PAN INDIA HINDU HAS NO CASTE

PAN INDIA HINDU HAS NO CASTE 

excerpt from a Punjabi's thoughts on jati : 

I grew up in rural Punjab (Ladda village in Sangrur District) in 1950s.  My village contained some one dozen different Hindu and Sikh jatis or caste groups. Population count was taken by the number of family units, not individuals. Of the total 300 families in 1950, the approximate caste breakdown was as follows: Jat farmers 180, Baniya merchants 20, Brahmins 20, the service castes (blacksmith, barber, carpenter, oil pressure, etc) 30, and two untouchable groups of Chamars and Churahs (leather workers and sweepers) 25 each.  Some 20 Muslim families of potters and weavers left the village in 1947 to migrate to Pakistan or to majority Muslim towns within India. Each caste was traditionally associated with a particular occupation.  But all did not pursue it. None of the Brahmin families pursued the traditional priest-craft; some did farming, others did retailing or labor. The untouchables did share cropping.  For each jati, the marriage circle consisted of some 40-50 villages spread within a radius of about 50 miles. This was 60 years ago.  With the availability of modern transportation and communication, the marriage circle now encompasses a wider area.

The village consisted of four contiguous sections or neighborhoods, called behras. The untouchables occupied one of the four neighborhoods. All other castes were mingled in the remaining three sections. Untouchable separateness was not strictly adhered to. Members of the higher castes bought properties adjoining the untouchable quarter. The primary school I attended was located in the untouchable section of the village and nobody thought much about it. With the exception of the untouchables, all other caste groups were intermingled. They shared each other’s food and water. They attended each other’s weddings and special ceremonies. Even though food and water was not shared with the untouchable, they were an integral part of the village social and economic fabric.

My Vaishya family’s three immediate neighbors were a Brahmin, a Tailor and a Jat farmer.  The barely literate Brahmin neighbor pursued subsistence farming rather than the traditional priest-craft. No taboo about sharing food held sway. As a child I accepted water and food at the tailor’s home (technically a lower caste Shudra) and nobody in my family told me otherwise. Nobody in the village identified the tailor as a shudra. Only after reading books on caste did I know that the tailor belonged to the lower shudra caste. 

The descriptions of caste system popular especially in the West are based more on certain ancient law books (for example, Manusmriti, the laws of Manu) than on ground reality.  Even sixty years ago in 1950, hereditary occupation was not much followed.  The principle of pollution and purity did not strictly hold sway. The status difference among different groups was minimal.  Only the practice of endogamy remained.  And, things have dramatically changed since my childhood.

Village identification was more important than caste or religious identification. When I left India in 1956 to travel to the United States for study, the entire village walked two miles to the railway station to send me off with their blessings. Many had teary eyes. When I returned three years later, a similar reception waited for me at the village gate. My emotional tie to the village is stronger than to my caste or religion. Even though I left the village some 50 years ago, I make periodic pilgrimages there.

Mine was a peaceful village, like all other villages in the vicinity that I knew.  Inter-caste tensions were rare.  Textbook accounts of inter-caste conflict are exaggerated or untrue. There was small scale thievery but little serious or violent crime.  There were no accounts of girls being raped in the remembered history of the village.  All lived in similar housing, one or two room clay-brick houses with front courtyards where animals might be tethered and cooking and washing were done.  Their possessions were few in number. Milk and honey did not flow, contrary to idealized versions of Punjabi rural life.  But all managed a healthful organic diet.  There was the close-knit family and the larger village community that gave one the sense of belonging.  Fairs, festivals and wedding feasts provided entertainment and gaiety.  We lived reasonably contented lives.

In post-Independence India, caste has been politicized and arenas of conflict have increased. Political parties now accentuate caste and religious divisions in order to garner votes.