Caste and Village Society Study Notes

• Study notes on the topics of "Caste and Village Society", "Arrack", and "The Origins of National Consciousness"

The Dominant Caste

• The concept of dominant caste was introduced by M.N. Srinivas in 1955.
• A dominant caste is greater in number than other castes.
• A dominant caste possesses significant economic and political power.
• A large caste group can more easily be dominant if its position in the local caste hierarchy is not too low.

Criticism of Dominant Caste

• Class differences exist within a single caste.
• Power may be shared between different castes and not confined to a single dominant caste in some villages.

Oliver Mendelsohn's Perspective

• M.N. Srinivas made an important observation about the dominant caste in the 1950s.
• Mendelsohn argues that the idea of dominant caste was vanishing at the time.

Dominance by Authority

• Dominance can be identified by the capability to exercise juridical authority.
• Exercising juridicial power means doing justice or settling disputes.
• Justice can come from the caste panchayat, the panchayat of the dominant caste, or official courts.
• M.N. Srinivas states that dominant castes settle disputes in three cases:
  • When both parties are from non-dominant castes.
  • When both parties are from one non-dominant caste.
  • It is surprising because a caste panchayat has authority to settle disputes internal to its own caste.

Devisar Village - Anand Chakraverti's Perspective

• Anand Chakraverti conducted field work in 1964-1965.
• Rajput influence was in the past, according to Chakraverti's study.
• In 1954, the Jagirdari abolition deprived Rajputs of much of their land.
• Redistribution of land went to Jats, Kumavats, and Ahirs.
• The loss of land by Rajputs was not the main reason for the destruction of their dominant status.
• Chakraverti emphasizes the ideological and general political environment outside the village.
• Chakraverti also emphasizes leadership factors internal to the village.

Loss of Rajput Power

• Land redistribution occured.
• The political landscape impacted the loss of power, as Congress gained influence over the local population.
• Other caste groups gained political and social power, such as the Jats.
• New leaders emerged in the village.

Rajput Status Before Loss of Power

• In 1928, a dispute about a relationship between a Brahmin widow and a Mahajan man resulted with both removal from their caste.
• Assistance from the Rajput landholders was sought to bring resolution.
• The two paid a fine of 11 rupees and were readmitted to their caste.
• It was expected that the problem would be handled by the Brahmin and Mahajan caste panchayat sitting separately.
• In 1924, an altercation arose because a calf strayed into the field where it did not belong and it led to an Ahir hitting a Rajput.
• All of the Rajputs met afterwards and suggested a fine of 101 rupees.
• In 1954, a dispute rose about illicit milking of goats that belonged to a Raegar.
• During the altercation, the Rajput lost his temper and struck one of the Raegars with a rake, to which the Raeger hit him back.
• All the Raegars were asked to bow won in symbolic submission and apologize before the father of the Rajput who was hit.

Challenge to Rajput Authority

• The Ahirs and Raegars were punished because they returned blows, or refused to do a polluting job which they traditionally had to.
• The Ahirs and Raegars challenged the authority of the Rajputs.

Behror: Oliver Mendelsohn's Analysis

• Mendelsohn studied the village from the 1970s to the early 2000s.
• Ahirs are the dominant landholding caste in Behror.
• To visualize the pattern today is complicated.
• The Ahirs did not possess any power in terms of settling disputes for other castes.
• The Ahirs lacked economic power to make the rest of the village dependent on them.
• The Jajmani system (client patron system of exchange of goods and services) is mostly absent.

Changing Village Structure

• Villagers in Behror are now engaged in economic activity outside the village.
• Many other castes, such as Bhangis, are not dependent on Ahirs for employment.
• The Green Revolution led to agricultural expansion and the condition of Bhangis improved.
• Bhangis have migrated to other cities for work and left the traditional occupation of sweeping.
• Some Brahmins have been moving on to take more respectable occupations such as medicine and the army.
• The Ahirs want their sons and to a less extent their daughters to study outside the village.
• The Ahirs operate trucking and bus lines, stone quarries.

Ahirs and Lack of Unity

• Individualism and family-centredness have replaced caste solidarity.
• The Ahirs never meet as a community (e.g. Panchayat).
• The Ahirs gather for weddings and funerals, but they do not hold any meetings of their community.
• Caste panchayats are disappearing.
• In some low caste communities, especially the untouchable castes, the panchayat is still important.
• Increased money will soon erode the solidarity of the community, according to a Bhangi tailor.
• Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from another community might intervene in disputes now.

Anti-Arrack Agitation of Andhra Pradesh

• Arrack is consumed by the poor people, especially agricultural laborers.
• Among the forward castes and some of the backward castes, drinking is a social taboo.
• It is socially acceptable by certain scheduled castes.
• The movement began in Dubugamta village of Nellore District in Andhra Pradesh.
• Protests occurred against arrack auctions and demands were made to ban the sale of arrack.
• Attempts were made to suppress it by the police.
• Arrack was sold under police protection and under police stations.

