in my preferring “Sanskritization” to the narrower
“Brahminization”. Thus, I find myself stating in the Coorg book,
 It is not always the Brahmin priest who is the agent of Sanskritic
Hinduism. In every part of the Kannada country and in Coorg, the
Lingāyat sect, consisting exclusively of non-Brahmins, have exercised
in the past a Sanskritizing influence. Lingāyat ritual is Sanskritic
(though not Vedic), and the Lingāyat Rajas of Coorg have been
responsible for the Sanskritization of the customs, manners and rites of
the Coorgs. Customs like marking the forehead every morning with
three stripes of sacred ashes (vibhūti), celebrating the festival of
Shivarātri and erecting tombstones, surmounted by the figure of the
Nandi Bull, over the graves of important persons, reveal Lingāyat
influence.6

Leach’s assertion that I see Sanskritization “as arising from an emulation of

the Brahmins” is, therefore, not correct.
My being a Brahmin did, however, influence in several other ways my
observation and understanding of the Coorgs. Throughout the Coorg book
there are comparisons, occasionally explicit but most of the time implicit,
between Coorgs and Mysore Brahmins. To quote an example of explicit
comparison: “Not only widows but remarried widows, are excluded from
auspicious rituals but such exclusion is not as thorough among Coorgs as it
is, for instance, among Brahmins.”7 Comparison, however, seems inevitable
in the process of understanding of another society or even a different
section or period of one’s own. All new social experience is referred to a
pre-existing base of known and understood framework of social institutions,
values and ideas.
My model of Sanskritization was derived, as I have stated earlier, from
both the Brahmins and Lingāyats. I did miss the Kshatriya and Vaishya
models—as Pocock and Singer have pointed out—not because of
“Brahminocentrism” but because the Mysore region lacks Kshatriya and
Vaishya castes whose style of Life is markedly different from that of the
Brahmin or Lingāyat. The Arasus (Kannada-speaking Kshatriyas) have
themselves been influenced by Brahmins and Lingāyats and the Komatis
(Telugu-speaking Vaishyas) by Brahmins. Both are, by tradition,
vegetarians and teetotalers, and call on the Brahmin priest to minister to
them at various rites de passage.
 I am now surprised to find that when analyzing my Coorg material I
missed the significance of Westernization. This certainly was not due to my
being a Brahmin, but to concentration on the traditional aspects of Coorg
society to the total neglect of social change. In a sense, the style of life of
Coorgs in the 1940s was far more Westernized than that of Mysore
Brahmins. But it was only in 1954 when, at the suggestion of Milton Singer,
I started writing the essay, “A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization”,
that the importance of Westernization and its linkage with Sanskritization
suddenly became clear to me. I found that Mysore Brahmins were rapidly
Westernizing themselves just as castes ritually lower to them were moving
in the direction of Sanskritization. (A similar process has been reported by
Gould for some villages in Uttar Pradesh.8) This, however, is only one
aspect of the process, and there are other and counteracting processes.
Westernization is becoming broader, deeper and more powerful as the years
go by, and this will necessitate a continuous examination of the dynamic
relationship between it and Sanskritization.
Dumont and Pocock have suggested that I transplanted the notion of
“dominance” from the African to the Indian field.9 I used the term
“dominant caste” for the first time in my essay, “Social System of a Mysore
Village”, and it is probable that I was unconsciously influenced by
references to dominant clan and dominant lineage in contemporary
anthropological literature on Africa. But in a sense the Coorg book is also
about a dominant caste, and it was but a step from it to a formulation of the
idea of the dominant caste. Moreover, when I was engaged in fieldwork in
Rāmpura in 1948, the dominance of the local Okkaligas made a powerful
impression on me. The few Brahmins who were resident there were
completely, even pathetically, dependent on the powerful Okkaliga
landowners. (In some villages in this area Brahmins had previously enjoyed
dominance, but their gradual movement since the 1920s into the cities in
search of education and employment, had been followed by their selling
land to Okkaligas and others.) From my talks with elders in Rāmpura and
neighbouring villages I got the impression that even as recently as the
World War I years, leaders of the locally dominant castes had enjoyed
considerable power and autonomy at the village level thanks to poor
communications, and to the absence of any effective involvement on the
part of the State in village affairs. This impression was confirmed when I
read N. Rama Rao’s Kelavu Nenapugaḷu, a masterly book of reminiscences
of the days when he was an Amildār (official in charge of a tāluk) in this
region.10 The government officials, as far as people living in any village
were concerned, were occasional and unwelcome visitors, and villagers
normally went about their work untroubled by them. The leaders of the
dominant castes resembled chieftains, and evoked fear and respect from
ordinary folk. Each leader was the head of a faction composed of kinfolk,
castefolk, and clients from other castes, and relations between leaders of
rival factions were distinctly unfriendly.
The dominant caste could be a local source of Sanskritization or a barrier
to its spread. Studies of locally dominant castes are, therefore, essential to
an understanding of regional cultural differences. More important, a
realization of the power, influence and prestige of dominant castes enables
the sociologist to view in a new light the ideas and sentiments expressed in
the sacred literature of the Hindus. A Brahmin who went to a peasant-
dominated village and behaved like a “deity on earth” would indeed get
short shrift. Manu would be a bad guide for fieldworkers; urban and upper
caste sociologists in India need to keep this constantly in mind.
Finally, my stressing of the importance of the Backward Classes
Movement and of the role of caste in politics and administration, are very
probably the result of my being a South Indian and a Brahmin at that. The
principle of caste quotas for appointment to posts in the administration and
for admissions to scientific and technological courses, produced much
bitterness among Mysore Brahmins. Some of these were my friends and
relatives and I could not help being sensitive to their distress as well as to
the steady deterioration in efficiency and the fouling of interpersonal
relations in academic circles and the administration—both results of a
policy of caste quotas. As one with a strong attachment to Mysore, I could
not but be affected by the manner in which conflict between castes
prevented concentration on the all-important task of developing the
economic resources of the State for the benefit of all sections of its
population. I must add, however, that in spite of the Backward Classes
Movement, members from different castes were frequently bound together
by strong ties of friendship. Sometimes such friendships occurred between
entire families, continuing from one generation to the next. I was fortunate
in that my natal family had close friends from different castes, sects and
religions, and this was a factor in my being able to view the Movement with
some detachment. I could also not help noticing how the caste-centered
comments of the Brahmins often annoyed sensitive non-Brahmins.
 The character of the Backward Classes Movement changed with the
transfer of power to the people. The numerical strength of caste groups
became critical in a political democracy based on universal adult suffrage
and dominance based on economic power and education alone was not
enough. Dominant castes tried everywhere to increase their strength by
ignoring subdivisions among them previously regarded as important.
Sometimes, however, the numerical strength of the caste varied according
to the context; for instance, subdivisions were ignored in political contexts
while for marriage they continued to be relevant. An extreme example of
this is to be found in the Gujarat Kshatriya Sabha, which is made up of
Rājpūts as well as Koḷīs who form distinct castes, the Koḷīs being regarded
as decidedly inferior to the Rājpūts.

