தென்னிந்தியாவில் ஜாதி சங்கம் உருவாக்கம் பற்றி புரிதலுக்கு உகந்த ஆங்கிலேயர்களால் எழுதப்பட்ட கட்டுரை
The Development of Caste Organisation in South India 1880 to 1825 David Washbrook Pdf
The Development of Caste Organization in South India /880 to 1925
0NE of the most obvious features of political modernization• in south India has been the emergence of the politics of the caste association. From the later nineteenth century, but particularly from about 1910, the provincial political arena became crowded with organizations claiming to represent the interests of caste groups, and appeals to caste solidarity became established in the vocabulary of modern politics. From that time onwards, caste political activity has grown in size and scope and has deeply coloured south Indian political history. This essay attempts to examine some of the reasons for this development. Perhaps the greatest problem of writing about caste is to find an acceptable definition of what the word means, or rather what kinds of social relationships constitute a caste system. For one school of social anthropologists, the caste system is best seen in terms of the webs of interdependence which link together members of different castes in local societies; for another school, the important connections are those drawn 'horizontally' between members of the same caste, which create mutually exclusive, competing, caste organizations. Even a casual examination of caste activities reveals that elements of both views can be defended. The question of caste is closely bound up with the question of perceived social status; and the concept of status implies relationships both with inferiors and superiors, and with peers. Equally, in different social contexts, the institutions of caste might be used to organize extended networks of influence among members, or they might not. What the protagonists in the debate appear to have done, is to take different arenas of social action-for the former school the village, for the latter the broad, politically informal caste -and to claim that the caste relationships to be found in their arena alone constitute the true essence of the caste system. This essay is intended as a contribution to history, not to social anthropology, and it is not concerned with the 'inner meaning' of the caste system. It proceeds from the notion that there were several systems of caste relationship present in south India at the same time, and that each was conditioned by the social context in which it was operating. Its main purpose is to examine these social contexts in order to see why, at or about the same time, caste communities which were radically dissimilar in their practical organizations all began to act in the same way, that is, to form caste associations and to develop their 'horizontal' caste connections. Its aim, therefore, is not to write a social history of all the castes of southern India but of the uses to which caste relationships were put. CASTE AND THE TRADING SYSTEM In M.N. Srinivas's view, one of the most important factors in the development of broad, political communities of caste has been the revolution in communications which took place under the British. From the later nineteenth century, the construction of railways and canals made it easier for people and goods to move freely from one locality to another; the spread of literacy and the growth of the press allowed ideas to be exchanged over greater distances; the emergence and enlargement of the towns as economic,administrative and educational centers helped to integrate previously dispersed localities. The extreme parochialism of Indian, particularly south Indian, life in the first half of the nineteenth century began to break down and new patterns of mobility brought extended patterns of social contact. Caste connections, which had previously been confined to small territories, were now able to expand to fill a wider arena Such a view stresses the continuity between caste organization in the old situation and caste organization in the new. All that was happening was that local, and probably informal, caste groupings which had existed separately were being fused together. We might see more clearly this process of change at work, and the partial validity of the argument, by looking at a few particular communities. The activities of the Komatis of south India as traders and moneylenders, can be traced to at least the tenth century A.D. Their original base was probably in the Northern Circars around the Kistna and Godavari rivers, but a series of commercial opportunities, created by various conquests and the rise and decline of various empires, had spread them widely. By the mid-nineteenth century, Komatis operated significant trading networks down the east coast to Madras city, westward through Hyderabad and the Ceded Districts, and south to the great cities of Salem, Coimbatore and Madura. In common with all other Indian trading groups, the basic unit of economic organisation among the Komatis was the extended family. 5 With systems of impersonal security undeveloped, the police dangerously uncontrolled and the law courts as predictable as roulette wheels, personal knowledge and close, preferably kin, connections provided the only viable framework for extensive credit dealings. The grid along which credit and trade passed between town and country often mapped out Komati kin patterns, and marriages were celebrated with all the pomp and circumstance of big business mergers. 6 In towns which were the centers of considerable Komati activity, proximity and common purpose formed the basis for the development of supra-familial caste and financial institutions. Money for entrepreneurial adventures was raised within the caste constituency; and the constituency was protected and supported by caste elders of panchayat which levied local taxes for projects of communal welfare, provided arbitration for intro-caste disputes and issued laws to regulate both business and social life. The sanctions available to these institutions-ultimately coasteering involved penalties which ripped the offender not only out of his ritual community but also out of a means of making a living, and gave caste elders and panchayat great ·authority. Through caste temples dedicated to the Komati saint, Kanyaki Parameswami, communal "bosses' exercised a pervasive influence in their neighbourhood and ruled some of the best organized trading guilds in the Madras Presidency. 7 Possibly because of their very early geographical expansion,however, the Komatis of the mid-nineteenth century did not possess institutions capable of linking together the whole caste. Whereas the Nattukottai Chettys of Ramnad and the Marwaris of Rajputana had spread across India and South Asia in the wake of the British, and had been able to preserve common centres which passed funds and authority to all their branches, the Komatis were very fragmented. 8 They had been tied to previous empires whose collapse had broken their connections. In theory, their marriage system was regulated by gotras, which should have forced wide territorial contacts; but in practice, their marriage patterns emphasized intensive, cross-cousin relationships within small localities. The Komati sub·caste structure became elaborate and territory was as much represented in the divisions as individual family status. 9 Moreover, save for a single caste shrine, 10 they had no supra-local religious organization which could relate local communities to each other. The later nineteenth century revolution in communications, of course, provided both the means and the reasons for the community's re-integration. Wherever they were, Komatis possessed a common ritual tradition, symbolized by their Kanyaki Parameswami temples. While the possibility of regular contact between local groups was limited, this line of connection was of only theoretical significance. But the coming of the railways and the press began to lend it a more practical importance. Local groups who found their ritual status challenged or their social pretensions scorned could ally with outside Komatis and bring the weight of a much larger organisation to bear on their locality. The Komatis of the Masulipatam-Guntur region, for example, grew rich on the trade of the Northern Circars, and, from the second decade of the nineteenth century, began to claim a heightened ritual status. They asserted their right to perform temple ceremonies associated with members of the Vaishya Sanskritic rama. The refusal of local Vaidiki Brahmans to accede to their demands produced perennial dashes between the two groups down to the 1880s. From about 1885, however, under the influence of A.L. Narasimhan, one of the first western educated men of their caste, the Komatis began to change their tactics. They took Vaidiki Brahmans to court and Narasimhan boarded a train to find support for his cause. He toured the more important Komati centres in the south, preaching from the steps of Kanyaki Parameswami temples and appealing