Caste, gender and discrimination

Overview

Recall questions on Brahminism, untouchability and dalit voices, the range of Hindu positions on caste, stridharma, marriage and children, why sons have been valued more than daughters, sati, resources for women's equality, and whether caste is social or religious.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by Brahminism?

   Model answer

   The term describes a form of religious and social order in which brahmins hold authority over scripture, ritual and the definition of purity, and in which the hierarchy of birth is legitimated by that authority. It is used most often by dalit and Ambedkarite writers, who intend it critically, arguing that what is called Hinduism is in practice a system organised for the benefit of the priestly and landed classes, and that the doctrine of karma and the duties of varna are the mechanism by which subordination is made to look deserved. Those who reject the term argue that it is a polemical caricature: brahmins were often poor, held no political power, and never controlled the many devotional and regional traditions that flourished outside their sanction, and that treating priestly texts as the whole of Hinduism repeats the colonial mistake.

2. 2

   What is untouchability?

   Model answer

   Untouchability is the exclusion of certain communities from ordinary contact on the ground that contact with them pollutes. It rests on a religious logic of purity and impurity in which occupations dealing with death, human waste, leather and animal carcasses are held to be permanently defiling, so those who perform them are treated as defiling by birth rather than by act. Historically it meant exclusion from temples, from village wells, from schools and from shared eating, restrictions on where people could live and walk, and violence against those who broke the rules. It was abolished by the Indian constitution and its practice was made a criminal offence, but it has not disappeared, especially in rural areas.

3. 3

   What do the different names used for dalit communities reveal about the argument over caste?

   Model answer

   Each name carries a position. Untouchable states the disability and was the colonial administrative term. Scheduled caste is the legal and statistical category created for reservation and protection, and defines the group by entitlement. Harijan, meaning children of God, was Gandhi's name, intended to confer dignity but widely rejected by those it described as sentimental and condescending, since it accepted their position while asking others to be kind about it. Dalit, meaning broken or ground down, is the name chosen by the communities themselves, and it describes what was done to them rather than what they are, which makes it a political claim as well as a label. Choosing between the terms is therefore already taking sides.

4. 4

   Can dalits speak for themselves, or must others speak for them?

   Model answer

   The case that they have needed others to speak: illiteracy, poverty, landlessness and economic dependence on higher-caste employers made independent political action extremely difficult; access to Sanskrit learning and the priesthood was denied, so the religious authority to argue within the tradition was closed; and the campaigns that produced legal change were largely led by high-caste reformers and by the state. The case that they can and do: Ambedkar was a dalit who framed the constitution and argued without a patron, dalit political parties have governed India's largest state, there is a substantial body of dalit literature and dalit theology, and international advocacy networks are dalit-led. The sharper argument is that speaking on behalf of others reproduces the very dependence it claims to relieve, which is what the dispute between Gandhi and Ambedkar was ultimately about. A further point is that dalits are not one voice: dalit Hindus, Buddhists and Christians differ, and dalit women argue that they are spoken over within dalit politics too.

5. 5

   Outline the social issues that arise from untouchability.

   Model answer

   Segregation in villages, with separate settlements, separate water sources and separate burial grounds. Continued concentration in stigmatised occupations, including manual scavenging, which remains despite being prohibited. Exclusion or humiliation in schools, and high dropout rates. Bonded and unfree labour and landlessness. Barriers to entering temples and to being served in shops, tea stalls and barbers. Violence, including the burning of dalit settlements and sexual violence against dalit women, often provoked by assertions of equality such as inter-caste marriage or contesting an election. And the political consequences of remedies, since reservations and specific criminal protections have themselves become a source of resentment.

6. 6

   Set out the range of Hindu positions on caste.

   Model answer

   There are at least four. The Ambedkarite position holds that the hierarchy is scriptural and doctrinal, that a religion whose texts rank people by birth cannot be reformed out of it, and that dalits should leave it, as Ambedkar did in converting to Buddhism in 1956. The reformist position holds that the abuse is a corruption of an original scheme based on aptitude and function rather than birth, and cites the Bhagavad Gita's statement that the fourfold order was created according to quality and action; it argues that Hinduism contains the resources for its own correction, and points to the temple entry campaigns and to figures such as Vivekananda. The traditionalist position holds that varna is an ordained interdependence of functions and not a ranking of human worth, that each has its own duty and its own route to liberation, and that egalitarian criticism imports an alien standard. The sociological position holds that lived caste is jati, a social and economic institution found among Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs as well, so that it is not Hindu doctrine at all and doctrinal argument is aimed at the wrong target.

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