Space and Caste: What has changed and what has not? Part 2: Self -Respect

Dr. Raees Muhammad

Spatial confinement, precarious existence and punitive regulation- these aspects of caste spatiality separate the ‘polluting’ outcastes from the ‘pure’ caste-Hindus. But they are seldom viewed as being central to how the caste system works. This is why it has been possible to argue that caste is not currently observed as before.

Sociologist Dipankar Gupta (2009) while writing the introduction to his volume “Caste in Question: identity or hierarchy?” writes,

‘untouchable castes that were once considered supine and docile are now militant, aggressive and fully conscious of their power and rights in a democratic polity. No matter which way one looks at caste, the system, such as it was supposed to have been has clearly collapsed. Where there was once a seeming tranquility of caste relations ordered by a status hierarchy (howsoever localised in character), we now have a plethora of assertive caste identities, each privileging an angular hierarchy of its own.’(x)

Gupta’s use of the word ‘militant’ refers to anti-caste movements aimed at not abolishing the caste system. But protesting to get minimal compensation for the atrocities. What he does not acknowledge is that such movements becomes militant in response to the rigidity of the caste system, with the state police-force often colliding with the culprits. These ‘militant’ and ‘aggressive’ voices were always questioning the State to implement the law rather than questioning the caste itself.

Andre Beteille in his speech delivered in Kolkata, 2007 argued that caste has declined in three fields of social life; rituals, marriage and caste occupation. This analysis misinterprets the changes which have occurred in some aspects of the caste system, taking it to represent a change in the entire caste system. In spite of any small changes which many equate to a change in caste, the caste system stays intact and is reinforced in new forms. Such opinions can be seen in M.N. Srinivas and Sumit Guha’s understanding of caste too. M.N Srinivas wrote in the 1970s that “In the last twenty years or so, there has been a certain amount of weakening of ideas regarding pollution. While this is especially true of the cities and towns, even the villages have experienced a certain amount of liberalization.” (5) Of course, Srinivas may be right in saying that the functioning of caste has changed- where earlier a separate tumbler was kept to practise untouchability, in the modern era, use-and-throw cups are used to do the same. 

For Sumit Guha (2016), caste is an imported concept and not unique to India and its ethnic hierarchy. Reading caste through the eyes of Guha would lead us to believe that the system exists in other parts of the world. Especially, in Japan and in Britain. The uniqueness of the caste system is the irrational rule of dividing people into different castes and ‘forcing’ each caste into a particular occupation and place of living;  and further, each caste agreeing to their position and living with the given occupation and status. This is unique to the caste system that is seen in Hinduism. However, designating the status of pure and polluted to different spaces, and likewise designating people between both, is the most important and unique feature of the caste system.

Fuller (2012) in his introduction to Beteille’s book “Caste, Class and Power” noted that, “The village’s physical structure- specifically the division into agraharam, main Non-Brahmin area, and dalit cheri-is fundamentally unchanged, …even the dalit’s quarter remains segmented, for the house of the chakkiliyar family, regarded as inferior to the Pallars, still stands apart from the rest of the cheri just as it did in 1961” (XX). Even Beteille in his 1996 study had conceded:

‘In the past, when the division of the village into spaces for Brahmins, Non-Brahmins, and Adi-Dravidas [outcaste] dominated not only rituals, but also economic and political life, it must have seemed natural for the three communities to live apart. Today there are many areas of life which are becoming progressively “caste-free”. Thus, land ownership, occupation, and even education are not to the same extent dependent on caste. Yet the physical  structure of the village continues to be consistent with the cleavages in its traditional social structure.’ (5)

In other words while there were areas of change in the caste system, as he argues, its ideology in separating the caste Hindus from the untouchables was intact and continued to be maintained in the spatial arrangement of the village. The question one remains to ask is whether Fuller and others confuse Class for Caste. I argue that although this spatial arrangement has gone unnoticed in the study of the caste system, it has been a very important aspect not only to the functioning of caste but also to reproduce caste ideology. In the process of reproducing and sustenance of Caste its the Class that stood protecting Caste relation. 

