By Aparna Pande
This article appeared in Chowk on April 19, 2007

Sanskritization is a term coined by the famous Sociologist, Dr M.N. Srinivas. It refers to the process by which castes lower in the hierarchy emulate the rituals and practices of upper castes, thereby seeking upward mobility. The basic premise of Dr Srinivas was to show that the caste system was not rigid but rather very fluid.

 

An example of this is the Nadars, formerly called the Shanars. The Shanars belonged to the caste of toddy-tappers in the region around Madras and Travancore. Their position in the caste hierarchy was just above that of the Untouchables. In the nineteenth century via education and a move towards a more respectable occupation, that of merchants, the Nadars (as the Shanars now referred to themselves) gained both economic and social status.

 

The caste system has existed in India for centuries and has been taken by some to be both an integral part of Hinduism as well as of the Indian civilization. Yes, the caste system came up during the Aryan Age and the four-fold caste organization was part of the occupational division of society.

 

There was a belief that society would be better organized if it could be laid down that some people need to be the priests, others the warriors, some the merchants and rest the farmers and other menial workers. There would thus always be people available to perform each of these activities.

 

It was the natural response of a society which existed 3000 years ago, it is neither true nor necessary 3000 years later. Yet in the early era the caste system was neither hereditary nor rigid; you could follow any occupation irrespective of what your parents did and you could move up and down the caste ladder.

 

Over the centuries this flexibility died and a hereditary caste structure came into being. It became almost impossible to change your caste and even more stringent sub-divisions within castes came up. Newer caste sub-divisions came up and even the category of ‘untouchables’, or those outside the caste system, was created.

 

However, despite and inspite of all this as centuries passed a certain flexibility in the caste system still existed. Buddhism and Jainism in the early centuries and the spread of Islam much later had the impact of forcing changes and flexibility in Hinduism. The upward movement of castes did take place, whether the Shanars/Nadars or the Marathas under Shivaji.

 

Caste was something that you were born with if you were a Hindu but it was not something laid out in an official document; there was also no way you knew what percentage of the population you belonged to. As with the relations between Hindus and Muslims the tensions between the castes exacerbated only during the colonial era.

 

The British did not ‘invent’ the caste system but what they did do was to make it the primary basis of social classification. When the British started taking the census, from 1882 onwards, caste was the basic unit of organizing society that they considered. When caste is your identity then you have an incentive in figuring out ‘how many’ people belong to your caste and when you organize politically or economically you do so along these lines.

 

For the British officers under the East India Company and even later under the Crown the caste system was an ideal way to control society. If there were certain segments of society, the Brahmins or the rajas (kshatriyas) whom everyone was supposed to obey then this was a very efficient way to maintain order. The other side of this dual-headed coin was that as long as people thought of themselves along caste lines there was very little chance of their uniting to fight the external enemy, the British.

 

According to some sociologists the British aided the process of Sanskritization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as it served their interests.

 

To some extent Sanskritization continued even during the early years of Independence when there was no political or economic incentive to belonging to a lower caste. Things changed in the 1990s with the rise of caste-based politics and religion based politics.

 

The implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations led to a massive fall out. This article is not going to go into the pros or cons of the Mandal report but rather the impact of the same.

 

The Hindu right wing parties tried to prevent what they feared was a ‘split’ in the so-called ‘Hindu vote bank’ by using the ‘mandir-masjid’ and other issues. The rath yatra and the 1992 Babri masjid demolition were an unfortunate consequence.

 

There was a rise of caste-based parties which claimed to speak on behalf of one or all backward castes. Even the non-caste based parties found it convenient to appeal along these lines.

 

The result was ‘de-Sanskritization’: it was no longer beneficial to be an upper caste and so attempts were made to re-claim any lower or backward caste roots.

 

The aim of the article is not to question whether or not caste-based reservations should have been implemented in India. Rather it is to point out that the notion that our caste is our main and major social identity can be traced back not to 3000 years but rather to a much nearer time – the colonial era.

 

Hinduism has lasted for so many centuries because it was open, flexible and accommodative, not narrow minded and rigid. Maybe as Hindus and as Indians we need to realize that our faith and our civilization is 5000 years old but our thinking need not be.