Leach has asked whether, from the point of sociological analysis, it is an

advantage or a disadvantage for a sociologist to be studying his own
society. Whatever the disadvantage, it has certainly not been so great as to
prevent the emergence of the discipline of sociology. Marx, Weber,
Mannheim and several other sociologists have been continuously
preoccupied with the study of their own societies.
It is evident, however, that a sociologist engaged in the study of his own
society enjoys advantages as well as disadvantages, and pedagogically it is
very important to ensure that the disadvantages are minimized while the
advantages are retained. This problem is urgent as an increasing number of
sociologists from developing countries are likely to be studying, in the near
future, aspects of their own society.
The sociologist who is engaged in the study of his own society is likely to
be influenced by his social position, not only in his observations but also in
the problems he selects for study. But this need not always be a source of
error—it might even be a source of insight. Insights, however, have to be
subjected to rigorous testing before they can become valid generalizations.
The moral, then, is that an idea is not necessarily wrong because its
originator occupies a particular position in the society. Its validity or
invalidity has to be independently established. In the words of Bernard
Shaw, “The test of sanity is not the normality of the method but the
reasonableness of the discovery.”11
The examination of one’s ideas and interests, and relating them to one’s
social background and intellectual history are, however, necessary in order
to make one’s work more objective. For the very awareness of subjectivity
—and the areas and forms in which it is most likely to occur—is a step
toward achieving greater objectivity. But that alone is not enough. It has to
be supplemented by several other measures. One obvious measure would be
to have the problem—any one problem—studied by sociologists with
different backgrounds and indeed, from different countries. International
cooperation among professionals is indispensable for achieving greater
objectivity in sociology.
Since subjectivity is inescapable as well as serious, a continuous effort
must be made to reduce it. This is best done by recognizing its existence
and by exposing the student, from the very beginning of his academic
career, to the culture and institutions of alien societies. It is in this context
that the traditional but irrational distinction between sociology and social
anthropology is so disastrous. A true science of society must include the
study of all societies in space as well as time—primitive, modern and
historical. This is forcibly brought home to the sociologist of Indian society;
not only has India a long, recorded history, but Harijans (about 66 millions
in 1965) and tribal folk (about 30 millions in 1965) have always been a part
of Indian culture and society. Interaction between the various segments and
levels of Indian society has been continuous. Over a period of time tribal
groups have succeeded in establishing claims to Kshatriyahood, and
elements of tribal ritual and social life have found their way into higher
Hinduism. Pollution ideas have been elaborated in tribal groups as well as
in the high castes. Vested interests continue, however, to regard sociology
and social anthropology as separate disciplines.

3
In order to be able to observe any society, the observer needs a measure of
detachment from his own, and for detachment to be effective, it must be as
much a matter of the emotions as of the intellect. Fieldwork, as I shall
explain later, is one of the surest ways of attaining such detachment. It is
true that some of the greatest names in the history of sociology did not
themselves engage in field research, but the discipline which they worked
devotedly to found has grown since their days and field research has
contributed significantly to this growth. Anyway, my concern here is with
the training of ordinary students and geniuses can be safely left to
themselves.
Fieldwork in an alien society constitutes an excellent preparation for the
observation of one’s own society, but it is very expensive and developing
countries will not be able to afford it. Under the circumstances it is best if
the young sociologist begins fieldwork in a section of the society different
from that to which he belongs. It is well to remember that a classic of
descriptive sociology, W. F. Whyte’s Street Corner Society, was the author’s
first study and was carried out in a community not far from his university.
An urban Indian sociologist coming from a middle-class family would
likewise find a village a few miles away or even a slum in his own city a
startlingly new social world. One of the consequences of a sharp
stratification system is an indifference among the upper groups toward the
culture and life of the lower; and in a large country such as India there is in
addition considerable regional diversity. Both these factors compensate to
some extent for the non-availability of resources enabling Indian
sociologists to carry out their first field study in an alien society.
I have so far spoken of fieldwork as though it was of one, homogeneous
kind; the fact remains that this is not so. There are different kinds of
fieldwork, from the intensive study of a small community or group by a
single investigator, to a large, country-wide survey employing a large
number of investigators doing the actual interviewing of respondents. And
there are various gradations in between. In what follows I have in mind
primarily intensive fieldwork using the method of “participant observation”,
but I expect that all fieldwork which involves the sociologist’s coming into
some form of close contact with people having institutions, ideas and values
different from his own will be productive of detachment, though not in the
same degree as intensive fieldwork.
I shall not try to define intensive fieldwork; instead I refer readers who
wish to know what it is to Evans-Pritchard’s Social Anthropology,12 and to
the appendix on fieldwork in Whyte’s Street Corner Society.13 Successful
fieldwork involves not only the sociologist’s painstaking collection of a vast
amount of the minutiae of ethnography, but also his exercising his powers
of empathy to understand what it is to be a member of the community that
is being studied. In this respect, the sociologist is like a novelist who must
of necessity get under the skin of the different characters he is writing
about. Some institutions of the community or group he is studying may
appear strange and others even outrageous. But he should make an effort to
overcome his hesitance, if not revulsion, and try to see them as does an
ordinary member of the host community. Needless to say, this involves not
only his intellect but his emotions as well.
In the process of putting himself in the shoes of the members of another
community, the sociologist becomes to some extent detached from his own.
Whyte sums up a typical process when he says:

I began as a non-participating observer. As I became accepted into the

community, I found myself becoming almost a nonobserving
participant. I got the feel of life in Corneville, but that meant that I got to
take for granted the same things that my Corneville friends took for
granted. I was immersed in it, but I could as yet make little sense out of
it. I had a feeling that I was doing something important, but I had yet to
explain to myself what it was.14

The transition from a non-participating observer to a participating

observer cannot happen without the sociologist’s exercising all his powers
of empathy. As Stark has said,

the problem of penetrating through the outer shell of an alien society is

only partly an intellectual problem; it is partly also a moral one: it is an
intellectual effort in so far as it presupposes the collection and
comprehension of a good deal of factual material; but it is a moral effort
—un effort de sympathie, as Bergson, with singular felicity, expressed it
 —in so far as we can make nothing of that factual material, in so far as it
will remain dead in our hands, unless we summon up sufficient
willingness to think the thoughts and feel the feelings of the people
whose life is involved in these facts.15