Take as an example, the Kannuvakarai village situated in Puliyampatti Taluk of Erode District in Tamil Nadu. The village comprises members of different castes who can be classified into two groups based on their living space on either side of a public road which divides the village. On one side of the road live the caste-Hindus, Gownders, and on the other side, the untouchable castes, Chakkiliyars or Arunthathiyars. Usually, all untouchable castes do not live together and their relationship is also not good either. Its here arunthathiyars argue that even Dalit colonies are segregated based on castes.  A decade before 2010 the village had a tea shop with two different glasses, and the silver tumbler was reserved for caste Hindus. All the caste-Hindus irrespective of age,  are addressed as ‘samy’ [god] by Arunthathiyars. At the same time, irrespective of age all the Arunthathiyars were addressed as ‘Chakkiliyar’ or adjective -da for men and -di for women. All of the Chakkiliyars worked in the fields of the Gowndens. With the development of factories in neighbouring cities, Tirupur and Coimbatore, many young children shifted their job to industries from agriculture. The local administration like the village panchayat was controlled by the Gowndens. In this area there was a shortage of water for agriculture. Without water many of the Gownden have left agriculture and now, Arunthathiyars lease this land and grow crops like groundnuts, which consume less water. Although the Arunthathiyars engage in agriculture, their income is not on par with people who grow other crops like bananas, which is the most popular crop in this area. Most Arunthathiyar families borrow money from the money lenders who are again caste Hindus. Though the economical condition of the Arunthathiyar caste has improved- with most people living in brick houses with electricity, using LPG to cook, and owning vehicles and some rearing domestic animals- the caste divisions remain intact. The lowly status of Chakkiliyars and the high social status of the Gownders hasn’t and will not get changed at all. Because this is what I call India is a “Caste Class” society, for the very reason in India one’s caste status decides whether one can become part of upper/caste Hindu class or the lower/untouchable class, this is unique to caste system I argue which precedes even before the universal class society. The universal class society when came to India, we find them adopting as per the Caste Class society that pre-existed than bringing a universal class society. Unlike other class society in India we have lower class, and upper-class categories in each of the permanently Cate Hindu class and untouchable class. The right of the upper class/caste Hindus is to get unfree labour to protect them from ritual impurity and to reproduce wealth and the system itself, while the untouchable class should provide only unfree labour and their only duty is to live for the Caste Hindu class and keep caste Hindus away from anything that would make caste Hindus ritually impure.  It’s this reason that we find even after dalits becoming President/Collector etc they still belong to the untouchable class where their movement is restricted within the untouchable class. (its an idea in progress) Even if they improve their class to the upper class within the untouchable class, still they would be ghettoised within the untouchable class. The system survives and reproduces from the unfree labour where it is told their work is ‘unfree’ as a service to their Hindu religion and society. Among many the blatant example of this can be witnessed when Modi and Gandhi made sweeping as a service to the nation than ghettoizing or chaining untouchable class to the occupation. So even before India became a class society we were already a “Caste Class” society. 

How does the Hindu religion sanctions and normalizes “unfree labour” and reproduces the system? This is sanctioned and normalized by equating both Hindu religious ideas of purity and pollution and the 16 century idea of the same that I discuss further. For example, the work of sweeping is considered lowly even by the sweepers themselves, they argue yes because the work about removing the dirt. The idea of sweeper or sweeping in India itself doesnt have value, leave alone working. When I was a child my mother used to tell me not to tell anyone that father is a sweeper. Even if they are a driver of garbage truck they dont want to associate, one is dirt then it becomes vicious when we associate dirt with religious purity and pollution. 

Temporary and Permanent Pollution: Rethinking Concepts

The inferiority or the lowly status of the Chakkiliyars is often justified with reference made to their occupation and living standard. Similarly, the superiority of the caste Hindus is justified with their economic and social position, most importantly these are approved as Karmas. In the caste system, these are not positions earned, unlike others who argue caste as a birth category, I argue its a mental psyche that we are not told by outsiders but we are told by our very parents, relations and community. At this point the caste doesn’t have any value it can be read as a community, but this community becomes caste, when we interact with the non-dalit castes, where one is told how to speak, how to walk in front of them, how to dress, how to sit, everything about in front of them. So the value of a caste class relation is realized when there is an exchange between two different castes.   People hardly question their social status enforced by their caste, and instead blame it on themselves, rather than pointing towards Hinduism or the caste system. Because it overlaps and caste has been the air in a cycle tube, where we have until now couldn’t catch it.

