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Session 1: 'Understanding caste'
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Tanushka Dutta
9:32
Hello and Welcome to Session 1 of the Colloquium on 'Understanding Caste', featuring Prof. Surinder Singh Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Prof S Anandhi, Madras Institute of Development Studies with Dr. Nalini Rajan, Dean of Asian College of Journalism as the moderator.
9:34
Dr. Nalini Rajan opens the session with an introduction to the topic. She says that caste affects all of us. Upper-class people get a lot of facilities, whereas lower castes face different types of problems.
9:35
She talks about how political parties are obsessed with caste, and to be modern is to ignore all categories.
9:36
Thinkers like Periyar were national leaders and they have unsettled boundaries between modern and pre-modern.
9:37
An introduction to the iconic reformer, Periyar.
9:39
Dr. Nalini goes on to talk about multi-culturalism, affirmative action and reservation, which will be further elaborated in the third session.
9:40
Dr, Nalini introduces Prof. Surinder Singh Jodhka, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
9:41
Prof. Jodhka dives into the theme of the day at the outset. "Caveats are very important when we talk about caste." He poses an important question, "Who is talking about caste and in what context?"
He adds that caste is a very difficult subject, despite it being easy since we all have a sociological imagination of what's around us. He gives an example of how by the time students are in the 10th grade or 12th they already have knowledge of the society around them.
9:44
"A caveat should be part of our common sense, but common sense has to be deconstructed. Common sense has its own history and sophisticated, ideological and political reality, "adds Prof. Jodhka.
9:45
He points out how most of us are located in some hierarchy of caste. "Caste is our identity. It shapes our likes and dislikes and entails a worldview of how society should be organized."
9:46
Discussing identities, Prof. Jodhka says: "There are many identities that we carry. For example, I am a speaker, an author, a professor, a Sikh wearing a turban and so on."
But caste is a system with a hierarchy.
"I am not myself a Dalit although I am speaking about this issue. Sikhism does not have caste. There are no brahmins in the gurdwara. But caste is a reality, "says Prof. Jodhka. He adds that identities are relevant and sociologists should not neglect them.
9:48
Prof. Jodhka on Understanding Caste Inequalities in India,
9:49
"There is no legitimacy for inequality as a value anymore. Caste cannot be talked about just as a scientist but also as a human being. It is not impossible to engage with caste empirically, provided you do so critically, engaging with new facts even if they contradict your given view, he adds.
It is not impossible to engage with caste empirically, provided you do so critically, engaging with new facts even if they contradict your given view. Historians have added a lot to the discussion on caste, in addition to ethnographic work by sociologists and anthropologists.
9:53
He poses the question: "How do we normally talk about caste?" Middle-class people generally talk about reservations and how this has institutionalised caste and kept it alive. He says that this is true, the idea of giving identities a life of their own, but institutionalisation may not be a bad thing in itself.
Secondly, people believe politicians keep caste alive because it works for them electorally.
9:54
"Others say caste is alive because India is backward and mostly rural. But this is not empirically true. To many, especially the urban upper class, caste feels irrelevant. But this is a result of the existence of privileged ghettos where caste does not seem to matter," he adds.
Coming to the academic literature of caste, Prof. Jodhka says, "Caste is not an Indian word, but is now identified with India, defining Indian reality"
9:55
"There is no word that can describe its reality completely," says Prof. Jodhka.
9:56
" 'Varna' and 'Jati' are brahminical ways of looking at caste. In reality, each region has different structures of hierarchy. They are castes, but not 'Varna' and 'Jati'. The 'Iyer' caste from Tamil Nadu has nothing to do with the 'Namboodris' of Kerala, despite both being brahmins. This obvious empirical fact of such boundaries is rarely invoked," says Prof. Jodhka.
9:57
Prof. Jodhka on Caste in Contemporary India,
9:58
Prof. Jodhka states that it is critical to understand what happened in the 19th century. There was a shift from understanding caste as a hierarchy to caste as a religious value. This happened as European Indologists tried to understand Indian society through a brahminical understanding, says Prof. Jodhka.
9:59
Prof. Jodhka: "India is believed to have stayed frozen and unchanged over centuries."
10:00
To quote Prof. Jodhka, "The British continued this theory, an idea of India without history, politics, conflicts- an India without change"
This colonial orientalist view became the common sense.
10:01
Prof. Jodhka opines, "There is a popular view that the colonialists invented caste. This is completely untrue"
10:02
The discursive aspect of caste, the way we talk and think about caste, has been highly influenced by colonialism. They identified caste with 'Manusmriti'. He says that caste is not practised because of 'Manusmriti'. It is not a Hindu religious text. The colonial obsession with 'Manusmriti' is due to brahmin interlocutors. It perpetuates the idea that India cannot change on its own, a colonial narrative.
10:04
Prof. Jodhka explains that the assumption that caste is a reality based on consensus. Everyone believes in the hierarchy resulting from karma and therefore caste exists. There is no material view of caste in this narrative, which is empirically untrue.
10:05
Farmers Movement and Emerging Solidarities in Rural Punjab: Caste, Class and Sikhi with Dr. Jodhka-
10:06
Prof. Jodhka puts forth Bernard Cohen's argument that by projecting India as a land with no history or change, it convinced India and Indians that we need the British, rather than them colonizing us.
10:07
As the nationalists mobilized, they also had demographic anxieties. Gandhi was concerned with ensuring Ambedkar remained a Hindu. The nationalism and self-imagination were influenced by the colonial view that India was a land of villages, of castes, and Hindus.
10:10
Prof. Jodhka says that caste is spoken of in a purely religious and conceptual manner, and neglects the materializes of caste. The concrete aspects of caste such as how people live and eat, their disabilities and their abilities.
This view is problematic as it is not empirically true. Manusmriti did not invent caste but propagated the Brahmanic view of social life.
10:11
But the 'Shramanic' tradition has always existed in this region too.
Religions in the subcontinent have not evolved in the semitic tradition. There have been plurality of traditions.
Pro. Jodhka argues, "Dumont did not recognize Weber's view that status is a result of power. The implication was that caste had no history"
10:12
Caste is a useful conceptual tool if we take it out of modernist teleology. Caste is a system of ascription that is based on hierarchies.
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