Generally, after finishing fieldwork, the sociologist goes back to his

university to write up the results of his study. Physical distance from the
field, as well as the necessity of describing and analyzing his experiences in
terms that will be intelligible to his colleagues all over the world, forces
him to emerge from his previous role of participant-observer and become an
impersonal analyst. This is not an easy task, as any fieldworker can testify.
For the first few days or even weeks after his return he will tend to be
bewildered by the adjustments he is called upon to make. The seminars and
lectures, the informal discussions outside the classroom and lecture hall,
and most of all the very process of writing about his ex́ perience for an
impersonal and professional audience, gradually produce for him a measure
of distance from the field he has left behind.
The field study of an alien society, or of a different segment of his own
society, prepares the sociologist for the more sophisticated task of studying
his own society or that segment of it to which he belongs. Though he still
remains a member of his society, he is able to look at it to some extent as an
outsider. His position is again similar to that of a novelist who manages to
observe his fellow man as well as participate in the life around him. Unlike
the novelist, however, the sociologist is primarily interested in a theoretical
explanation of human social behaviour and in generalizations rather than
the development of concrete particularizations.
I have spoken earlier of the diversity of Indian society and culture, but
diversity is only one aspect of the matter. The Indian subcontinent is, in a
broad sense, one culture area, and over the centuries ideas, institutions and
artifacts have frequently moved from one part of the country to another,
undergoing modifications at every step. Thus, as one moves across the
country, seemingly familiar things are seen to reveal unsuspected
unfamiliarities just as seemingly unfamiliar things reveal familiarities. The
unity as well as the diversity of India has to be borne in mind continuously,
for otherwise there is likelihood that a village or tribe will be regarded as an
isolate. A knowledge of regional history and culture, if not of Indian history
and culture, would be a necessary preparation for undertaking a community
study. But this can easily be carried too far, and in another sense one’s
knowledge of the regional or overall culture can never be adequate.
Actually, the study of a village or a small town or a caste provides a
strategic point of entry for the study of Indian society and culture as a
whole. It forces the young scholar to keep his mind steadfastly on the
existential reality as contrasted with the book-view of society. It also poses
the all-important question, “What is the relation between the sacred
literature and the existing institutions during various—that is, any particular
—periods of Indian history?” A satisfactory answer to this can only be
provided after years of painstaking research into regional history and
culture.
While intensive field studies have a very important place in the study of
Indian society,16 it is obvious that they must be supplemented by several
other kinds of studies using a variety of techniques. Macro-studies
involving the cooperation of several workers, as well as interdisciplinary
studies, are essential. But it is best—from the point of view of the
researcher’s career—that an intensive field study precede rather than follow
a macro-study, as it trains the sociologist to look at a fact or event in its total
matrix, and to perceive subtle and remote relationships which are frequently
missed out in broad surveys of a limited set of facts or relationships.
The study of one’s own society while it is changing rapidly—as all
developing societies are indeed doing—poses a challenge that calls for the
mobilization of all the intellectual and moral resources of the sociologist.
The changes might seriously threaten his own social position and sense of
security and the difficulty of retaining a measure of detachment under these
circumstances can be imagined. Many of my colleagues in India, for
instance, come from urban but landowning middle-class families and they
have been adversely affected by recent land reform legislation, inflation and
the prospect of a change from the use of English to regional languages in
the administration and universities. They also see that the political changes
which have occurred since Independence have brought to power in many
areas leaders of the dominant, peasant castes, whom their fathers used to
look down upon only a generation ago. Political dominance at the regional
and State levels yields economic and other rewards to the dominant castes,
and along with this there has been a steady decline in the power and
influence wielded by the urban middle class. Under the circumstances, it is
understandable if some Indian sociologists from the middle class become
hostile to all change, while others move to another type of subjectivity in
which they become the enthusiastic exponents of a radicalist ideology
which holds the upper castes and the urban middle class responsible for all
the ills of modern India.
Developing countries are today arenas for conflict between the old and the
new. The old order is no longer able to meet the new forces, nor the new
wants and aspirations of the people, but neither is it moribund—in fact, it is
still very much alive. The conflict produces much unseemly argument,
discord, confusion, and on occasion, even bloodshed. Under the
circumstances, it is tempting for the sociologist to look to the good old
peaceful days in sheer nostalgia. But a moment’s reflection should convince
him that the old order was not conflict-free and that it perpetrated inhuman
cruelties on vast sections of the population. A theoretical approach that
regards conflict as abnormal, or that invests equilibrium with a special
value in the name of science, can be a handicap in studying developing
societies. But that is precisely what has happened under functionalism.
Leach has pointed out the consequences of preoccupation with equilibrium
and solidarity:
English social anthropologists have tended to borrow their primary
concepts from Durkheim rather than from either Pareto or Max Weber.
Consequently they are greatly prejudiced in favour of societies which
show symptoms of “functional integration”, “social solidarity”, “cultural
uniformity”, “structural equilibrium”. Such societies, which might well
be regarded as moribund by historians or political scientists, are
commonly looked upon by social anthropologists as healthy and ideally
fortunate. Societies which display symptoms of faction and internal
conflict leading to rapid change are on the other hand suspected of
“anomie” and pathological decay.17
Conflict ought to be seen as inhering in social life everywhere. The
institutional devices which every society has provided for the solution of
conflict may work with greater or less efficiency. Or the devices may work
efficiently in some areas and not in others. There may be more conflict in
some societies than in others, and in the same society there may be more
conflict in some periods than in the others. Conflict may be uniform over
almost the entire range of institutions, or more frequent in some than in the
others. It may be much greater over some objects and events than over
others. But conflict as such is an inescapable part of social existence and
should be of serious concern to the sociologist.
It is necessary to distinguish between forms of conflict that can be
resolved by existing institutional mechanisms and more fundamental
conflicts that threaten the entire social order. The social order may change
gradually over a period of time, or suddenly and with violence. The
suddenness of the change may, however, be more apparent than real, the
dynamic forces having gone unrecognized for some time or their
significance having been misunderstood.
The developing countries are characterized by the existence of leaders
who are determined to bring about radical changes in traditional life and
culture, and these leaders both reflect and guide the aspirations, hopes and
ideals of their followers. Population is growing rapidly in these countries, in
some of them, this constitutes a serious obstacle to economic development.
Under the circumstances a return to the old order would only mean
starvation and misery for millions. Sociologists from developing countries
are therefore forced to take a positive attitude toward social change. Some
are also actively involved in the process of development, and an increasing
number are likely to be thus involved in the future as these countries
become committed to programmes of planned development.
Sociologists may be involved in developmental work, either as regular
employees of the government or as members of policymaking committees.
In the former role they are like other civil servants except that they continue
to be engaged in a sociological activity—the study and evaluation of the
work of various developmental agencies and individuals. This is not an easy
task as it involves judging, however indirectly, the work of their colleagues
in the government. A very tactful report may preserve good relations with
colleagues in other departments, but may thereby totally fail in the main
task of evaluatin developmental work. Pinpointing defects, on the other
hand, may not only result in bad relations with particular departments or
officials, but may even dry up official sources of information for
investigators. The information collected cannot always be used, as it might
mean committing a breach of confidence. The work of evaluation thus
poses a variety of problems when the evaluating unit is part of the
administrative machinery, or even when it is an autonomous organization.
Over the years, sociologists employed by the government are likely to find
their expertise becoming blunted and out of date, just as their bureaucratic
sense is likely to become keener. The government as well as the discipline
might benefit by their spending a few months periodically in universities,
attending refresher courses and reading up on the latest developments in
theory and method.
The problems of the academic sociologist who serves on government
committees are, however, of a different kind. In the first place, he has to
decide how much of his time he is going to give to committees, and how
much to his teaching, his students and his own reading and research. The
pitfalls and dangers attendant on membership of committees are well
known. The need to be “practical” and to see the difficulties of government,
to present to the people a hopeful view of the future, plus considerations of
tact and finally, the desire to rub shoulders with the great of the land, might
all make him a pleasant “yes man” who finds himself, as a result, put on
more and more committees. Again, the fact that governments now collect
vast quantities of data on a wide variety of subjects, and that they have a
monopoly over such data, means that committees start with assumptions
regarding facts which are not checked by any outside agency.
Perhaps those sociologists most useful to committees are the ones who
have had some experience of how the development agencies of the
government work and how these agencies actually collect their data. The
employment in government of academic sociologists for short periods or for
particular assignments, may be desirable from several points of view. It
gives the sociologists inside knowledge of how policies are implemented at
various levels of the government and of the relations between officials and
the people. In other words, it would be a kind of “field experience” of
development for them. They would also meet and talk to the men who are
gatherers of primary data for the government.
But a most important role of the sociologist is to analyze ongoing social
processes in his country. If he is successful in this task he is making a
contribution to collective self-knowledge which others, without his training,
are ordinarily not capable of making. And knowledge, unless it is
suppressed, is likely to lead to action. The sociologist can perform such a
function only when he is in a university and it is therefore essential that a
sufficient number of able sociologists teach in universities. The higher
salaries and attractive perquisites and even the greater prestige, attached to
government employment in some developing countries operate against the
best men continuing in universities. And the situation is likely to get worse
when firms and factories begin to compete with the government in luring
sociologists away from teaching and fundamental research.
Underlying his role as teacher and as analyst of social processes, however,
there is a commitment to the discipline as well as to his country. As a
sociologist he is a member of an international, scholarly community, each
member of which is striving to teach the subject and also advance its
frontiers. It is well to remember that his other commitment is to the country
as a whole and its development, and not to the government of the day, a
political party or the establishment. It is true that all developing countries
are passing through a strong nationalist phase, and that occasionally this
may express itself in chauvinism; but while rejecting the latter we should be
careful not to also reject nationalism, which provides a strong motive force
for social reform and development. But as a student of social evolution the
sociologist should also see that wider political entities than the nation-state
are emerging, and that the best hope for the survival of his country (and
himself) is a world in which a supranational order has outlawed war and the
sources of war, between nations.
The sociologist’s commitment to democratic processes is fundamental and
is derived from his commitment to his discipline, for unfettered social
inquiry cannot exist and flourish in totalitarian systems. This is particularly
true in regard to a sociologist studying his own society. Commitment to
democratic processes results in the sociologist having a deep concern in
national development; the expectations of ordinary people have risen
everywhere and they can only be satisfied by swift development as well as
by a swift and sharp reduction of existing inequalities. Development which
only makes the rich richer and leaves the condition of the masses of the
poor unchanged is likely to produce chronic political instability which, in
turn, will hamstring development. Commitment to development is therefore
also a commitment to the reduction of economic and social inequalities.
I have listed some of the qualities I regard as desirable if not necessary in
sociologists coming from developing countries. I would like to add to these
an occasional ability to see the absurd side of things and to laugh at
themselves. Otherwise they will be pompous and opinionated, and apt to
regard themselves as infallible.
 NOTES

1 A.R. Radcliffe Brown, foreword to M.N. Srinivas, Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South

India, Oxford, 1952, p. v.

