Shiv,
How enfuriating of you to write this just when I'm unable to do more than drop
in for a few minutes at a time! I've always believed that this is the easiest
way to explain some of the oddities we see, historically and in current
contexts, and wish you had said this a few days earlier or a few days later.
Perhaps if this thread is still alive after the 10th (I've already subjected
you to too many trespasses on off-line mail in the past )...
And if Ajit Mani steps in, I'll step out, running hard and screaming. For
obvious reasons
bonobashi
--- On Tue, 2/9/08, ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [silk] curious about whether this is a reasonable article...
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Date: Tuesday, 2 September, 2008, 8:28 PM
On Sunday 31 Aug 2008 10:49:27 am Bonobashi wrote:
> Even during the early mediaeval Hindu revival, very large sections of
> society went 'crypto', as in the case of the Maranos, and there is
a close
> link between Tantrik Hinduism and the Buddhist practice that it more or
> less evolved from, sometime between 800 AD to 1200 AD.
>
> This situation too offered ways out of the designed-in rigidity of the new
> varna system. Such competition, and providing such dangerous alternatives,
> was obviously not welcome; note that one of Shankaracharya's forays
was
> reputedly to Kamrup to combat the Tantrik excesses of Hindu belief and
> practice there and to bring them back to the pure springs of Vedanta. The
> 'gate-keepers' fought this alternative social structure as hard as
they
> could.
>
> It didn't work, of course. The moment opportunity came, people
deserted
> this born-again, sterile Brahmanism in droves and turned Muslim. The
> wet-lands of Bengal, according to one analysis, were converted to Islam
> through voluntary adoption, not through the sword.
>
> So, two points: there were alternatives to this frozen state of social
> status till about 800 years ago, alternatives which actively competed with
> orthodox Hinduism; when these alternatives were stamped out, more or less,
> another very effective, far more hostile alternative turned up and was
> taken up in huge numbers.
>
> Can we never change our social status? Only under the mainstream current
> Hindu social architecture. Alternatives existed before, and may exist
again
> later. And there is always the possibility of turning Buddhist or Muslim.
That is a very interesting take actually. I only wish that old CiXer
Ajit "Marney" Mani would come on here.
I am veering around to the view that Hinduism is basically a colection of
tribal cultures refined in a particular way. Let me try and explain that.
Hindus are a mix of a bunch of tribes following tribal customs and rituals. I
am told that "ethnicity" is a more PC word as "tribal" is
perjorative. I have
a theory about why this agglomeration of tribes was resistant to change -
resistant to convesrion to Buddhism, Islam or Christianity. And those that
converted never gave up their tribal practices.
I see it as follows. I believe that both Islam and Christianity were goals
that sought to suppress ancient tribal differences and tribal wars by
suppressing tribe and creating a unified "super-tribe" of
Christianity and
a "super-tribe" of Islam. This process was by an large eminently
successful
until it hit India.
I suspect that the relative resistance to change in India was because the
system in India which pre-dated the arrival of both those system actually
encouraged the infitite splitting of society into innumerable tribes or
jatis. The system in India was less of a suppression of tribal differences
and more of an organizaton of tribes. each tribe was allowed to exist as it
was - and since a tribe is basically an endogamous extended family heirarchy,
it is a robust organization. My theory (completely without proof) is
that "warring tribes" which could be united by the new religions like
Christianity and Islam required that the tribes should be in violent
conflict.
Tribal conflict as far as I know arose mainly over resources, and both
religions spread easily through areas where tribal conflict existed. India
however is a benevolent subcontinent that not only has a plentiful food
supply, but also enjoys weather patterns that do not even call for clothes in
many parts of the country 365 days a year. I suspect that India was able to
support many self sufficient tribes that did not have to fight for
resources, but merely traded resources that happend to be abundant in a
particular area.
It is in the trading of resources that castes come into their own. Each tribe
or "jati" could exploit its skills based on local resources to
produce goods
that gould be traded with another tribe's (jati's) goods.
But even if "varna" (caste) was merely a description of occupation,
it was
inevitable that it would get linked to jati sooner or later. Some jatis - say
from Assam might end up always being associated with woodwork based on bamboo
for obvious reasons. But even apart from that, jatis and varnas could have
ended up being synonymous through a different route.
For example it has been argued that a poor potter could have sent his son to
learn carpentry and acquire a different varna. But that presumes that the
jatis who tended to be carpenters needed assistants. If the economy was bad,
they would not take on anyone and the potter's son would learn only what
his
father could teach him, and the carpenter's son, carpentry.
Naturally in a "father teaches son" economy the fathers who had
control of the
best means of survival would teach their children exactly that, The real
problem here is not merely that there is no horizontal spread of knowledge.
The problem is that the knowledge boundaries are also tribe boundaries. In
theory one can say "give this person knowledge of carpentry and he will
improve". But since the new learner has a different tribe he cannot marry
into
the tribe that teaches him the new skill, and the new skill may be
unsupported by his own tribe because the carpenter has now made himself a
foreigner in the potter's tribe. He may survive but he will not get a
potter's daughter girl to marry, nor will he get a carpenter's
daughter.
Changing religion made absolutely NO difference to these dynamics.
So I believe that "varna" (occupation) relentlessly became associated
with
jati (tribe) and the best varnas kept their skills to themselves, within
their tribes. Thus India got its caste system.
shiv
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