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Andre Beteille: Perspectives on the Study of Caste Systems

1. Beteille study on caste is reflexive, distinctive, dynamic and analytical, as against Ghurye, Dumont, and Srinivas sociology of caste. Dumont considers caste as a sacred cow driven by the universal superiority of Brahmins, dominating in ritual sphere or in the status hereby.
2. Srinivas considers that Sanskritic behaviour or way of life is mostly solicited by ethnic group of people in Indian society. So Dumont and Srinivas along with Ghurye, explicitly or implicitly speak that Brahminic superiority and Sanskritic exclusivity Andre Beteille tries to study caste beyond these perspectives.
3. According to Beteille, caste is an objective reality. Its role and structural character should be studied from empirical perspective. His understanding of caste comes out of the field data, collected from Sripuram village of Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu.
4. In this village three major caste groups are present Brahmins, Non-Brahmins and Adi-Dravidians. Between Brahmins and Adi-Dravidians a huge cultural, symbolic and relational gap is found Beteille finds out that Dumont’s Theory of hierarchy’ carries relative significance to understand the disharmonic relationship between Brahmins and AdiDravidians.
5. These two castes are placed in two extreme position of caste hierarchy. He empathises with M.N Srinivas to understand the rise of non-Brahmins in the secular sphere of caste hierarchy. Controlling village land and dominating in village, local and state politics; these groups intensified the emergence and consolidation of dominant caste.
6. His sociology of caste criticizes Srinivas, Dumont and Ghurye on the ground that Brahminic exclusivity and superiority is not a matter of fact. It is evident from his study of Sripuram. Brahmins of Sripuram are largely divided into two groups: Srivaishnav and Samarthas, distinctively different from each other in terms of the ritual practices, symbols, doctrinal affinity and way of life.
7. Residential areas of both the castes are also strictly different and both the groups practice endogamy implying that a subcaste should be considered as caste. Samarthas are further divided in 4 major groups, and these groups are further divided into sub-groups. This study of segmentation of caste is largely influenced by the writings of his teacher and old friend Evans Pritchard who in his study of Neurs talk about segmentation of tribe.
8. According to Beteille, Brahmins never follow a distinctive identity, ritual pattern and way of life. What means sanskritisation to one aspiring caste may not be meaning to other. So Brahmins being so segmented, it is too difficult to believe that the superiority is historic, continuous and undiluted as presumed by homes Dumont. Caste does not determine social commensality amongst people.
9. It is evident from Samarthas divided on the basis of economic standing into three broad groups such an upper class, middle class and lower class. Beteille finds out that caste is not only a source of social exclusion only rather both caste and poverty are two distinctive dissensions to social inequality in India. Exploring different genesis to social exclusion, he concludes by saying, that social inequality in India has multiple dimensions and caste is one of it. In his book “Caste, class and power” he finds out that non brahmins are mostly artisan and peasant caste.
10. One these castes experience economic upliftment because of good harvest or trade and commerce. They spend their wealth on renovation of house, sending their children for modern education and ultimately identify themselves as ‘MUDLIIAR’ (Peasant caste) but doesn’t want to become a Brahmin, when given a opportunity. Therefore sanskritization is not an all Indai phenomenon. Under the influence of Dravidian movement in south India, non-brahmin considers that secular mobility is an ‘end-initself’ which is essential to distinguish between Brahmins originating from Aryans and Dravidians, who are “sons of soil”.

Therefore Beteille states that

1. Caste hierarchy is a competitive hierarchy, within caste system hierarchy and differences mutually coexist.
2. Class and caste combinedly together determines the social ranking of family. Social commensality and marriage.
3. Social distance between Brahmins and non-brahmins which was absolutist in past is no longer maintained due to younger generation exposure to modern education and employment.
4. India should be studied from stratification perspective rather than caste perspective.

Economic transformation, political changes should be taken into consideration to understand the changing nature of intra and inter caste relationship. Caste and class is not the only source to explain all possible sources of inequality as highlighted by structural functionalist on one hand and Marxists on other. Following the footsteps of Max Weber he indicates that structure exists in many forms and in village India source of the structure are:

1. Unequal of distribution of land and giving rise to class structure.
2. Unequal access to power.
3. Unequal access to status on the basis of caste identity.

Based on his study, title of his first book is ‘Class Status and Power: The study of structure in a Tanjaure
village’.

Beteille considers that Bhakti movement Backward caste movement, dalit mobilization potentially question to hierarchical gradation of values giving rise to the emergence of plural values competing with each other.