2 Times Literary Supplement, September 6, 1952.

3 E.R. Leach, The British Journal of Sociology, vol. XIV, no. 4, December, 1963, pp. 377–378.

4 M.N. Srinivas, Marriage and Family in Mysore, Bombay, 1942.

5 Ibid., p. 126.

6 M.N. Srinivas, see supra note 1, p. 225.

7 M.N. Srinivas, see supra note 1, p. 73.

8 H.A. Gould, “Sanskritization and Westernization, a Dynamic View”, Economic Weekly, vol. XIII,

no. 25, June 24, 1961, pp. 945–950.

9 L. Dumont and D.F. Pocock, “Village Studies”, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, no. 1, April,

1957, p. 27.
10 N. Rama Rao, Kelavu Nenapugaḷu, Bangalore, 1954, passim.

11 Bernard Shaw, preface to “Saint Joan”, p. 16 (Penguin edition).

12 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology, Glencoe, 111., 1954, pp. 64–85.

13 W. F. Whyte, Street Corner Society, Chicago, 1953, pp. 279–360; see also J.A. Barnes, “Some

Ethical Problems in Modern Fieldwork”, British Journal of Sociology, vol. XIV, no. 2, June, 1963,
pp. 118–134 and G.D. Berreman, Behind Many Masks, Ithaca, 1962.
14 Whyte, op. cit., p. 321.

15 W. Stark, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Brussels, no. 13, July, 1950, p. 19.

16 See in this connection, “Village Studies and Their Significance”, in Caste in modern India, pp.

120–135.
17 E.R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, London, 1954, p. 7.
 Appendix

CHANGING VALUES IN INDIA TODAY

BEFORE I proceed further, I would like to provide a brief and tentative

idea of what I mean by “values”. I have in mind those ideals of conduct the
practice of which is admired by a people. Implicit in such admiration is a
recognition that the ideals are difficult to practise, and that those who
succeed in doing so are regarded as exceptional individuals, providing
models for others to emulate.
However, my aim here is not so much to provide a satisfactory definition
of “values”—that I leave to philosophers—but to convey a rough and ready
idea of what I mean so that I can proceed with my main task, which is to
discuss the changes in ideals of conduct (values) which have taken place
(and are taking place) in India today.
Values are a difficult subject to discuss with respect to any people but the
difficulty increases enormously when dealing with a country as vast,
diverse, stratified and complex as India. Values vary from one section of the
people to another on the basis of region, language, religion, sect, caste, class
and ethnicity. There are also significant differences between villagers and
city- dwellers. Indeed, the complexity is so great that one is tempted to
abandon the task as hopeless but then valour is sometimes, though very
rarely, better than discretion.
Values ought to be distinguished from norms governing actual behaviour.1
For instance, monogamy is a value for men and women in certain sections
of Indian society, and this has to be distinguished from norms which govern
the behaviour of husbands and wives. Thus a husband in a traditional
marriage is expected to provide for his wife and children, while the wife has
to cook and serve food and perform other domestic chores. She is also
expected to obey her husband, who has the right to chastise her when he
thinks that her conduct is not “wifely”. But the norms are not very clear
when two educated members of the middle classes get married and both of
them are earning.
Even at the level of norms, there is a distinction between what may be
called “statistical” norms and “ideal” norms. The norm may be mutual
sexual fidelity on the part of husband and wife. However, local opinion may
recognize that very few men are actually faithful to their wives and
breaches of the fidelity norm by men may be viewed leniently, while
unfaithful wives may be treated harshly. Again, in a stratified society, the
fidelity norm may be regarded as more binding in some strata than in
others.
While values and norms varied from group to group, the locally dominant
caste or other ethnic group provided a model for emulation for the non-
dominants. But this operated in a circuitous way: since the dominant castes
were wealthy, powerful and enjoyed high status, lower groups were not
permitted to take over their customs, manners and life-styles. Any attempt
on their part to emulate the dominants invited punishment, but over a long
period of time some of the customs and manners of the dominants gradually
percolated to the others. Incidentally, since the 1950s the power of the
dominants to enforce their will on the others has been eroded due to
legislation, education, improved communications and other modernizing
factors.
However, the dominants were not always Hindus: Jains, Sikhs, Christians
and Muslims enjoyed dominance in particular parts of India at different
periods of time, and their culture influenced the culture of the area in which
they were dominant. Some groups were particularly susceptible to the
influence of the dominants: thus some Kāyastha groups in parts of North
India were influenced strongly by the local Muslim aristocracy, and in
South India, the culture of the omnivorous, martial Coorgs was influenced
by the puritanical, vegetarian and non-martial Lingayat rulers. During
colonial rule, however, the better-off Coorgs were influenced by the culture
of the British coffee planters in Coorg.
In considering the values, norms and behaviour of people in a country
such as India, one cannot ignore the influence of the scriptures and the
epics. It is possible that the influence of some scriptures such as the
Manudharmashastra on the conduct of Hindus has been greatly
exaggerated, especially by reformers, but that is no reason for ignoring the
influence of the sacred books. The only point is that such influence varies
from region to region and group to group, and is therefore difficult to
generalize. In this connection, the proximity or otherwise of a great temple,
monastery, pilgrimage centre, or the capital of the kingdom, radically
affected the values and behaviour of the people. For instance, given the lack
of roads in pre-British India, people living even 25 miles from the capital of
a Hindu king might be guided entirely by the norms of their caste or tribe,
unless a great temple or monastery was located close by. At the same time,
the popularity of the epics and of institutions such as harikatha (narration of
religious tales in prose or verse), helped to spread certain values, norms,
ideas and beliefs of all-India Hinduism among people living in different
parts of the country. The two points I have just made run counter to each
other, but then the interplay of contrary forces must be accepted as a basic
characteristic of our field of study.
Contrary to the popular belief that Indian society is rigid and immutable, it
has been subject to continuous change. The fluidity which characterized the
pre-British political system, particularly at the lower levels, was a source of
dynamism in the sense that dominant castes often acquired political power
at local levels and sought to legitimize power by claiming to be Kshatriyas,
employing genealogists to provide them with lineages which would be
regarded as noble, and by Sanskritizing their rituals, customs and life-styles.
This in turn gave rise to local caste systems which differed in some ways
from similar systems elsewhere. (This was specially true of frontier areas.)
While caste has been studied in some depth, the Bhakti movement, which
surfaced in almost all parts of the country though at different times, and
which was anti-caste, anti-Brahmin, anti-ritual and anti-patriarchal, has not
been studied in sufficient depth or seriousness by sociologists. What was
the effect of the Bhakti movement on the caste system and on the ideology
of gender relations? Has the Bhakti movement facilitated the acceptance of
human equality? Considering that the Bhakti movement goes back to the
7th century A.D., even if we ignore the Jain-Buddhist questioning of the
pre-eminence of the Brahmins, does protest against caste and gender
inequalities form a main strand of Indian culture instead of being a marginal
phenomenon?
The establishment of British rule resulted in shutting the doors on group
mobility through the well-known route of capturing political power at local
levels, and the picture of Indian society as extremely rigid, bigoted, divided
and characterized by untouchability, suttee and the inhuman treatment of
widows, painted by some British administrators and evangelizing
missionaries, was accepted by Indian reformers early in the 19th century.
This picture continues to persist though recent sociological research has
pointed out serious shortcomings in it.
Changes in values and norms are frequently discussed at the individual
level, and without reference to the wider society of which individuals are
members, and to the forces operating in the wider society. In this brief
chapter, however, some of the changes in the wider society are emphasized,
as they are essential to understanding changes in values and attitudes in
India today. In section 2, I describe briefly a few major changes that were
initiated during the early years of Independence, and they in turn are
responsible for some changes in the values and attitudes of individuals.

