Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 29, 2014 vol xlIX no 48 27

book reviewS

The Evolving Forms of Caste

Hugo Gorringe

I can imagine that one of the fi rst questions people encountering this monograph will ask is: do we really need another book on caste? Given pre-vailing political sentiments, some might even be moved to wonder whether aca-demics rank alongside unsavoury politi-cal entrepreneurs as those most respon-sible for keeping caste alive. Both ques-tions, such potential readers may be surprised to learn, are addressed head on in an introduction that persuasively makes the case for an analysis of caste in contemporary India.

Surinder Jodhka is one of the foremost sociologists in India and in this book he draws together data gained from exten-sive research over time to capture key processes of continuity and change. The book also breaks ground in seeking to shift analysis of caste away from two popular fallacies: the notion of Indian exceptionalism which sees caste as unlike any form of social stratifi cation in the world; and the argument of liberal academics and modernisation theorists that caste will inevitably disappear so long as political entrepreneurs do not keep it alive.

Conceptual Trajectory

Arguing against such accounts, Jodhka highlights a threefold conceptual trajec-tory of caste that charts the changing responses to and understandings of the system. Initially, he notes, authors like Dumont presented caste as tradition. This perspective was challenged by re-searchers such as Berreman working with lower castes who presented caste as a form of exploitation or power politics. The third stage of caste, the book suggests, is articulated by Ambedkar and Dalit activists and views caste as humiliation. Our framing of the caste question, this suggests, cannot be divorced from its contestations in every-day politics and social life (p 2). In

Caste in Contemporary India by Surinder Jodhka (New Delhi: Routledge), 2014; pp xvii + 252, Rs 695 (hardback).

charting the changing understandings of, and responses to, caste, this book condenses over a decade of research and a wealth of analysis into a highly read-able book that takes complex issues and debates and presents them in a lively fashion that avoids the incomprehen-sible jargon characteristic of many academic volumes.

Capitalism and Caste

Caste in Contemporary India is about change rather than stasis and vividly captures multiple sometimes contra-dictory processes of development and transformation. At the very outset of the volume we are told that India is no longer under-developed. Indeed, in 2014 India put a satellite into orbit around Mars. Amidst all the talk of an emerging global power it is very tempt-ing to see caste as an anachronism that is destined to fade away. As Jodhka pow-erfully notes, many writers succumb to this temptation.

In July 2014, for example, Devesh Kapur wrote an article for the Financial Times entitled Western Anti-capitalists Take Too Much for Granted. The gist of his argument was that Indias Dalits are being emancipated by economic growth. Among the most striking benefi ciaries (of Capitalism), he argued,

are Indias Dalits (previously known as the untouchables), who for centuries were victimised by one of the most hierarchical societies in the world. Capitalisms role in erasing this stain on Indian society is compa-rable to the contribution it made to curtailing slavery, serfdom, feudalism and patriarchy in the west.

Let us leave aside the sweeping gener-alisations and the scepticism we may

have about capitalisms role in the eradi-cation of slavery given numerous studies relating to bonded labour around the world today what we have here is but the latest iteration of a classic argument that caste will wither away in the face of modernity. In a growing economy that is open to all, we are told fortune re-wards those with grit, ambition, drive and hustle. In the open market, to put it another way, merit and worthiness are the primary currencies.

In the face of such assertions (and al-lowing that the constraints of a news-paper article preclude the more nuanced aspects of Kapurs argument), Jodhkas important book assumes still greater sig-nifi cance. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data on the topic, he demonstrates t hat being caste blind does not mean that industries or private employers are in any sense caste neu-tral. The repeated claim that caste does not matter in the global workplace is at odds with practices of recruitment that hinge on family background and social capital. Even if we accept that these are not just thinly-veiled proxies for caste, the consequence of privileging those with educated and English-speaking families is that certain social demo-graphics are advantaged at the expense of others.

Furthermore, as the book shows, even where they succeed in gaining work, Dalit employees still encounter what we might term a caste ceiling when it comes to promotion or entrepreneur-ship: lacking the networks and resources that would result in jobs, loans, bank guarantees, Dalits fi nd that the growing economy is more open to some than others. Individualisation of the labour markers, as Jodhka notes in conclud-ing, only makes structures like caste invisible. It does not make them irrele-vant, particularly in the distribution of valued goods in society (p 230). The book, thus, offers a key contribution to ongoing debates and a vital corrective to the premature obituaries for caste. Even when it changes, Jodhka observes at the end of Chapter 2, caste does not go away. We need as he puts it,

BOOK REVIEW

NOVEMBER 29, 2014 vol xlIX no 48 EPW Economic & Political Weekly28

to explore what makes it possible for caste to reproduce itself even outside its traditional social universe, the Indian village (p 17).

Resistance and Violence

Although caste remains a key aspect of social relationships and social struc-tures, no one would suggest that there has been no change in caste. Dalits in contemporary India would be the fi rst to acknowledge that changes in employ-ment, education, legislation, politics and consciousness have in Judith Heyers (2010) words shifted the moorings of caste. Even those still engaged in what we might call traditional and degrad-ing occupations have altered their hori-zons and aspirations: they may not themselves take on the risks of fi nding new employment but they will rarely accept humiliation in their work without responding and will almost invariably be investing in a brighter future for their children. They may also take steps to join a religion, party or organisation that will speak on their behalf. The book details Ad-Dharm and Ravidasi strug-gles to create a positive identity for themselves and carve out spaces for self-expression and development. More mundanely, in my own work I have seen autorickshaw drivers in Tamil Nadu, for instance, frequently unveiling boards pronouncing their affi liation to a politi-cal party in part to assert themselves and in part as a safeguard against harassment. This dual search for dignity and opportunity signals the transforma-tion in Dalit aspirations and attitudes that has attended the declining depend-ence on dominant castes.