(Existentialism competing with spiritualism, materialism competing with moralism) resulting in competitive values, rising in Indian society, reflecting on social change.

Andre Beteille in his book “Caste old and caste new” has collected empirical data from different sources to conclude that during early part of 20th century, caste becomes class at different level of social strata and it leads to power in different strata. So Europeans who saw the early 20th century scenario concluded that Indian society is closed one characterized by fixed hierarchy. In changing India these structural hierarchies are crumbling.
Dilution of these relationship of values is leading to shift from harmonic to disharmonic position in social structure of Indian society. So caste should not be considered as hierarchical system that stands constant for indefinite period It changes with changing time, therefore Indian society should be studied from three perspectives.

1. System of hierarchical gradation.
2. Vertical ties between individuals and families.
3. Hierarchical gradation of values.

India has not gone for complete modernity as explained by Yogendra Singh and it has not confined to absolute tradition as per Dumont. Therefore Beteille tells that caste old is replaced by caste new than caste being replaced by class in India.

He can absence that the most brahmins whose forefathers were priest and preacher in the villages now are working as teacher is schools and professors in colleges. Descendents of Kashtriyas are largely seen in Army, bureaucracy and political apparatus. Vaishyas are still dominant in trade and commerce. Shudras have gone for peripheral occupation in government sector and industry. And untouchables are in class IV employment in government/Municipal bodies.

Therefore occupational change is not absolutist in India. That is India followed path of selective modernity. Thus Indian modernity is typically Indian in character, exclusive and different from modernization of West, but some of the European suggest fail to understand So they conclude that India provides hierarchy and European society produces structure.

Apart from this Andre Beteille in his book “Backward class and New social order” criticizes the extension of reservation policy to other backward classes. The sociological analysis of Beteille stands on following grounds.

1. While defining class he dwells upon weberian understanding, that is people holding same income, occupation can be categorized as class. Generally people who lack control over means of production identically can be said to be backward class. But in India. OBC’s have different historically as well as differential access to income and occupation. Therefore caste group combinedly together making a class in India. Which is conceptually wrong and empirically incorrect.
2. He argues that today’s reservation policy banks on Vote bank politics’ mainly exercised by progressive castes so, politics of reservation is superimposing on sociology of reservation.

Further, He argues that today’s reservation policy is ‘anti-moratorian’. It is bringing forward new forms of and deeper in India. Which is leading to polarization based on caste groups.

He questions the contextual justification of reservation. In his opinion, reservation offeres compensation for historic discrimination. The people who are benefitting from reservation are not exploited by non beneficiaries at present Therefore, giving compensation for mistakes of past in the present time is anti-equalitarian and anti-democratic. Beteille makes distraction between ‘Equality of opportunity’ and ‘Equal distribution of benefits’.

Therefore, he advocates for equality of opportunity in education’. Quality healthcare. Employment to lower castes in India. Thus enjoying equal opportunities, all caste people must compete on merit to get into occupational structure.

He concludes that identity focused polities is taking India into medieval period rather into 21st century. He argues for an equalitarian, meritorian and democracy society where education, job security equality health care to every citizen of country will be provided So citizenship should destroy caste and promote equality.

Andre Beteille on caste: India’s destiny not caste in stone (HINDU FEB 2012)

1. Those who try to keep up with discussions on current affairs in the newspapers and on television maybe forgiven if they conclude that caste is India’s destiny. If there is one thing the experts in the media who comment on political matters have in common, it is their preoccupation with caste and the part it plays in electoral politics.
2. Many are now coming to believe that, despite the undeniable demographic, technological and economic changes taking place in the country, the division into castes and communities remains the ineluctable and ineradicable feature of Indian society.
3. They also believe that to ignore those divisions or to draw attention to other divisions such as those of income, education and occupation is to turn our backs on the ground reality. The more radical among them add that ignoring those realities amounts to an evasion of the political responsibility of redistributing the benefits and burdens of society in a more just and equitable manner.
4. Does nothing changed in India? A great many things have in fact changed in the last 60 years both in our political perceptions and in the social reality. The leaders of the nationalist movement who successfully fought for India’s freedom from colonial rule believed that India may have been a society of castes and communities in the past but would become a nation of citizens with the adoption of a new republican constitution.
5. They were too optimistic. The Constitution did create rights for the citizen, but it did not eradicate caste from the hearts and minds of the citizens it created For many Indians, and perhaps the majority, the habits of the heart are still the habits of a hierarchical society.