Soon after Independence, the new rulers set themselves the task of
producing a constitution committed to bringing about a change from a caste
and feudal society to a “casteless and classless” society through the means
of parliamentary democracy based on adult franchise. This was a
revolutionary decision, in particular the introduction of adult franchise,
considering the fact that only 16.6 per cent of the population was then
literate,2 and that over 80 per cent of the people lived in villages which
lacked roads and were isolated, particularly during the rainy season. Unlike
other known revolutions in history, the Indian one was slow to pick up, and
was by and large non-violent till the 1970s, when it turned increasingly
violent. Violence of all sorts is now widespread, and in some parts of the
country, endemic.3
The elite which came to power with Independence wanted the constitution
to bring about fundamental changes in Indian economy, culture and society.
The constitution provided not only a charter for ushering in a revolution but
the instruments for achieving it. As already mentioned, adult franchise was
the principal means for bringing about the revolution, while other measures
such as the outlawing of untouchability, and its practice in any form
declared a criminal offence, the reservation of seats in legislatures for SCs
and STs, and jobs in the government were also important. It must be
mentioned, however, that these were intended as temporary measures in
order to enable the SCs and STs to catch up with the forward sections of
society. Provision was also made for the states to take steps to advance the
interests of the “Socially and Educationally Backward Classes” (SEBC),
also called the “Other Backward Classes” (OBC). The states were asked to
prepare lists of such “classes” on the basis of objective criteria: caste was
chosen as a major criterion by several states, on the basis of the level of
education of its members and their representation in the government
services, as compared with the average levels for all the castes in the state.
The southern states have been active since the 1920s in the promotion of
the welfare of the OBCs, and this has resulted in the latter making
substantial gains. But states such as West Bengal and Orissa have not even
prepared lists of OBCs. The Mandal Commission, established by the Janata
government in 1978 to suggest suitable measures for increasing the access
of the OBCs all over India to education and employment in the government,
recommended, among other things, the reservation of 27 per cent of
government jobs, both at the centre and in the states for the OBCs. In
August 1990, V.P. Singh, then prime minister, decided to implement the
Mandal recommendation regarding job reservation. This led to violent
protests from college students all over the country, many of them
committing suicide by setting fire to themselves. There were writ petitions
against the government’s decision in the Supreme Court. In a recent
judgment (November 1992), however, the Supreme Court has upheld the
decision to reserve 27 per cent of government jobs at the centre and in the
states for the OBCs, but they have also imposed a few new conditions.
 3

It is indeed impressive that India has been able to practise democracy since
1947, except during the emergency years 1975–77. The task of holding
periodical elections for electorates running into a few hundred millions, is
indeed a Himalayan one, and what should be surprising is not that the
elections are marred here and there by violence, booth-capturing and
“rigging” but that the bulk of the people in this vast, poverty-stricken,
backward and hierarchical country should not only practise democracy but
make attempts to deepen, extend and cleanse it.4 Democracy enables every
tension to surface, and with increasing numbers of hereditary groups
competing to obtain access to resources which are getting more scarce, the
government is continually under such pressure that its survival occasionally
appears precarious. But even such a situation is better than that under
totalitarian regimes, where everything appears smooth on the surface, only
to collapse suddenly and irrevocably. Further, democracy is also an
invaluable information system in a large, diversified and poor country like
India. Democracy is a necessity for India, and it is likely that India’s
survival as a single entity is due to its adherence to democracy. Contrast in
this connection the sudden collapse of countries to its north and west.
India’s success with democracy is far more relevant for developing
countries than its success in the U.S. or U.K.
Another achievement is the manner in which India has increased its food
production from about 52 million tonnes at the time of Independence to
over 170 million tonnes today. Of course production must continue to
increase if the growing population has to be fed, let alone a surplus created
for export. It is also remarkable that India has not had a famine after
Independence, whereas China had disastrous famines during the years of
the Cultural Revolution (1954–1956) when millions of people died,
estimates varying between 16 and 30 million.
 As a result of economic development since Independence, the proportion
of the population below the poverty line has come down to about one-
third.5 But the country is far from abolishing poverty and from assuring the
poorest that their basic needs will be met.
Substantial improvement has occurred in the position of women but it is
as yet confined largely to urban middle-class women. However, women’s
movements have gained strength in the last three decades and they are
aimed at combating specific evils such as dowry and suttee, and in
achieving eventual gender equality. But I do not discuss this here.

No discussion of changing values can avoid referring to pervasive

corruption and violence in political and social life. Corruption has grown
phenomenally during the last 30 years and no area of life is free from it.
Over the years corruption has come to be accepted as a fact of life and it is
widely known that the citizen has to pay officials and politicians for
permits, licences and other favours. Government officials have to pay
bribes, for instance to be transferred out of a place, or to stay where they
are. Transfers appear to be a major source of income for higher officials and
their bosses, the ministers. This means that transferable officials must
collect enough money in the course of their official work to be able to get or
avoid a transfer. The net result is that the citizen is compelled to pay a bribe
for anything he wants from the government. Corruption has penetrated so
deep that a former chief minister of Karnataka once remarked that only a
powerful social movement could put an end to it. Apart from the fact of
corruption, there exists a mythology of corruption which is even more
destructive of public morale; ordinary people talk gaily of chief ministers
who made a few hundred crores in the course of two or three years in
power.
There has been a tremendous increase in all kinds of violence, organized
violence against the state, inter-group violence, intra-familial violence, an
increase in the general climate of violence, and finally, as in the case of
corruption, a tacit acceptance of violence and a growing insensitivity to
murder, bloodshed, gang wars and rape. Some of the violence is directly
related to the politico-economic system if it does not stem out of it, as for
instance in “booth-capturing” during elections.
Since the acquisition of political power opens the doors to wealth,
influence and status, all sorts of people, including smugglers, black
marketeers and mafia dons want to become MLAs and MPs. Political
scientists and journalists have written at length about the “criminalization of
politics” in recent years but nothing has been done so far to tackle it.
Another prime though indirect source of continued violence and
frustration is the excessive concentration of power in the centre (union of
India) as compared with the constituent states. Such concentration has been
compounded by the Planning Commission, which has become a powerful
arm of the centre allocating resources to the states, and also in monitoring
the implementation of the projects it funds. This has resulted in a feeling of
helplessness on the part of the people in some states, which ultimately leads
to violence. The remedy is to give more powers to the states but the centre
is dragging its feet on this issue as also on the issue of forming smaller
states, which will enable some ethnic groups and areas to shape their own
futures. The agitation for the formation of a tribal state, Jharkhand, out of
parts of Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa could have been
prevented from assuming the violent forms which it has taken if remedial
action had been taken earlier. That smaller states make for greater
democracy and better administration, is another argument in their favour.
I do not wish to discuss in detail the phenomenal increase in violence,
particularly inter-group violence since Independence, but would like merely
to point out that the abolition of untouchability, punishing its practice in any
form, the reservation of seats in legislatures, jobs in government and other
concessions for the SCs and STs, have angered large numbers of others and,
in particular, the rural dominant castes. Clashes between the dominant
castes and SCs are frequent and bloody, and are likely to increase with SCs
becoming more assertive of their rights.
In urban areas, which are invariably multi-ethnic, economic conflict
between groups might assume the form of a struggle between the “sons of
the soil” and “outsiders”, even when the former are only earlier immigrants.
This kind of situation is often exacerbated by politicians, businessmen and
the film industry, who may use such conflict to further their own ends. The
presence of a large number of unemployed, low-skilled and uneducated
youth provides the requisite muscle-power to fight the battles of politicians
and businessmen.
No account of inter-group violence can afford to ignore clashes between
members professing different faiths, which have become frequent in recent
years. The causes are many and tangled but an important factor has been the
rise in the post-war world of religious fundamentalism everywhere and in
particular, in West Asia. In the South Asian region, relations between
Hindus and Muslims came under tremendous strain during the closing years
of British rule, and the departure of the British was marked by the partition
of India into Pakistan and India, and by the most violent carnage in the
region’s history, in which nearly half-a- million people were massacred.
However, independent India opted for a secular, democratic constitution
which guaranteed the protection of the culture, language and religion of the
minorities, while Pakistan declared itself an Islamic republic. But in the last
few years India’s secularism has come under strain, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) and its allied organizations such as the RSS, Vishwa Hindu
Parishad and Bajrang Dal, charging the ruling congress Party with
practising “pseudo-secularism” and “minorityism” to the detriment of the
interest of the Hindus who constitute 80 per cent of the population. The
recent destruction of the Babri Masjid by the followers of the VHP and
allied organizations in order to erect a temple to Rāma in its place, was
followed by violent riots all over the country, in which over 1,100 people
died, and it has greatly exacerbated relations between Hindus and Muslims.
The destruction of Hindu and Jain temples and churches in Pakistan, and
Hindu temples in Bangladesh in retaliation for the destruction of the masjid
have added fuel to the fire. The net result is that India’s political system and
social order are facing a severe crisis.6
With the rapid spread of dowry among the people cutting across not only
caste but sect, religion, class and region, intra-familial violence has
increased enormously. Harsh economic calculations enter into all traditional
marriages, the main aim being to become rich at the expense of the bride’s
family, and huge sums of cash, gold and consumer durables are extracted by
the groom’s family. The size of the dowry has become an indication of the
status of the groom’s family. Greed and crass materialism mark marriage
negotiations and dowry demands often pursue the wretched wife even after
she has given birth to one or two children. Many women choose to escape
torture and humiliation from their affines by committing suicide by the
horrible though well-known method of dousing their saris with kerosene
and setting fire to themselves.
One cannot fail to mention the part played by the media, the films and TV
in particular in fomenting a climate of violence.
Violence, sex and drugs seem to be the staple of films, both foreign and
Indian, and the TV brings all this into the living room. Violence, sex and
drugs are now a world-wide problem with the invasion of the skies of the
developing countries by satellite and cable TV. This is one of the
consequences of the world becoming a global village.

