Caste and Class

 I've been reading Edward Luce's excellent book In Spite of the Gods, a dispatch from post-independence India written with the wisdom that comes from having lived in India for many years, immersing himself to the point of marrying and Indian woman, but maintaining the perspective needed to remain the FT's South Asia correspondent up until today.  

The story he paints is that of a country hopelessly mired in corruption, where there are no real heroes and very few innocents. For those trapped in the vortex of poverty, doomed to be charmed by political bosses who's very power and prosperity flows from keeping their own constituency impoverished and disenfranchised. They win government posts which enable them dispatch patronage in the form of government jobs – an effective tool as long as the people who's votes you're trying to win are desperate enough to want a government job more than public services. The formula is simple: pick one of India's myriad ethnic, language, or religious groups, ideally one that feels oppressed enough to fall prey to some angry rhetoric. Promise them jobs, and government services, and furhter induce them to vote for you with the help of a little goon muscle – if you're a mob boss yourself, all the better, because in winning a parlimentary seat you also win yourself immunity from prosecution.


This is interest-group politics at it's very worst, and it's a wave that has swept India over the past few decades, eroding the voter base of the two main parties, Congress and the BJP, now together pull only just over 50% of the vote. The remainder goes to small interest-group parties. The worst of the lot is probably that run by a certain Lalu Prasad Yadav, the former criminally corrupt Chief Minister of the state of Bihar, who recently was elected an MP to the national government. His party helped cement Congress's governing coalition, and so he was essentially offered his choice of ministerial portfolios. What did he chose? Finance? Foreign affairs? Nope – Railways. A natural choice, because the railways employs 1.5 Million people – each representing a potential piece of patronage to be disperesed.


Luce also gives the first lucid description I have read of the caste system which is what is largely responsible for these rifts in society that corrupt politicians can exploit. Hinduism and the Indian caste system are notoriously difficult for outsiders to understand. The first step is recognize that they are largely one and the same. Hinduism is not really a religion as much as it is a system of related tribal religions. The very term Hindu is not indigenous to India – it was simply used by Muslim invaders to describe the pagan beliefs of the non-muslim local population. Each caste in india is essentially a tribe, which has it's own gods, it's own mode of dress and worship, and importantly, it's own traditional occupation. The tribes generally lived in very close proximity to one another, and each filled a need of the broader society. The tribes didn't inter-marry, and it's members were kept to their traditional occupations by a strong belief in dharma, or duty. The tribes, known as castes, varied in social stature from the Priests on the high end to various “untouchables” such as cow-skinners and manure-shifters on the low end.


What we think of as “Hinduism”, with it's holy trinity of Bhrama-Vishnu-Shiva and it's holy Vedic scriptures was actually the religion of the highest priestly castes, called Brahmins. Their gods were considered paramount among the many gods worshipped by the lower castes, and they maintained exclusive access to many of the temples and religious writings. As society advanced and knowledge proliferated, many lower-caste Hindus began to emulate the Brahmins and their practices. Hence, the worship of Shiva and Vishnu have become widespread, and the practice of vegetarianism likewise. Even Lau Prasad Yadav, the corrupt politician from Bihar who has made a career of pandering to his Untouchable power base, has started to adopt the Brahmin religion.


Luce's describes all of this interspersed with a good number of anecdotes and war stories from his years in India, and a good dose of modern history thrown in for good measure. Despite it's bleak painted picture, it's a cheerful book – perfect to take along on a vacation to India.