Similarly, such views of blaming the individuals rather than the caste system can be repeatedly seen in scholarship on caste. In other words, the marking of dalits as polluting or polluted has been most often attributed to their present living condition and their daily habits rather than studying how they were entrenched in that position in the first place. 

To recap the earlier arguments, when most studies on caste argue that pollution rules in the caste system are fading, they are actually paying attention to some of the changing temporary rules in polluting activities of the caste Hindus. Pollution rules are of two kinds, temporary and permanent. The permanent category of rules which is concerned with the outcaste or the polluted, has been kept intact all these years. To understand how the temporary and the permanently polluted categories navigate through space and produce untouchability or stigma, I discuss the pollution rules regarding menstruation.

According to the Hindu pollution rules, menstruating women are polluted. In Hindu custom,   a menstruating woman is kept away from the family, secluded, and given separate tumblers and plates, because it is believed that the pollution of her body would transmit through the utensils to other spaces of the house. Though she is considered polluted during menstruation and secluded from the main rooms, she continues to maintain her distance from the scavenger. While a menstruating woman becomes temporarily polluted, her clothes are still washed by the untouchable washer women/men and her bodily wastes are still cleaned by the scavenger. I argue that though she is considered polluted, her pollution is never considered at par with the permanent pollution ascribed to the scavenger. In recent times, though it is no longer a wide practice to seclude menstruating women, and give her separate tumblers and plates, there still exists stigma attached to menstruating women. While it’s not as explicit as earlier, the most explicit aspect becomes visible when one thinks of the temple.  Henceforth though the rules might look they are changing, the undercurrent of stigma attached to menstruation and products related to it, still remains.

In this section I discuss the way Gandhi (1934)  and Douglas (1966) misread caste. Mary Douglas, writing “Purity and Danger” in 1966 about the caste system and pollution rules, is actually referring to these temporary pollution rules and mistakenly equates it with the permanently polluted untouchables. I quote:

‘In the ritual we know that to touch excrement is to be defiled and that the latrine cleaners stand in the lowest grade of the caste hierarchy…’ (125)

It is true that the act of touching excreta leads one to become polluted and in  Hinduism it is mandated to clean the pollution with water to become pure. However this is not the case with the latrine cleaners, who cannot become pure even by washing and bathing because s/he is permanently polluted.  The difference Douglas fails to engage with is how an act of touching the excrement becomes defilement and equates to the ‘latrine cleaner’ whose state of pollution is permanent. In other words, not only the latrine cleaner, but even his/her sons and daughters or even their newborns are considered defiled. This is unique to Hinduism alone.

Douglas also continues to equate temporary pollution with the permanently polluted.

‘..Holiness and unholiness after all need not always be absolute opposites. They can be relative categories. What is clean in relation to one thing may be unclean in relation to another, and vice versa.’ (10)

Equating the changes that happen in the temporary rules of pollution to the permanent polluted category, did not of course start with Douglas. It was Gandhi who pioneered in articulating untouchability as an act related to temporary pollution. I am referring to a few of his prominent views defending the permanently polluted category of scavenging using the temporary pollution rules and subject.

‘I call scavenging as one of the most honourable occupations to which mankind is called. I don’t consider it an unclean occupation by any means. That you have to handle dirt is true. But that every mother is doing and has to do. But nobody says a mother’s occupation is unclean. And yet the scavenger’s occupation is considered an unclean occupation…’ (76)

At the outset, let us ask, why should mothers be the only ones to handle dirt? If one agrees that this is the job of mothers, then there remains no point in questioning why scavenging is reserved to a particular caste. Since that is not the focus of this paper, I leave it there. In Gandhi’s explanation, the filth that the mother cleaned, was not from the toilet, but from inside the house [pure space]. Further, while the mother was cleaning the child’s filth, she did not clean her filth, but removed the dirt from the living space and threw it in the toilet or the dustbin which is an untouchable location, reserved for the outcastes to clean.  Nevertheless, in the household, the mother remains the ONLY one who will undertake that task, precisely because, in caste women have the lowly occupation in the household. As we can see, the shit becomes untouchable not when we defecate inside the house, but only when it reaches the right space, that is, the toilet, or in case of open defecation, the space outside the house. Hence, filth becomes untouchable only when it is left within its right space [toilet], and only then, does caste untouchability have meaning. In other words, it is argued that neither filth nor the toilet become untouchable in isolation but only in relation to the other.