Since Independence, there has been a visible improvement in the living

standards of large numbers of people, who eat better, dress better, invest
sizeable portions of their income in the education of their children, live in
better housing, and spend sizeable sums in buying such consumer durables
as refrigerators, TV sets, washing machines, food-processors, two-wheelers,
cars and VCRs. The market for these commodities comprises the middle
class and the top 10 per cent of the population, both together amounting to
340 million in 1987–88.7 It is a huge and growing market, and it is no
wonder that multinationals appear to be keen to enter it. It may be noted
that buyers of consumer durables are not confined to urban areas, the better-
off in rural areas also going in for them. It is not unlikely that the status
component in the buying of consumer durables is even higher in villages
than in cities, those who own the durables being a small proportion of the
local population and the possession of durables being a clear inark of social
distance between the haves and have-nots.
Improvements in living standards is usually, if not invariably, followed by
an attempt on the part of the upwardly mobile individual to improve the
social standing of his family if not of the larger kin-group. A key element in
upward mobility is education, for without it good jobs will not be available,
living standards cannot be improved, good marriages cannot be contracted
and access to other elements of high status denied. But there is severe
competition for obtaining admission to good schools which means, by and
large, from the point of view of the parents, English-medium schools. (This
preference has also spread to rural areas.) The tremendous demand for
admission to good English-medium schools has led to the latter charging
high fees and, in addition, to the payment of sizeable amounts of money as
admission fees. The government has no control over private schools in such
matters. This practice is confined at present to some parts of the country,
but all over India urban parents experience acute anxiety over the admission
of their children to good schools.
Parental anxiety reaches its apogee, however, at the time of their offspring
seeking admission to college, in particular to medical, engineering,
technical and other professional colleges. The question of admission is
further complicated by reserving a proportion of seats to SCs/STs and
OBCs. Such reservation is probably highest in Karnataka, where not more
than 30 per cent of the seats are allotted on the basis of merit as measured
by marks obtained at the qualifying examination, and at the entrance test.
The net result is that a large number of “good” students from the “forward”
castes are rejected, while those getting lower marks but hailing from the
SC/ST and OBC categories obtain admission. This causes much heartburn,
and the parents of at least some of these students will try their hardest to
obtain seats for their offspring in professional colleges. There is also
another and perhaps more prolific source seeking admission to such
colleges, namely the rich and influential parents of mediocre students. What
are labelled as “capitation fee” colleges meet this demand. “Capitation fee”
colleges are Karnataka’s contribution to the cause of higher education in
India.8 The Supreme Court has recently condemned the institution of
charging capitation fees for admission but unless the causes underlying the
demand for them are removed, I am afraid they will continue in one form or
another. Many politicians have a vested interest in them.
 It is well known that many of those who obtain admission have neither the
ability nor the interest to pursue exacting courses of professional study even
when the institutions are well-equipped and have competent teachers. The
question then arises, why do so many parents want to admit their offspring
to such tough and demanding courses of study? The apparent answer that
the possession of professional degrees provides the road to economic
security is not true, for newspapers recently (1992) reported that in
Karnataka alone there are over 18,000 unemployed engineering graduates.
And there are also dozens of unemployed doctors. But society continues to
place a high value on professional education, and a doctor or engineer son
fetches a big dowry which not only improves the family’s finances but also
its social standing. In some parts of the country, however, there is a caste
component to the demand for professional education; the earlier entrants to
professional education were from the higher castes and their success and
prosperity stimulated large numbers from the backward classes to emulate
them.
It is surprising that parents—I am now thinking of educated parents—do
not seem to pay any attention to the talents and inclinations of their children
in choosing careers. The main motive in choosing a professional career for
a son or daughter is to boost the latter’s image and their own among their
relatives, friends and neighbours. The idea that a person should pursue a
career which would allow his innate talents to develop so that work not only
gives an income but a sense of satisfaction, does not seem to obtain even
among the middle classes. A surer and more expensive way of producing
educated misfits cannot be imagined and the country has been doing this for
over 50 years.
The government of India had a constitutional obligation (Article 45) to
make education compulsory for all children in the age-group 5–14 within a
period of ten years from 1951, but this has not been met even 45 years after
Independence. Further, the national literacy rate is only 52 per cent and
there are regions where literacy, particularly female literacy, is abysmally
low. However paradoxical it may seem, higher education continues to be
highly subsidized, and there is the proud boast that India is the third-largest
producer of scientific and technological specialists in the world.
 The IITs enjoy great prestige as institutions and they are highly subsidized
by the government. Admission to them is eagerly sought after and highly
competitive, but how many of those who graduate from them stay in India?
Indeed, the question needs to be asked, how many of those who benefit
from studying in the elite institutions of higher education in India seek
careers in the country? Our most successful exports are our best and
brightest men and women!
In contrast to Indians who went abroad in the 1940s and 1950s for higher
studies, those who go abroad nowadays do not seem to want to return home
to seek careers. Excited parents are heard saying, “My son (daughter) does
not want to come back. What is there to come back to?” And they are right.
Many if not most of our universities and other centres of higher learning
have become cockpits for caste, regional and linguistic conflict and
intrigue, and both teaching and research are in a deplorable
condition.Appointments are made frequently on grounds other than merit.
In fact “merit” has become a dirty word in the lexicon of the advocates of
caste quotas and the “progressives”. There is no surer way of being dubbed
a reactionary” than by advocating merit as the main criterion in selection to
an important post.
Until recently, some concern was expressed about the “brain drain” from
India to the developed countries, and the need to “reverse” the flow. But
such concerns seem to have evaporated quietly, and the expatriates have
become NRls, whose dollars seem to be more important to the country than
their skills, qualifications and experience. The irony of this situation seems
to be lost on everyone. Greenbacks are preferred to grey cells.
The foreign bug has bitten not only the young but older men and women
too. Middle-aged Indian women now travel to the U.S. or U.K. to oversee
the pregnancies of their daughters, reversing the traditional custom of
pregnant daughters going to their natal homes for confinement. Middle-
aged women love to talk to their relatives and friends about their stay
abroad, the air-conditioned houses and cars, the gadgetry, the glories of the
American supermarket, and the conveniences and wealth their offspring
command. Back home, the middle class family has shrunk, elderly parents
living by themselves and receiving dollar cheques from their offspring.
Very soon it will not be untrue to define an urban middle-class family as
one which has at least one person earning abroad.
I shall now return to the phenomenon of consumerism, indeed galloping
consumerism, for no account of changing values can be complete without
reference to it. This is a fairly recent phenomenon but it is making up for
lost time by the speed with which it is spreading. Consumerism is heavily
dependent on advertising, and the advertising business is not only booming,
but attracts many talented people. Indian newspapers and journals
nowadays regularly bring out lush supplements with multi-coloured
illustrations on glossy paper but with hardly any worthwhile reading matter.
Looking at them one wonders whether India is a poor country.
Advertisements figure on the TV with glamorous film, sports and athletic
stars urging the viewer to buy this or that variety of TV set, refrigerator,
washing machine, shaving soap, mouthwash, toothpaste, textiles, shoes and
so on. It is safe to assume that as far as the TV is concerned, India is only
witnessing the beginning of the exposure. TV-watching has become an
addiction with large numbers of people and I learn that even in a remote,
small temple town like Melkote (in south Karnataka) over two hundred
houses have satellite TV connections. It is alleged that priests hurry through
their worship in the temples to go home to watch their favourite
programmes!
A distinct teenage culture is emerging, or has already emerged, as a result of
the emergence of a sizeable middle class whose youth offer a tempting
market for a variety of goods which can be advertised in the newspapers
and on TV. The teenagers are recognizable by their distinctive dress, hair-
style, lingo, habits and life-style. Their heroes and heroines are usually
sportsmen, athletes, film stars, rock musicians and models. The better-off
among them visit pubs, Bangalore being a trend-setter, go disco-dancing
and smoke pot. They are more subject to peer group pressures than to
family influence. Older people seem to be bewildered at the attitudes and
behaviour of their teenage relatives. Or perhaps it would be more accurate
to describe the situation as one of mutual incomprehension. There is an
urgent need for sociologists to study teenagers in the same way as they
study the culture and behaviour of far-away tribes and ethnic groups.
An inevitable consequence of growing consumerism is the pressure to buy
goods which are not needed. Housewives and teenagers are likely to feel the
pressure even more than elderly people. Hire-purchase schemes, chit funds,
the organization of periodic sales by big firms, and the use of credit cards
are an inevitable consequence of consumerism. Having a lot of goods
enhances one’s status and one is judged by what one has and not by what
one is.
When the rich and the middle classes go in for consumerism, the gulf
between them and the poor will widen even further. Since the richest
villagers are also victims of consumerism, the rich-poor divide will sharpen
in rural areas too. Given the tensions which already exist, namely caste,
religion, language, region and low status, consumerism might prove to be
the last straw on the backs of the poor. Given an opportunity, the poor might
do in Indian cities what the American Blacks did some years ago in Watts
and New York. The situations are not all dissimilar.

