by Vishal Verma
The word ‘caste’ derived from the Portuguese term casta (status-group), and it was the sixteenth-century Portuguese colonizers who applied it in India “to what they encountered locally as varna and jati” (1). The Portuguese used the term primarily to denote a group defined by “purity of blood” (1998, 26). From the Portuguese colony of Goa, the term caste spread not only throughout India but also to the Spanish colonies in Mexico and Latin America, where it gradually evolved into an enduring racial category.
During the French Revolution, the term ‘caste’ came to denote the nobility (aristocratic class), as reflected in the writings of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès. For Sieyès, as William H. Sewell Jr. points out, “The true fault of the nobility is that it is a caste” (114, emphasis in original). Sieyès was against the privileges of the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility), but for him, only the latter constituted a caste, because its position was hereditary and not open to the Third Estate (people) through free competition. Sewell argues that Sieyès’s model of society was fundamentally based on three principles of political economy: the productivity of all labor, the division of labor, and free competition. His theory of the ‘social contract’ aimed precisely at multiplying individuals’ private labor by integrating it into a social system of division of labor and making it open to free competition, in order to maximize the most meritorious form of general social labor. In his theory, there was no distinction among agrarian labor, industrial labor, the labor of distributing goods, and the labor of moral and political services, as long as all were necessary and contributed to the wealth of the nation. Therefore, the key claim of Sieyès’s What is the Third Estate? (1789)—the Third Estate is everything and the nobility is nothing—should not be understood as a denial of the nobility’s potential to contribute usefully to the nation. Rather, it is a rejection of their hereditary status, which hampers productivity and reduces the nobility to a closed caste outside the nation—what Sieyès calls “political foreigners” (111). In other words, unlike the body of clergy, which “is not an exclusive caste but is open to all citizens,” the position of nobility is “defined as a caste, a privileged body whose privileges depend upon birth” (115, 117).
In the century to follow, as Michel Foucault rightly points out, “European culture was [sic] inventing for itself … great hidden forces developed on the basis of their primitive and inaccessible nucleus, origin, causality, and history” (274). However, this new form of ‘biologized’ thought—which emerged with the development of industrial capitalism and its associated social form, and which eventually gave rise to race theories and Social Darwinism—was, as Moishe Postone argues, “itself a part of the fetish which presents the ‘natural’ as more ‘essential’ and closer to origins, and the course of history as one of increasing artificiality” (111). In other words, during the ‘long’ nineteenth century, the concept of labor came to be understood through a racialized and biologized framework. In Germany, which had only recently asserted ‘mastery’ over nature—by reshaping the Rhine River and transforming a waterlogged swampland into one of the most powerful and usable landscapes—and was experiencing the rapid rise of industrial capitalism, the racial conception of labor was amplified through the political rhetoric of völkisch ideology.
Luna Sabastian, in her piece, “Volk against Kaste: Nondemocratic Popular Sovereignty in Nazi Germany,” traces that “Kaste entered German via the French” (848). The term was “first mentioned in a work by Christoph Martin Wieland in 1772” (849). Discussing the political and rhetorical “history of Kaste” in Nazi Germany, Sabastian explores “how the Nazis stood popular sovereignty on biological foundations” (880). In other words, Nazis used the term, Kaste, as antithetical to the category of Volk, and “promised to free” the latter from the former’s oppression (846). In 1932, Hitler accused the “caste of masters (Herrenkaste)” of being behind the emerging division within society, and claimed that abolishing Kaste would mend the “brokenness (Zerrissenheit) of the past” (859). And, that would further reconcile the two classes—the rulers and the ruled—in ‘one blood, one nation.’ Even after attaining power, caste remained central to the Nazis’ “arguments about völkisch consolidation and the aim of Volksgemeinschaft” (856). For them, the figure of the Jews, under the Weimar Republic, became the “Kaste of power” by building a powerful network of international Jewry that undermined the popular sovereignty of the German nation. Hence, while the Germans retained the French usage of ‘caste’ to designate a status group of ‘political foreigners’ within the nation, they redefined it in crucially divergent ways. In the French context, the category of ‘the people’ is a constitutional, republican, and political category, while ‘caste’ refers to the closed estate of the nobility. In the German context, the term Volk denotes a biologized, racial, and social category, while Kaste refers to the Jews—perceived as lacking Nordic blood and the Aryan traits of discipline and hard-work.