Inter-dining rules

1. Universal adult franchise opened up new possibilities for mobilising electoral support on the basis of caste and thus prevented the consciousness of caste from dying down. Democracy was expected to efface the distinctions of caste, but its consequences have been very different from what was expected Politics is no doubt an important part of a nation’s life in a democracy, but it is not the only part of it There are other areas of life in which the consciousness of caste has been dying down, though not very rapidly or dramatically. The trends of change which I will now examine do not catch the attention of the media because they happen over long stretches of time, in slow motion as it were. They are not noticeable from month to month or even year to year but across two or more generations.
2. Let us start with the ritual opposition of purity and pollution which was a cornerstone of the hierarchical structure of caste. The rules of purity and pollution served to mark the distinctions and gradations among castes and sub-castes. Characteristic among them were those relating to commensality or inter-dining. They determined who could sit together at a meal with whom, and who could accept food and water from whom. Only castes of equivalent rank could inter-dine with each other. In general people accepted cooked food and water from the hands of their superiors, but not their inferiors.
3. The ritual rules governing food transactions were rigid and elaborate until a hundred years ago. Nobody can deny that there has been a steady erosion of those rules. Modern conditions of life and work have rendered many of them obsolete. The excesses of the rules of purity and pollution have now come to be treated with ridicule and mockery among educated people in metropolitan cities like Kolkata and Delhi. It is impossible to maintain such rules in a college canteen or an office lunch room. To insist on seating people according to their caste on a public occasion would cause a scandal today.
4. In the past, restrictions on inter-dining were closely related to restrictions on marriage according to the rules of caste. The restrictions on marriage have not disappeared but they have eased to some extent Among Hindus, the law imposed restrictions on inter-caste marriage.The law has changed but the custom of marrying within the caste is still widely observed However, what is happening is that other considerations such as those of education and income are also kept in mind in arranging a match. At any rate, it will be difficult to argue that caste consciousness in matrimonial matters has been on the rise in recent decades.

In politics, the media

1. There continues to be a general association between caste and occupation to the extent that the lowest castes are largely concentrated in the menial and low-paying jobs whereas the higher castes tend to be in the best-paid and most esteemed ones. But the association between caste and occupation is now more flexible than it was in the traditional economy of land and grain. Rapid economic growth and the expansion of the middle class are accompanied by new opportunities for individual mobility which further loosens the association between caste and occupation.
2. If, in spite of all this, caste is maintaining or even strengthening its hold over the public consciousness, there has to be a reason for it That reason is to be found in the domain of organised politics. Caste had entered the political arena even before independence, particularly in peninsular India. But the adoption of universal adult franchise after independence altered the character and scope of the involvement of caste in the political process.
3. The consciousness of caste is brought to the fore at the time of elections. Elections to the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas are now held all the year round For logistical and other reasons, elections to even the Vidhan Sabhas may be stretched out over several weeks. There are by-elections in addition to the general elections. Election campaigns have become increasingly spectacular and increasingly costly, and they often create the atmosphere of a carnival. The mobilisation of electoral support on the basis of caste is a complex phenomenon whose outcome gives scope for endless speculation.
4. Even though for the country as a whole the election season never really comes to an end the individual voter participates in the electoral process only occasionally and sporadically. The average villager devotes far more thought and time to home, work and worship than to electoral matters. It is well known that the voter turnout among urban professional Indians is low. But even when they do not participate in the elections to the extent of visiting their local polling booths, they participate in them vicariously by following on television what happens in the outside world Television provides a large dose of entertainment along with a modicum of political education.
5. Private television channels have created a whole world in which their anchors and the experts who are regularly at their disposal vie with each other to bring out the significance of the “caste factor,” meaning the rivalries and alliances among castes, sub-castes and groups of castes by commentators who, for the most part, have little understanding of, or interest in, long-term trends of change in the country. These discussions create the illusion that caste is an unalterable feature of Indian society. It will be a pity if we allow what goes on in the media to reinforce the consciousness of caste and to persuade us that caste is India’s destiny.

Response to Andre Beitelle on this by Joseph Tharamangalam

1. Why is caste such a dominant feature of Indian social life? According to Andre Beteille, in his article published in The Hindu (“India’a destiny not caste in stone,”) it is because of electoral politics and the media which keep caste alive. India’s constitution may also have played a role.
2. While creating a nation of citizens and citizenship rights it also kept caste alive. Outside of politics many changes, slow but steady, have transformed caste practices and caste consciousness in such areas as inter-dining, inter-caste marriages and caste-based occupations.
3. That the forces of modernization are associated with what sociologists call a move from particularistic to universalistic forms of social relations is a generally accepted view and should come as no surprise. We saw this happen in India with the coming of the railways which simply could not provide separate coaches for different castes. So let us grant that the changes Beteille notes are taking place with the caveat that he may be over-stating the case.
4. The fact that the more than three lakh manual scavengers of India are almost exclusively drawn from Dalit communities must provoke some serious thinking about the issue. It would also be interesting to know much inter-dining and how many inter-caste marriages have taken place in the Tamil Nadu village where Beteille did his PhD research some six decades ago.