A major change that has occurred with independence and adult franchise is
the emergence of political power as more or less the supreme value for a
very large number of people. Translating this into traditional terms, it is as
though artha, the politico-economic realm, has become sovereign, cutting
itself loose from dharma, the moral realm.9 Even within the realm of artha,
power has emerged as superior to wealth, for power can confer wealth and
much else besides. The ease and swiftness with which politicians become
extremely wealthy is a very familiar phenomenon. But it is also true that
businessmen who are very wealthy can use their wealth to manipulate
governmental decisions in their favour. In the process the politician and
administrator also benefit, the only ones to lose being the people. That
wealth is also used to atone for sins and increase one’s stock of merit by
doing works of charity and contributing funds to temples, mosques and
churches, is the other side of the coin. This idea has not lost its hold;
indeed, if anything, the contrary, thanks to the fact that a great many people
have had access to wealth in recent years.
But it is important to note that power does not only have an instrumental
value but is also endowed with glamour. The trappings and perquisites of
power, uniformed sentries, resplendently dressed servants, government cars,
telephones, PAs, the hundreds of favour-seekers who throng the compounds
of ministers and the obsequiousness of these favour-seekers, all serve to
proclaim the magic of power. No wonder so many people want it.
Finally, power has emerged as the legitimizer of all achievement and,
indeed, of all activity, especially public activity. Ministers are asked to
open, inaugurate, release, preside over, chair and grace all kinds of
functions—sometimes half the cabinet attends a function and those
ministers who do not oblige the organizers are dubbed arrogant. How much
of his time a minister spends in attending to his ministry’s affairs and in
attending to the problems of his constituents and how much on ceremonial
and public relations exercises is a matter deserving serious examination.
A recent and significant development is the coming together of the
politician and the “renouncer”, or man in ochre robes. (The politician is
indeed versatile: he moves from the company of criminals of all kinds at
one end to that of “godmen” and sanyasis at the other.) Here, a distinction
needs to be made between different kinds of “renouncers”: renouncers who
engage themselves in welfare activities, renouncers who are reputed to
possess “powers” to effect cures and perform other miracles, and finally,
pure contemplatives (like the late Sri Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharishi).
Those who are engaged in welfare activities such as starting schools,
colleges, hostels, orphanages, hospitals and old people’s homes need to
cultivate politicians to obtain grants of land and money, and various kinds
of permits, even favours. Politicians know that it is good for their image to
be seen close to renouncers, and there is always the hope that at some point
closeness might yield votes. “Godmen” command large followings and their
support is not only politically beneficial, it also provides a shield against the
insecurities of the high-risk profession of politics. Finally, the reclusive
renouncer is contacted only rarely, for his “blessings”. It is in the Indian
tradition that the temporal realm acknowledges, though only rarely, the
supremacy of the spiritual.
 An inevitable result of enhanced opportunities for a large number of
people and the prevalence of acute competition for obtaining access to
resources such as education, employment and a comfortable standard of
living, is the spread of stress and stress-related ailments among the people.
High blood-pressure, nervous tension, hyperacidity and insomnia are
becoming indicators of middle-and upper-class status. When neglected, they
may lead to inefficiency at work, inability to cope with the many demands
made on one and, in extreme cases, nervous breakdown. Not only are there
not enough psychiatrists to cope with these maladies, but the culture of
going to psychiatrists and counsellors is simply not there. Under these
circumstances, prayer and meditation, and visits to temples and pilgrimage-
centres offer some relief to people, though rationalists may scoff at such
practices. People in all walks of life consult astrologers, though it is likely
that the middle and upper classes nowadays resort to them more than the
others, as their lives are coming under increasing strain. (It is not that the
lives of the poor are stress-free but they also have their temples, oracles,
amulets, exorcists and holy men.) Incidentally, consulting astrologers is not
peculiar to Indians or Asians for that matter. It is prevalent in the West too;
the Reagans consulted three astrologers, Princess Diana has an astrologer
and we do not know about the other VIPs in the West who consult
astrologers.
While consulting astrologers is wide-spread in India, there is a reluctance
to acknowledge the fact, particularly among the educated. Intellectuals do
not hesitate to pour scorn on astrology, though it is not certain that they
themselves do not consult astrologers when in trouble. Politicians do not
have a monopoly on hypocrisy.
To recapitulate, in discussing changing values in India today, my approach
has been that of an empirically-minded sociologist. But I am also a citizen,
and an individual with my own preferences, values, if you like. On the
institutional side, I think that people’s movements are essential to set right
the many ills that infest the body social, of which the body politic is a vital
part. People’s movements are indispensable to lessen corruption in Indian
public life, to see that development plans do not destroy the environment, to
ensure gender equality, to promote decentralization of power and to combat
growing consumerism. People’s movements are needed particularly to teach
elected representatives that real power in a democracy rests with the people,
and that errant, corrupt or perverse governments will not be tolerated. The
tendency to autocracy is so deep at the state and lower levels that periodical
elections are not enough to curb it. People’s movements might provide the
necessary curb but they need time to build up, given the fact that the
electorate is poor and uneducated, and that local leaders are bribable.
Perhaps institutions such as recall may be necessary to make leaders more
responsive to public opinion.
There is also a need to cut down the role of the government and to
encourage people to develop their own initiatives. To this end, voluntary
associations need to be encouraged, particularly in the execution and
monitoring of development and welfare work. On the individual plane,
there is need to spread the message that happiness consists not in the
senseless accumulation of goods which one can do without but in doing
work which not only gives money but also satisfaction. It is also necessary
to realize that those who are gifted have an obligation to use the gifts they
have inherited and which a favourable environment in early years
developed, for the good of society, for the benefit of those who are weaker,
and not for self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. Gandhi’s idea of
trusteeship should not be confined to the wealthy but extended to include
the gifted too.
 NOTES
[This essay is a revised version of the author’s Surya Prakash Memorial
Lecture delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture in Bangalore on
September 12, 1992. I thank B.V. Raman for doing me the honour of
inviting me to deliver the lecture. Thanks are also due to V.S. Parthasarathy
for help in the preparation of the lecture, and P. Ramachandran and R.
Krishna Chandran who have typed patiently several versions of the lecture.
I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to the National Institute for
Advanced Studies, Bangalore, where I am the J.R.D. Tata visiting professor,
for providing me with the leisure and freedom to pursue my studies.]
1 “Values are not the same as norms for conduct. Norms are rules for behaving: they say more or less