Prohibition

• The Directive Principles of State Policy directs the state to endeavor to bring about prohibition of consumption.
• The law makes exceptions for medicinal purposes, of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.
• Prohibition was lifted in almost all states except Gujarat in the late 1960s.
• The UP government abolished prohibition in 11 districts where there was prohibition in 1964.
• Madhya Pradesh followed suit.
• In states that did not go in for prohibition, a policy of increasing excise duty was adopted as way of reducing liquor consumption.
• This ended up raising revenue instead of reducing liquor consumption.
• This benefits the political class.

Statistics from Andhra Pradesh

• In 1990-1991, Andhra Pradesh ranked first in arrack consumption.
• The consumption of all kinds of liquor increased steeply.
• Seventy to eighty percent of the growing excise due to arrack.
• The number of arrack shops declined to 16,436 in 1990-1991.
• The decline did not mean reduction in arrack demand, instead it reveals the new ways of selling liquor.
• Arrack was packed in 90 ml and 45 ml polythene sachets.
• It could now be supplied to someone's doorstep by people on cycle and foot.
• The difference between the sale price and the issue price is the contractors' share of the profit.
• Contractors do not make much profit, official records state.
• Official records fail to include other expenses such as goonda gangs, bribes to excise department, or the contribution to political parties.
• Official data excludes illicit distilling and packaging.
• Consumption will be higher than official estimates show, due to illicit distilling.

Non-Economic Impact

• The non-economic impact of arrack concerns impliciations for gender relations and political implications.

Gender Specific Implications

• Men spend most of the household income on arrack.
• Women struggle to provide for food and their children's upbringing is affected.
• Women are victims of domestic violence and abuse at the hands of their husbands.

Political Implications

• Liquor contractors' criminal activities and political nexus lead to a loss of respect for the political process.
• The CPI (ML) groups demanded a ban on arrack in north Telangana districts.
• The Akshara Jyoti Program was a literacy program for women in Nellore.
• The movement helped raise awareness about the nexus between politicians, police, and arrack contractors.
• Women demanded complete prohibition.
• Village committees led by women pressured men to take an oath to stop drinking arrack in the village temples.
• In the event of the oath being violated, the men would be forced to pay a heavy fine to the temple.
• The families that violated the oath would be banished from the villages.
• The activists refused to serve food to those coming home drunk.
• Women used brooms, chili powder and fire as methods of protest.
• The women would attack the contractor's den and set fire to the barrels and sachets.
• The women collectively sat in front of liquor shops to prevent sales.

The Origins of National Consciousness

• Nation is a modern phenomena and is socially constructed, according to Benedict Anderson.
• A nation is an imagined political community.
• A nation is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.
• Nations are imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members.
• Citizens in a nation still feel a sense of community.
• Nations have a boundary beyond which are other nations, so their size is limited.
• Regardless of inequality and exploitation within a nation, the nation is always thought of as a deep, horizontal comradeship.
• Kingship derives legitimacy from divinity, not from people, since they are subjects, not citizens.
• Early printing brought about the rise of national consciousness.
• Printing was an early example of capitalism.
• The early printers established branches all over Europe.
• People took the form of internationalization of publishing houses and these moved beyond national frontiers.
• 1500-1550 was a period of exceptional European prosperity and publishing shared in a general boom.
• The initial book market was literate Europe, consisting of a wide but thin stratum of Latin readers.
• It took around 150 years to saturate this market.
• Latin was a sacred language and it was a language of bilinguals.
• Very few people then were bilinguals, most were monoglots in 16th-century Europe.
• Once the bilingual market had been conquered, the potential of the monoglot population would be tapped by the publishing industry.

Vernacularization

• It involves expressing in the vernacular or to translate into everyday language.
• Vernacular is the language or the dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a particular country or region.
• There are reasons for the beginning of national consciousness:
  • Change in the character of Latin.
  • Impact of Reformation.
  • Slow, geographically uneven spread of particular vernaculars as instruments of administrative centralization by well-positioned, would-be absolutist monarchs.
• Latin that the intellectuals aspired to write in was more of the ancient kind than the one being used in everyday and ecclesiastical/church life.
• Latin acquired a quality very different from Church Latin of medieval times.
• Martin Luther in 1517 nailed his 95 Theses to the chapel door in Wittenberg. They were immediately translated to German and circulated.
• In 1520-1540, three times as many books were published in German as in the period 1500-1520.
• A true mass readership was established for the first time.
• Protestantism made use of the vernacular print market.
• There were cheap popular editions published.
• The market created new large reading publics, especially among merchants and women who knew little or no Latin.
• This mobilized a new group for political and religious purposes.
• Universality of Latin in medieval Western Europe did not correspond to a universal political system.
• No sovereign was able to monopolize Latin and make it his language of state.
• Latin's religious authority did not have a true political corollary.
• Print language unified fields of communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars.
• A huge variety of people who spoke Spanish and French could now communicate.
• People became aware of the millions of people who spoke their language.
• Print gave a fixity to language and the ability to build image of ancient times which is central to the idea of a nation.
• It created languages of power.
• The impact of capitalism and print technology on the different kinds of human language created a new type of imagined community.
• This basic form set the stage for the modern nation.