Ambedkar Summary - Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development PDF

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Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development...

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Dr B.R. Ambedkar read his paper Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis, and Development at the Anthropology Seminar of A.A. Goidenweiser at Columbia University on the 9th of May 1916. In the paper, Ambedkar analysed the origins of the caste hierarchy, the processes that perpetuated it, and its evolution. He articulated that the caste system, though explored in many anthropological works, was never clearly explained; instead, it was merely classified as an aspect of society that could not be understood and, thus, unknowable. His paper attempted to explicate the caste system by drawing attention to the custom of endogamy, class relations and imitation of Brahman customs by non-Brahman groups. By critiquing the various definitions of caste as given by Émile Senart, John Nesfield, H.H. Risley and Dr Ketkar, Ambedkar brought to attention how most scholarly works of literature have overlooked the most fundamental characteristic of the caste system: the prohibition of intermarriage, implying, the practice of endogamy. To him, caste was maintained by the social, and religious sphere, both of which were constructed by the dominant Brahman caste who superimposed endogamy on the previously exogamous Indian population. Ambedkar regarded the genesis of the caste system to be grounded in the very custom of endogamy that homogenised the Indian population while arbitrarily constructing caste boundaries. He specified that in order to maintain the caste system, there must be an equilibrium in the supply of the men and women of an endogamous group, as an excess in either of them would lead to a spillover effect outside one’s caste group. He concluded that the caste system was determined by the value of surplus men and women in Hindu society. By performing the ritual of Sati and enforcing widowhood, the society sought after the surplus of women. However, the surplus of men was a harder issue to solve, as men possess greater social, economic, and political capital. Contextualising the position men occupy in the Hindu society, Ambedkar stated that it is neither possible to impose involuntary celibacy on men, nor burn the widower on the funeral pyre of his wife. Thus, the issue of surplus men and women could be solved by marrying surplus men to child brides, and consequently imposing widowhood on the surplus of women. In this sense, he affirmed that the origin of the caste system was equivalent to the origin of the mechanisms for endogamy. The practices of Sati, widowhood and child marriage perpetuate endogamy, thus, preserving the caste structure and subsequently, the class hierarchy.

While exploring the origin of caste, Ambedkar delved into the relationship between class and caste. In acknowledging that the formation of class groups is contingent on varying factors, he maintained that in Hindu society, a caste is an enclosed class. When tracing the origin of caste, it is imperative to find which class was the first to emerge and insulate itself from the rest of the society. Historically, it is found that customs that preserve the caste system are the most strictly adhered to among the Brahman caste, who occupy the highest position in the caste hierarchy. Therefore, Ambedkar suggested that the Brahmans were the first class to enclose itself into a caste. In the later segment of his paper, he extrapolated how the formation of Brahman class affected the non-Brahman population. Ambedkar divulged the processes through which the caste machinery extended to nonBrahman groups by highlighting two theories: one theory contended that the caste system was forcefully imposed upon the non-Brahman population through the people in power, especially Manu; a second theory proposed that the caste system grew because of a social law of growth distinct to Indian society. Ambedkar rejected the first theory citing that it would have been impossible for one person in power to spread the caste system across a large landmass with a sizeable heterogeneous population. Furthermore, he criticised scholars like Nesfield who proposed a functionalist perspective to analyse the caste system on the grounds that it was problematic to view caste as a productive institution when it oppressed a large section of society. Ambedkar asserted that the caste system was not simply based on occupation or function as it resulted in the isolation of caste groups, created a system of hierarchy founded in endogamy, ascribed caste status to members of the society and, prohibiting mobility among its classes. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that there was mobility among the classes at some point in history; however, once the Brahman caste isolated itself from other groups and began to practice endogamy, one’s caste membership became immobile. Next, Ambedkar investigated the ways in which the caste hierarchy spread among the non-Brahman groups. To explain the influence of the caste system among non-Brahman groups, Ambedkar employed a two-fold theory of psychology and mechanics. Firstly, he stated that the nonBrahmans enclosed themselves because they observed the Brahman caste doing so; such a

decision may have been a conscious one, but more likely, an unconscious attempt to imitate the practices of Brahmans to the extent that the non-Brahman groups resembled the structure of the Brahman caste. He drew from Gabriel Tarde’s law of imitation theory to prove his theory. According to Tarde, the source of imitation for a group must be superior to those who imitate and there must be sufficient contact between the two groups. The first condition proposed by Tarde is fulfilled in Ambedkar’s analysis as the Brahmans, on whom the caste system is modelled, is the dominant caste who practices endogamy, Sati, enforced widowhood and child marriage. The status of one’s caste membership depends on the extent to which groups abide by or imitate the three mechanisms of caste. Moreover, the condition of distance is met in the sense that the castes closer to the dominant Brahman caste imitate the three customs more strictly while castes farther away from the Brahmans do not. Secondly, Ambedkar elucidated castes only exist in plural numbers. In the process of creating a Brahman caste, the Brahmans not only created their own enclosed class but also a non-Brahman class. Thus, the existence or creation of one caste consequently corroborated the existence of other castes. Some non-Brahmans castes consciously or unconsciously created their own enclosed classes, while others were forced to do so out of the fear of being alienated from the rest of the Hindu society. Ambedkar brought to attention the punishment of excommunication to highlight that some groups transformed themselves into caste groups out of the fear of being excommunicated. Therefore, the caste system, Ambedkar concluded, was a vicious cycle of excommunication and enclosure with no foreseeable end. To summarise, in his essay, Ambedkar explored the custom of endogamy and the mechanisms of Sati, enforced widowhood and child marriage, that perpetuated the caste system. Next, he brought to attention the relationship between caste and class. Lastly, he gave account of the ways in which the enclosure of the Brahman group led to the development of caste hierarchy across non-Brahman groups by proposing the theory of mechanics and psychology....