Beyond Caste: Identity And Power In South Asia Past And Present

by Sumit Guha

“Caste” is today almost universally perceived as an ancient and unchanging Hindu institution preserved solely by deep-seated religious ideology. Yet the word itself is an importation from sixteenth-century Europe.

This book tracks the long history of the practices amalgamated under this label and shows their connection to changing patterns of social and political power down to the present. It frames caste as an involuted and complex form of ethnicity and explains why it persisted under non-Hindu rulers and in non-Hindu communities across South Asia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Asia, India

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Conrad Barwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A macro-historical survey of caste that looks at its development over the last 1,000 years by one of the most prominent historians of pre-colonial and colonial India. Guha's books has many strengths and is a valuable addition to the literature; not least of which is the demolishing of the Dumontian theoretical view of caste and of caste as being essentially a religious phenomenon and linked exclusively to the practise of Vedic-Brahmminical Hinduism. The prevalence of caste across non-Hindu South Asian regions such as Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as Buddhist Sri Lanka preclude such simplistic classifications. Guha also does much to correct armchair anthropological and sociological models that rely too heavily on grand theories of structuralism without the empirical ground research to support it. He also persuasively argues that caste must be seen as a form of ethnic community formation that is enforced by actual power relations rather than ideology. Only lacunae is that he doesn't actually account for why it has developed the form it has in South Asia as opposed to elsehwhere and underplays the elements of consistency in the hierarchical ranking system - most notably the 'Dalit problem' of why Dalits have not been effectively incorporated into the established social order and why group mobility still eludes them. Moreover, by only going back to the mideveal period, there is no explanation of why caste arose and how it did occur as a form of social organisation in the ancient period. These questions hold an important key in explaining both its longevity and the answer to its eventual supercession.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book makes the convincing case that caste is grievously misunderstood in the West. Usually, caste is interpreted as this transhistoric belief handed down from on high in the ancient writings of Hinduism and transmitted by belief and inertia among South Asia's Hindus.

I think the core segment of this argument is from pages 140 - 141: "It will be evident that I am deeply skeptical of attempts to trace socio-economic institutions to fundamental values. I have found considerable evidence to suggest that individuals systematically sough to modify and invent customs and institutions to their own perceived advantage, and that the patrimonial and early colonial state tried to derive fiscal and political advantage from these efforts. Inter-caste relationships and the idyllic village itself existed through the constant contest of unequal powers. The varying outcome of these ceaseless contests explains why institutions varied considerably at different times and in different regions. Society was never static in some "traditional" mode, and the bitter contests for political power and social status that rend the villages today are not as novel as they may seem".

As I understand it, the author makes the case that castes are bounded corporate entities that were constantly shaped by social and political forces. Caste is somewhat analogous to the corporate bodies found in feudal systems across Eurasia - we even call it "caste" because the Portuguese believed it vaguely analogous to their own systems with aristocrats and guilds, commoners and slaves, privileges and demerits. The author examines how castes developed - for example, how the trade castes formed as certain jobs became hereditary and passed down through family lines, or how people compelled to do unclean work became Dalits. The author highlights that this is based more in the material realities of power (and oppression) in South Asia than in just everyone "believing" in it strongly, and that despite being ruled largely by Muslims and Christians for the past half a millennium, both Islamic and European conquerors fit quite nicely into the pre-existing caste society. The author also explores how caste varied across India. Because castes are social/political categories, they could often not be recognized across the vast expanses of the subcontinent. The author provides the example of a Dalit from UP being treated as a Brahmin in Gujarat, or of how different groups of Brahmins did not recognize each other as valid. Finally, the author explores how caste changed over time. Apparently in contemporary times, there is less a focus on ritual purity even as the communal and electoral conflicts have heightened caste tensions.

I'll be perfectly honest - since I don't know a whole lot about India, there's a lot of stuff that I either missed entirely or that I probably misunderstood. That being said, the parts that I did understand are brilliant and changed my understand of how caste works - as a social construct shaped by contests over power, rather than just a belief manifesting in the social world.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has been hailed as an intervention on par with Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus. At least, it can be said with certainty that it is an intervention and an ambitious one at that. Sumit Guha tries in this book look at the historiography of caste and revise our understanding of its ubiquity, rigidity, and ways of manifesting and expressing itself. Guha draws from a concept in anthropology proposed by Fredrik Barth: that ethnicities and their power relations must be understood not through the cultural stuff within the boundaries of these ethnic groups but by the fact of the boundaries. Guha argues that groups and peoples could move out of and into castes but the rigidity and hierarchy of caste existed in the fact that high and low castes always existed. Also, caste could not be understood as being an independent institution in itself but as it interacted with other institutions - notably state power, fiscal instruments of states and other mercantile groups, kinship systems, and specific economic organisations. The book much in the line of Nicholas Dirks again, he tries to understand the transformation caste(s) may have undergone under the ethnographic and historiographical projects of the colonial state and bureaucracy. Guha sets out - on other words- to unravel the entire institution of caste and to be honest, in a quite longue duree way but he is pressed by the constraints of space and I was left disappointed with the description and exposition dedicated to each idea.

[Dhananjay Ashok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate social scientists man. They use 800 words for a sentence that needs 8. Overall a nice book made hard to get through for no reason.

[emely]

did i read this? i guess we'll never know