There is a tendency when writing about Dalit movements to focus dispro-portionately upon the political triumphs of the Bahujan Samaj Party. It can be quite diffi cult to measure the outcomes of social movements and in the election of Mayawati commentators perceive a real success. This volume, however, offers a welcome corrective in shifting our focus away from the exceptional to a focus on how sociopolitical net-works and projects are embedded in the everyday. Electoral victories have been a rarity for autonomous Dalit

politicians outside Uttar Pradesh but very few have been untouched by the challenges to hierarchical practices and values. Perhaps the single biggest contribution of the Dalit movement has been to highlight the ways in which caste structures peoples life-chances and encourages people to think beyond caste and challenges the restrictions it imposes.

Of course, those privileged by existing structures have not accepted this chal-lenge lying down: much of the violence unleashed against Dalits in recent dec-ades, Jodhka argues, follows a logic in which dominant groups seek to reassert their superiority with force. The declin-ing dependence and social mobility of Dalits has come as a blow to the pride and honour of those castes ranged above them in the old order and this, in part, explains the vehemence of their backlash. As Dalits have become more independent, new forms of untoucha-bility have been invented as a way to emphasise difference and status. Those who fl out such rules are often met with violence. There seems to have been a signifi cant rise in the number of honour killings against unsanctioned (usually cross-caste) affairs, that are seen to dishonour the family and the caste. Honour killings, at root, are about reasserting the boundaries of an affi nity group and they are at the extreme end of a spectrum in which disowning, boycotting and indifference also fea-ture. The imbrication of caste and patri-archy is evident here too, for it is the bodies of women that are most heavily policed in these efforts to maintain caste purity and standing. Jodhkas analysis helps to under stand the social dynamics being played out across the country today.

Caste Theory and Understanding

Caste, in short, continues to create and perpetuate stark material disparities. It continues to shape both material condi-tions where people live, what jobs they can do and what access they have to key services and psychological atti-tudes: how we see ourselves and how we view the world around us caste identities, the book shows, continue to

be associa ted with particular stereo-types which affect how people interact and the opportunities that they have access to. Many of these processes, of course, may be found elsewhere and I applaud Jodhka for taking the dis-cussion of caste out of its culturally specifi c box to place it within a compar-ative dimension. In a strong rejection of accounts which portray caste as unique and particular, the book points to other forms of discrimination and prejudice which share commonalities with caste. Drawing on a range of socio-logists such as Weber, Jodhka rightly notes that caste is a form of status grouping. It is this concern with status, standing and honour that helps explain why caste is so visible and complex in the present day at a time when many sociological indicators point towards its decline.

Caste in Contemporary India draws on the work of those studying racial in equalities in America. In so doing, it opens up a range of insights arti-culated by reference to racial discrimi-nation. In addition to the authors mentioned in the text, I would highlight the contributions made by W E B Du Bois, whose idea of a white blindspot highlighted the way in which the inter-ests of some whites can pose as the general interest (cf Roediger 2007). Du Bois also coined the idea of a psychological wage:

It must be remembered that the white group of labourers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white ... The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, de-pendent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness (1935: 700).

As with the authors whom Jodhka quotes, the parallels with caste are strik-ing. Caste, as Ambedkar noted, is a form of graded inequality and we see here how similar gradations exist in other structures of inequality. Time and again during fi eldwork I have been told how impoverished members of dominant castes cannot be equated to impover-ished Dalits precisely because they have wider networks and higher status. There

BOOK REVIEW

Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 29, 2014 vol xlIX no 48 29

has been a strong tendency in recent decades to describe caste as difference what Balmurli Natrajan (2012) refers to as the culturalisation of caste. Caste is said to function as community rather than hierarchy and is occasionally even applauded as a form of bonding capital that enables entrepreneurs to succeed. As Natrajan (2012: 57) concludes, how-ever, the problem of caste is that caste groups presuppose casteism: the latter gives rise to the former.

Jodhkas book, in other words, em-phasises the necessity of analysing caste in the present and as an evolving form of human relations rather than a remnant of tradition that will wither away of its own accord. He points to the way in which it is intertwined with structures of capital that perpetuate both privilege

and disadvantage. Finally, he charts the efforts of Dalit entrepreneurs, activists and groups to carve out a new life for themselves. The Dalit activists we encounter in Caste in Contemporary India would recognise the institutionalised nature of disadvantage that Du Bois talks about. This is why they are not sat-isfi ed with their own individual success but feel the need to pay back and help empower others from their communi-ties. In documenting and illustrating forms of what we might call institu-tionalised casteism, Jodhka offers an insightful analysis of caste in its current avatar. The book is accessible, well written and informative in charting the efforts of those struggling to create a new dawn for Dalits and the distance that remains to be traversed. As such, it is essential

reading for those wishing to compre-hend this enduring form of inequality.

Hugo Gorringe (Hugo.Gorringe@ed.ac.uk) teaches at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, the UK.

References

Du Bois, W E B (1935): Black Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company), available online here: https://archive.org/details/black-reconstruc00dubo

Heyer, Judith (2010): The Marginalisation of Dalits in a Modernising Economy in Barbara Harriss-White and Judith Heyer (ed.), The Comparative Political Economy of Development: Africa and South Asia (London: Routledge), pp 225-47.

Kapur, D (2014): Western Anti-Capitalists Take Too Much for Granted, Financial Times, 23 July, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7db7d974-1252- 11e4-93a5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3 GnS3Hzmv

Natrajan, B (2012): From Jati to Samaj, Seminar, 633, http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/ 633/633_balmurli_natrajan.htm

Roediger, D (2007) (1991): The Wages of Whiteness (London: Verso).