To restrict access

1. The problem with Beteille’s argument is that it ignores some critical dimensions of caste that doggedly persist and perhaps underpin some India-specific features of the country’s development path.These dimensions are sustained by a material base defined by vastly different control over resources and the means of coercion.
2. These are now deployed not so much to enforce rules of purity/pollution, but to restrict access to vast numbers of Dalits and Other Backward Classses (OBC) to resources and opportunities old and new. The politics of caste cannot be understood if seen outside this context and delinked from these realities.

Social indicators

1. A widely noted paradox about India’s development can shed some light on the endemic deprivations suffered by the lower castes. Despite its high growth India fares very poorly in almost all measures of social indicators provided by major international and Indian organisations (e.g., the Human Development Index or HDI, the Multiple Poverty Index or MPI, the Global Hunger Index or GHI) in comparison with developing countries at the same or even lower levels of economic growth and per capita GDP.
2. Its low HDI ranking (119 in a list of 169 in 2010 — compared with China’s 89) is attributable to its exceptionally low indicators of basic education and health. It ranks particularly low in such measures as Infant Mortality Rates, malnutrition, underweight and stunted children and pregnant women who are underweight and anaemic.
3. Even more scandalous is India’s ranking in the GHI with a ranking of 66 out of, below even its south Asian neighbours except Bangladesh; the country is home to the single largest pool of hungry people in the world, 255 million who make up 21 per cent of its population. The MPI provides a similar scenario; 455 million making up 55 per cent of the population, are MPI poor and eight Indian states contain more MPI poor people than 26 of the poorest African countries combined.
4. Behind these figures are two significant facts about Indian society: first the country has an unusually large underclass, and second prominently figured in this class are the lower castes (especially the Dalits) and the Scheduled tribes. In all the relevant social indictors the figures are considerably worse (difference of 10 per cent or more) for these groups. For example, while 55 per cent of Indians are MPI poor the figures for SCs and STs are 65.8 and 81.4 respectively. Note also that the worst performing states are generally the ones with high proportions of SCs and STs.

System of violence

1. The abysmal socio-economic condition of the lower castes is not a random occurrence but is embedded in historically inherited structures that have resisted radical change. India’s historical failures — aborted land redistribution, neglected agriculture (except during the Green Revolution period of thel960s-70s) and a soft approach in attacking caste iniquities — have helped to maintain these structures.
2. In this context it is interesting to look at another enigma in India’s trajectory, its very poor record in primary education (e.g. in contrast to East Asia) during the same period when it made great strides in scientific, technical and other forms of higher education spawning the now famous Indian middle class. One explanation for this massive failure is that early planners pursued a misguided view that it was the latter forms of education that India needed for rapid economic development.
3. But there is another explanation in which caste figures as a factor.A benign version of this view is that upper caste Indians, following their habits of the hearts, simply did not see the merit of educating the lower castes.
4. A less benign version argues that the project of educating the low castes may have met with resistance from the upper castes who feared that such a project and consequent upward mobility of the lower castes would jeopardise the control and management of their low caste workers, dependents and servants. Having done fieldwork in rural Bihar and observed such dynamics at work, I see some merit in this last argument.
5. Finally, it is important to note that this structure is maintained not just by ideology and pollution rules but also by considerable violence. It is indeed a system of structural violence manifested by constant threats and periodic outbursts of physical violence employed by land owing upper castes threatened by changes in established relationships and also by the lower castes who dare to resist or retaliate.
6. ‘Atrocities against Dalits” — ranging from murder, rape and arson to such humiliating practices as parading Dalit women naked in the village and making the victims consume human excreta, are reasonably well documented India’s parliamentarians regarded these as serious enough to enact the “Atrocities against Dalit Act” in 1989. While the effectiveness of the act is disputed Dalit activists insist that the act cannot be implemented without political pressure from below.
7. In the wake of recent patterns of economic growth that are further marginalising rural dwellers and agricultural labourers, concerned activists and scholars such as Amartya Sen (whose famous studies on Indian famines have noted the disproportionately high numbers of Dalits victims in Indian famines) have called for the building of “countervailing power” through better political organization of underprivileged groups.
8. What, then can we make of Beteille’s suggestion that caste would simply have disappeared if only it had been kept out of the domains of politics and the media? To be sure, he has an important case about the misuse of caste by self-serving politicians and media persons. But the prescription for depoliticisation of caste is surely a non-starter.
9. Perhaps a better route would be the one traversed by Kerala where the political mobilisation of the lower castes was integrated into broader rational-legal and universalistic forms of organisations across caste, community and religion into modern forms of trade unions and parties.
10. Yes, we have abolished untouchability, the need today is to abolish the material base of the system that sustained untouchability, now spawning newer forms of discrimination and violence.