The normative register of the nineteenth-century economic thought—the biologized conception of labor—is not confined merely to Europe. Jotirao Phule (1827-1890)—the architect of the non-Brahmin movement in the Bombay Presidency and author of Gulamgiri (Slavery, 1873)—overturned the dominant belief that the Aryans were the original cultivators. [For instance, Max Müller asserted: “the etymological signification of Arya seems to be ‘one who ploughs or tills,’ and that it is connected with the root of arare” (198)]. Instead, Phule portrayed them as etymologically linked to the Iranians who, drawn by the wealth and fertile land of India, invaded a region primarily inhabited and cultivated by the Dravidians. He presents a radical reinterpretation of the legendary stories of Puranas, which recounts Lord Vishnu’s various incarnations, beginning with Matsya (fish). Phule argues that these stories revealed Aryans’ repeated attempts and strategies to conquer Dravidian lands and people. Put briefly, according to Phule, the Aryans were initially called bhrashta (corrupted) as they were surviving on stealing and killing animals of the native cultivators, Dravidian Kshatriyas, who were known as rakshak (protectors). However, over time, under the dominance of Aryan rule, the term rakshak began to be recharacterized as rakshasa (demon), while bhrashta came to be rendered as bhata (a Brahmin-associated surname) (2002, 64). After conquering, Phule narrates, Aryans enslaved the native Dravidian Kshatriyas and subjugated them as field laborers in villages, who were referred to as kulwadi, a term that later evolved into Kulambi or Kunbi (a peasantry caste). Aryans began treating these enslaved native Kshatriyas as inferior and ignoble, labeling them Kshudra, which later became Shudra (lower castes) (65). However, a few Kshatriya clans that had not been subjugated revolted against the Aryans “in order to rescue their [Shudras’] brethren from their [Aryans’] clutches” (66). The historical uprising, according to Phule, deepened the Aryans’ hostility towards the rebelling Shudras. The latter were exiled and isolated from the village society and cultivation – “all their trade and commerce ended and they were reduced to a life of abject poverty and had to resort to the practice of eating the flesh of dead animals in order to survive” (45). Phule argues that Aryan trickery poisoned the minds of the Shudras, inciting them to hate and humiliate their own people – “so much that the [S]hudras now consider them [Atishudras] as [U]ntouchables” (45). This is how the conquering Aryan Brahmins, according to Phule, established their dominance over the land of the cultivating Dravidian Kshatriyas—whom he referred to as Bahujan (literally ‘majority’ – encompassing the Shudra and Atishudra communities)—and started the inhuman practice of ‘Untouchability.’
B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), the principal architect of the Dalit movement, rejected the racial divide of native cultivators and foreign conquerors. Writing in the shadow of National Socialism and the Holocaust, Ambedkar, in his The Untouchables: Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables? (1948), problematized the cultural and civilizational dominance of cultivators that marginalized the Broken Men. He argues that primitive society was a group of nomadic tribes exclusively defined by blood and kinship. However, for Ambedkar, “Primitive Society was migratory because its wealth, namely the cattle, was migratory. Cattle went after new pastures. Primitive Society by reason of its love for cattle, therefore, went wherever its cattle carried it” (274). Intra-tribal warfare, often driven by the theft of cattle, pastures, and women, was common, where a defeated tribe was typically routed rather than completely annihilated: “broken into bits. As a consequence of this there always existed in Primitive times a floating population consisting of groups of Broken tribesmen roaming in all directions” (275). The transition from primitive tribes to settled communities occurred with the discovery of agriculture, which shifted the nature of wealth from being based on natural abundance to being created through human labor. While some tribes settled in one place, others continued to live a nomadic lifestyle. When nomadic tribes realized that settled communities had more wealth, they began to attack them. Ambedkar explains that settled communities needed protection from these raids, and the Broken (tribes)Men sought shelter. This led to a contractual arrangement where the Broken Men, unable to integrate due to the tribal system’s emphasis on kinship, lived on the outskirts of villages (ghetto) and served as a militia to protect the cultivators. In return, they had the right to collect grains during harvest and, crucially, to take the carcasses of dead animals.
However, the Broken Men had not yet become ‘Untouchables.’ For Ambedkar, the origin of ‘Untouchability’ lies at the heart of the cultural conflict (around 400 CE) between Buddhism and Brahminism—though it was also shaped by the material interests of cultivating populations and the sacralization of livestock. Ambedkar argues that Buddhism became the most popular religion in India because it rejected the ritualistic practices of Yajna (a form of worship that required the sacrifice of the cow) that were dominant during the late Vedic period: “The objection to the sacrifice of the cow had taken a strong hold of the minds of the masses especially as they were an agricultural population and the cow was a very useful animal” (346). In response, and to regain the popularity of the agrarian population and establish supremacy over Buddhists, Brahmins not only abandoned the Yajna system or animal sacrifice, but also began to promote cow worship, elevating the cow to a sacred status. While Buddhists had rejected the killing of animals, they had not prohibited the consumption of the flesh of dead animals. Ambedkar notes that Buddhist scriptures mention instances of Buddhists eating meat, including beef, provided the animals had not been slaughtered. However, Brahmins abandoned meat-eating and adopted vegetarianism “because they did not want to put themselves merely on the same footing in the eyes of the public [cultivators] as the Buddhist Bhikshus [monks]” (348). Ambedkar further argues that while cultivating populations imitated Brahmins, the Broken Men, residing at the outskirts of a village, continued eating beef because, for them, “imitation was too costly. They could not afford it. The flesh of the dead cow was their principal sustenance. Without it they would starve” (355). Also, for them, “Killing the cow was Himsa [violence]. But eating the dead cow was not. The Broken Men had therefore no cause for feeling qualms of conscience in continuing to eat the dead cow” (355). Therefore, according to Ambedkar, it was only when cow-killing was declared a Mahāpataka (a mortal sin or capital offence) under the Gupta rulers, champions of Brahmanical orthodoxy, that those who continued to eat beef were relegated to the status of ‘Untouchables.’
Hence, in articulating the genealogy of the ‘Untouchables,’ Ambedkar not only rejected the racial and conquest-based theories of caste, but also subverted dominant nineteenth-century economic thought—which essentialized or biologized labor as an authentic and normative social and political category—by turning the history of cultivating civilizations into a site of critical inquiry.
This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”
Vishal Verma is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research explores the conceptual and historical entanglement of Buddhism and caste at the intersection of political theory, intellectual history, and economic thought. He has also worked as a Visiting Faculty at NLSIU, Bengaluru, where he taught an elective course on Capital and Food: Making of Culture and Politics.
Edited by Rajosmita Roy.
Featured image: Photo by Bea Vallejo via Unsplash.
