Understanding Caste System

A Survey of Popular Writings on Caste Violence

by Dunkin Jalki

Introduction

Let me begin this essay on a personal note. My first acquaintance with the activism in the area of caste violence is now seven years old. It began during my first doctoral research in Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad. I was one of the group of students who came together to start, now an active minority students body in CIEFL, called Dalit Bahujan and Minority Students Association (DBMSA). Some of the issues that we picked up as part of our work in the association were, fighting for the Dalit students’ rights in the students’ mess, and the library; fee concessions for the Dalit students, their admission issues, reservation, and so on. There was one question that kept some of us wondering all through these years of activism. Why are we not able to convince our fellow students about the presence of caste related problems, or some solutions to them? And, to add to this frustration, all that we can glean from the histories written in the 19th and 20th century about the fights against caste issues – in the history of mankind from the days of Buddha1 to Basavanna, from Ambedkar to Kancha Ilaiah – is that despite the centuries of activism we have not been able to eradicate caste related problems in India.

[H]ow are we to destroy this caste system? Several attempts have been made [but they all failed]…Ambedkar…finally [resorted to] … renouncing Hindu religion and embracing the atheistic Buddhism along with thousands of his ‘Mahar’ followers. Several social reformers too tried to attack the caste system but all of them failed including men like Basavanna, Narayana Guru, Vivekananda and Periyar…[and] Gandhi. (Shetty 1978: p. 6)

Today, at the end of my second doctoral research, and the three inactive years of Dalit activism, when I look back on the issues we fought for, and their intransigent nature, logically I see only one way out of it: to reflect upon our very understanding of caste system, and problematise the compatibility of our problems and the related solutions. If it is the case that people from Buddha to Basavanna have failed in eradicating the caste system, then there must be something seriously wrong about their approach to the problem itself. Or, our understanding of the caste system and Buddha and Basavanna’s work is problematic. This reflection on my own activist days, however small, was made possible by some of the recent persuasive work in the area of social sciences.2 It is during this time that CED, thanks to CED, awarded me a scholarship, and opened out a whole archive of writings on the issue of caste, and provided ample time and space to sit and think about them

1 ‘By the end of the Rig Vedic period the Brahmins emerged as the Superior caste.’ (David 1979: p. 10)

2 I refer here to all the published and unpublished works of S.N Balagangadhara and Vivek Dhareshwar. And this essay owes a great deal to the writings of S.N Balagangadhara.