Another reaction on Andre Beitelle’s article

An internal code, culture and values make a caste special to its members.

1. What explains the persistence of caste consciousness in our politics? Andre Beteille explores this in his piece in The Hindu [India’s destiny not caste in stone,February 21, 2012). Beteille’s argument is structured thus:
2. Media experts are preoccupied with caste and its role in politics. Divisions of income, education and occupation are ignored and caste alone is stressed
3. Beteille says in 60 years a great many things have changed. These are things that change over generations, and so don’t interest the media. People dine with one another now. To insist on these rules of ritual purity in the age of the college canteen, he says, would cause a scandal. The “custom of marrying within the caste is still widely observed’ he accepts, but adds “it will be difficult to argue that caste consciousness in matrimonial matters has been on the rise in recent decades.”
4. To him such things indicate the steady dying out of caste consciousness in matters outside politics. So then what explains the persistence of caste in politics? Beteille says: “The consciousness of caste is brought forward to the fore at the time of elections.” How? “Private television channels have created a whole world in which their anchors and the experts who are regularly at their disposal vie with each other to bring out the significance of the ‘caste factor’.”
5. Let us agree with Beteille that caste is not India’s destiny. But let us also examine why it persists in our politics if it’s dying out elsewhere as he claims it is. The Constitution created rights, Beteille says, but could not eradicate caste from the hearts of its citizens: “For many Indians, and perhaps the majority, the habits of the heart are still the habits of a hierarchical society.”Adult franchise opened up the possibility of mobilising electoral support on the basis of caste, but outside politics “the consciousness of caste has been dying down, though not very rapidly or dramatically.”
6. In showing changes in society, Beteille refers to such things as pollution and inter-dining. That is to say, in interactions members of caste A have with members of caste B. This is the prescriptive aspect of caste. The Constitution skewers it through Articles15, 16 and 17, but it was dying even a century ago. The Sanatani Gandhi does only perfunctory penance for sailing to England (and so losing his caste),and promptly sails off again, to South Africa.
7. The prescriptive aspect is eroded easily by modernity because it is prejudice and superstition. Adherence brings little benefit It erodes also because, as Beteille says, urban life brings proximity, in the college canteen and the city bus, where such rules are not easy to follow.
8. Is this aspect of caste, the one that is dying out, what produces caste division in politics? Is it why people cleave to their caste when they vote?
9. No. The reason for the persistence of caste in politics is something entirely different
10. It has to do with the internal code of the caste, its positive aspects, its culture. What makes it special, according to its members, and distinguishes it from the other castes.This aspect erodes more slowly, if it erodes at all because it is felt
11. Two quick examples will illustrate what is meant Let us look at the castes of the 10 richest people in India, according to Forbes magazine: Lakshmi Mittal (Baniya), Mukesh Ambani (Baniya), Azim Premji (Lohana), Ruia brothers (Baniya), Savitri Jindal (Baniya), Gautam Adani (Baniya), K.M. Birla (Baniya), Anil Ambani (Baniya), Sunil Mittal (Baniya), Adi Godrej (Parsi).
12. Nine of the 10 are from mercantile castes, including the only Muslim. The break up as we go further down the list is diluted somewhat in favour of the other castes, but not by much. Even first generation billionaires, for instance Adani, the Ruias and Sunil Mittal or Uday Kotak (Lohana), tend to come from mercantile castes. Wealthy Muslims like Premji or Khorakiwala (Lohana) also tend to follow this pattern. It is not easy to find many Indians of non-mercantile castes who run businesses of scale.
13. The Baniya is convinced that his ability to raise and manage capital is demonstrably superior to that of the rest. He sees this as a result of his caste’s culture, which stresses the ability to set aside honour, to compromise.

The End of the Blog: Andre Beteille: Perspectives on the Study of Caste Systems