specifically what should or should not be done by particular types of actors in given circumstances.
Values are standards of desirability that are more nearly independent of specific situations. The same
value may be a point of reference for a great many specific norms; a particular norm may represent
the simultaneous application of several separable values. Thus the value premise of ‘equality’ may
enter into norms for relationships between husband and wife, brother and brother, teacher and
student, and so on. On the other hand, the norm ‘a teacher must not show favouritism in grading’
may, in a particular instance, involve the values of equality, honesty, humanitarianism and several
others. Values as standards (criteria) for establishing what should be regarded as desirable, provide
the grounds for accepting or rejecting particular norms. Thus achievement values, stressing active
instrumental accomplishment against a standard of excellence, may be reflected in norms for sports,
games, occupational activities, community service, political life, education, science and so on. The
same principle holds for values considered as desirable objects or states. For example, a high positive
education of ‘freedom’ or ‘authority’ may be one of the grounds for a great many specific norms in
various areas of society, culture and personality. On the other hand, many norms are multi-valued,
relating simultaneously, for example to hedonic criteria, considerations of efficiency, and values of
social integration. A minor but clear case in point might be norms of etiquette for social dining.”
(Robin M. Williams (Jr.). “Values: The Concept of Values”, in International Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, vol. 16, Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968, p. 283.)
2 See Statistical Abstracts of India, 1987, Government of India, Central Statistical Organisation, New

Delhi, pp. 542–543. The figure of 166 literates out of 1,000 is based on figures for India excluding
Jammu and Kashmir, and NEFA.
3 See in this connection my On Living in a Revolution and other Essays, Oxford University Press,

Delhi, 1992.
4 The Indian parliament has passed two bills, Panchayati Raj and Nagarpalika, providing for

decentralization of power to the people. Two constitution amendment bills, 72 and 73, have been
passed, the 72nd amendment providing for decentralization of power to the rural areas, while the
73rd amendment provides for decentralization of power to cities and towns. The bills make it
mandatory to hold elections to these local self-governing bodies. See The Times of India, December
23 and 24, 1992.
During the last few months, municipal and panchayat elections have been held in the Punjab, with
voter turnout exceeding 60 per cent. Elections have also been held successfully in Meghalaya,
Nagaland, and most recently, in Tripura.
5 Attention needs to be drawn in this connection to the perceptive statement of M.Y. Ghorpade, “The

poverty line today is defined in a particular way but the nature of poverty has undergone a change
and is not so hopeless and helpless as it used to be.” (“Whither Economic Policy and Performance?”,
Rajyotsava Lecture, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, November 23, 1992, p. 3.)
6 In the modern world, violence within a country is frequently linked to the ramifications of

international politics, to religious fundamentalism, to drug-trafficking, mafia dons, and to the

existence of close links between all these factors. In this connection see the excellent article of Jasjit
Singh, “Means of Terrorism: From Transistor Bombs to RDX” in The Times of India, April 3, 1993.
7 The Report of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, quoted in R.

Venkatachary, “The Emergence of a New Middle Class” in The Sunday Times, November 1, 1992, p.
14.
8 See in this connection, Nupur Basu’s article “Capitation Fees: Money vs. Merit?” in India Abroad,

August 21, 1992, p. 29.

9 Moksha, the ultimate value, is far too distant to be able to influence people directly, but its indirect

influence may be seen in such activities of the elderly as performing daily puja and meditation at
home, visiting temples and pilgrimage-centres, performing bhajans, reading religious literature and
leading a life-style characterized by attention to things spiritual and indifference to things material.
 READING LIST

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Barnabas, A.P. “Sanskritization”, Economic Weekly, vol. XIII, no. 15, April 15, 1961, pp. 613–618.
Berreman, G.D. Hindus of the Himalayas, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963.
Chanana, Dev Raj. “Sanskritization, Westernization and India’s North-West”, Economic Weekly,
vol. XIII, no. 9, March 4, 1961, pp.409–414.
Gould, H.A. “Sanskritization and Westernization, A Dynamic View”, Economic Weekly, vol. XIII,
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Marriott, McKim (ed.). Village India: Studies in the Little Community, Chicago, 1955.
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12, no. 2, Summer 1956, pp. 117–144.
Orans, Martin. “A Tribe in Search of a Great Tradition: The Emulation-Solidarity Conflict”, Man
in India, vol. 39 no. 2 June 1959, pp. 108–114.
Raghavan, V. “Variety and Integration in the Pattern of Indian Culture”, Far Eastern Quarterly,
vol. 15, no. 4, August 1956, pp. 497–505.
Sahay, K.N. “Trends of Sanskritization Among the Oraon”, Bulletin of the Bihar Tribal Research
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Singer, Milton. “The Social Organization of Indian Civilization”, Diogenes, vol. 45, Winter 1964,
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Singer, Milton (ed.). Traditional India: Structure and Change, American Folklore Society,
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Vidyarthi, L.P. The Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya, Bombay, 1961.
Vidyarthi, L.P. (ed.). Aspects of Religion in Indian Society, Meerut, 1961.

ii. the backward classes movement

Beteille, A. The Future of the Backward Classes, Supplement to Indian Journal of Public
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––––. “Caste and Politics in Tamilnād” (to be published).
Brass, P.R. “Regionalism, Nationalism and Political Conflict in Uttar Pradesh”, paper read at a
meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, April 2, 1965.
Broomfield, J.H. “An Elite and Its Rivals: Bengal Bhadralok at the Opening of the Twentieth
Century”, paper read at a meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco April 2,
1965.
Dushkin, L. “The Backward Classes”, Economic Weekly, Bombay, October 28–November 18,
1961.
Galanter, Marc. “Equality and Protective Discrimination in India”, Rutgers Law Review, vol. XVI,
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Harrison, Selig. India, the Most Dangerous Decades, Princeton, 1960.
Irschick, E. Politics and Social Conflict in South India—The Non-Brahmin Movement and Tamil
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Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, April 2, 1965.
Isaacs, Harold. The Ex-Untouchables, New York, 1964.
Patterson, M. “Caste and Political Leadership in Maharashtra”, Economic Weekly, Bombay,
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Smith, D.E. India as a Secular State, Princeton, 1963.
Srinivas, M.N. Caste in Modern India, Bombay, 1962.
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 FURTHER READING

Beteille, André. Studies in Agrarian Social Structure, New Delhi. 1974.

Dube, S.C. (ed.). India Since Independence: A Social Report on India 1947–1972, New Delhi,
1977.
Dumont, L. Homo Hierarchies: Caste System and Its Implications, Chicago, 1970.
Epstein, T. Scarlett. South India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, London, 1973.
Gore, M.S. Urbanisation and Social Change, New Jersey, 1968. Mahar, Michael (ed.).
Untouchables in Contemporary India, Tucson, 1972.
Mandelbaum, D.G. Society in India, 2 vols., Berkeley, 1970. Saberwal, SatishMobile Men, New
Delhi, 1976.
Shah, A.M. Household Dimension of the Family in India, New Delhi, 1973.
Singer, Milton. when a Great Tradition Modernizes, New York, 1970.
Singer, Milton and Bernard Cohn (eds.). Structure and Change in Indian Society, Chicago, 1968.
Srinivas, M.N. The Remembered Village, New Delhi, 1976.
––––. Nation-Building in Independent India, New Delhi, 1977.
Srinivas, M.N., S. Seshaiah and V.S. Parthasarathy (eds.). Dimensions of Social Change in India,
New Delhi, 1977.