Caste and Equality in India

A Historical Anthropology of Diverse Society and Vernacular Democracy

Akio Tanabe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000409338
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives.

Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality.

This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

1 Introduction

Towards a cultural politics of ethics in everyday practice

Problems and perspectives

Social change and its ethical basis

One day in September 1992, during my fieldwork in the village of Garh Manitri in Khurda, Orissa, I witnessed a grand procession of villagers passing in front of the house where I was staying.¹ It started from the hill where the tutelary goddess of the locality resided and marched through the village streets. The procession triumphantly declared the end of factional fighting and the reunification of the village. Men shouted “Garh Manitri zindabad” (long live Garh Manitri),² as they proclaimed to everyone that the village had ‘become one’ again, as it had been in the past. I had seen so much factional discord in the village that I could hardly believe that this procession could bring about any real change. Indeed I was not alone in my scepticism, and many villagers remained unconvinced.

One of the main impressions during my fieldwork in Khurda was the serious disjuncture between the practice and discourse of community, duty and cooperative togetherness in the socio-cultural sphere and of competition, cheating and corruption in the politico-economic sphere. On the one hand there was constant giving and receiving of services and gifts between households. People eagerly performed their roles in the grand local festivals. I was impressed with the sheer length of time people spent together with their kin and fellow villagers in their work and leisure, sitting and talking together about all sorts of topics. There was no doubt about the existence of abundant care and affection. On the other hand, however, there was fierce factional rivalry over the acquisition of state resources that often broke into heated arguments and sometimes even physical violence. Rural society, despite its socio-cultural practice of togetherness, seemed to suffer from a variety of social problems, such as a lack of cooperation among villagers regarding development projects, fighting among political factions and widespread corruption.

Such a disjuncture of the lifeworld reflected the “postcolonial predicament” (Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993) of Indian society. Although India achieved political independence in 1947, this did not mean a total departure from the colonial experience. Independent India not only inherited most of the governing apparatus—bureaucracy, court, police and military—from the colonial state (Jalal 1995), it also maintained the colonial dichotomy of ‘inner tradition’ and ‘outer modernity’ as the semantic framework of cognition and practice. Furthermore, caste hierarchy along with the structure of dominance based on landholding, fixed during colonial times, continued to bind socio-economic relationships in local society. In this way, independent India was never really free of its colonial past. What I witnessed in an Orissan village in the early 1990s was the persistence of a colonially wedged schism between the inner tradition of the socio-cultural sphere and the outer modernity of the politico-economic sphere.

In this predicament, where the lifeworld was fragmented into incompatible parts, socio-cultural practices of cooperation and exchange were given importance as representing community tradition, though its content was often contested. Politico-economic activities, putatively based on the principle of equality and rationality, were dominated by the logic of power and numbers. Low castes and the poor were totally marginalised in local politics, as people of the dominant caste engaged in self-serving factional politics. Many people se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of maps
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Note on transliteration
• Glossary
• List of Abbreviations
• Weights and measures
• 1 Introduction: Towards a cultural politics of ethics in everyday practice
• 2 Managing diversities: Frontiers, forest communities and little kingdoms
• 3 Local society and kingship: Reconsidering ‘caste’, ‘community’ and ‘state’
• 4 Early colonial transformation: The emergence of wedged dichotomies
• 5 Consolidation of colonial dichotomy: Political economy and cultural identity
• 6 Postcolonial tradition: The biomoral universe
• 7 Cash and faction: ‘The logic of the fish’ in the political economy
• 8 Ritual, history and identity: The Goddess Rāmacaṇḍī festival
• 9 Recast(e)ing identity: Transformations from below
• 10 Vernacular democracy: A post-postcolonial transformation
• 11 Conclusion: Beyond the postcolonial
• Appendix 1: Deed of Sale of Village Office
• Appendix 2: Details of State Tax
• Bibliography
• Index