The comparison made by Gandhi between a mother’s work and a scavenger itself misleads and erases the spatial segregation in the architecture. Gandhi, instead of addressing the inhuman manual scavenging practices, valorized the service, and also put the blame for any suffering the sanitary worker undergoes, on his/her own wayward ways:

‘But I am trying also to tell fellow-scavengers that, while we may handle dirt, we must be clean ourselves both inwardly and outwardly. After we have done the cleansing, we must cleanse ourselves and put on clean clothes. I know many scavengers eat carrion and beef. Those who are doing this must abstain. Many of them are given to the evil habit of drink. Drink is a bad, filthy, unclean, degrading habit. A man who drinks intoxicating liquor forgets the distinction between wife, mother and sister. I would beseech you to give up all evil habits, and you will at once find that you are accepted as honourable members of society without any stain on you.’ —Harijan, 19 January 1934

When Gandhi gives this advice, it’s as though scavengers are willingly doing the occupation. Gandhi’s intervention becomes a turning point in the study of the caste system as for the first time the condition of the outcastes was not blamed on caste but on themselves, changing the debate to ‘cleanliness’. Similar opinions on scavenging were widespread in various organizations. I refer to one such organization mentioned by Vijaya Prasad (2000) in his book,

‘The Ram Sevak makes a series of familiar pronouncements which carry the message that the dalits will not be treated as untouchables if they lead clean lives. Give up meat (especially beef), stop drinking liquor and do not gamble..’

Such an argument shifted the blame of caste to cleanliness, a concept spearheaded the 18th and 19th Europe, where sanitation and cleanliness became the focus for living a healthy life. 

Opposing Gandhi’s view, Ambedkar (1990) replied,  

‘…In India a man is not a scavenger because of his work. He is a scavenger because of his birth irrespective of the question whether he does scavenging or not.’ (92)

The truth is that the occupation was forced as part of hereditary or customary practices on the particular caste.  According to the village rule dalits were to continue the given caste occupation. They did not have the freedom to change their occupation.  The Municipal system while framing its rules incorporated the customary laws that controlled outcastes into the new Municipal law.  From this point onwards, the unauthorised punishment became legal.  Prasad (2000) writes,

‘The strictures of varnavyavastha (social organization of the four varnas) emerged from the sanitation departments which sent out recruiters to hire the dalits… ‘One day, as it used to happen occasionally’, Bholi said of the early 1930s, ‘the Jamadar of the sweepers stood on a pedestal before the municipal office, pointed to a pile of uniforms stacked near a store and shouted, “Who amongst you will join our forces? Put on the uniform and take a jharu (broom) from that store and join us! Come on everybody!” ..‘When I came to Delhi from Punjab with my family’, Puran Chand recalled of the same period, ‘I was small. I took a job in the municipality. The Jamadar was not of our caste. All of us safai karamcharis [sanitation workers] were Chuhras. They would only take us. Jamadars used to come into our mohalla and announce openings (in the DMC).’(44)

And the work that awaited them as described by a worker was this: Kamala from Uttar Pradesh says “I removed human excreta manually with the help of a plate and a broom. I scraped it onto the flat cane basket and then carried it off for disposal. If it was light I balanced the palla (vessel) on my hips, if heavy I carried it on the head. My mother preferred carrying a tin bucket… For all the indignities I suffered I was given leftover food plus 20 kgs of grain per month. This ensured one square meal a day for my family. During weddings and festivals I got an ‘additional tip’ or a new sari,” said Kamala. So based on Gandhi’s ideas, what will Kamala do and how does it become her burden to lead a healthy life while the administration provides such degrading working standards?

The association of outcastes with sanitary labour then must be viewed in terms of the larger spatial logic of separation which has to do with purity and pollution. This goes beyond the anthropological sense, and has to do with how caste society views these notions – who it considers pure and who it considers impure and the consequences of such an understanding.

I would like to focus on the making of space in this context – the division of space into the pure and the polluted, and how that reflects in material life. I consider modern architecture to make my arguments.

Continues………..Part 1 Part 3 will be published on 18th and part 3 will be published on the 19th.

write to the author Raees Muhammad [email protected]

Part 3

Write to the author Raees Muhammad [email protected]