The British didn’t create the caste system from scratch, but they had a huge role in shaping what became the modern caste system. I’m sleepy, so I’m going to quote direct from this BBC article (though it’s a good amount article, if you have the time. It does a good job for a summary, imo)
“[Britain’s reshaping of Indian society] was done initially in the early 19th Century by elevating selected and convenient Brahman-Sanskrit texts like the Manusmriti to canonical status”
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" [The caste] categories were institutionalised in the mid to late 19th Century through the census. These were acts of convenience and simplification."
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“The colonisers established the acceptable list of indigenous religions in India - Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism - and their boundaries and laws through “reading” what they claimed were India’s definitive texts.”
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“There is little doubt that the religion categories in India could have been defined very differently by reinterpreting those same or other texts.”
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“In fact, it is doubtful that caste had much significance or virulence in society before the British made it India’s defining social feature.”
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"The colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience during a period that covered roughly the 19th Century.
“This was done to serve the British Indian government’s own interests - primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed.”
“A very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened.”
“The resulting categorical system became rigid during the next century and quarter, as the made-up categories came to be associated with real rights. Religion-based electorates in British India and caste-based reservations in independent India made amorphous categories concrete. There came to be real and material consequences of belonging to one category (like Jain or Scheduled Caste) instead of another.”
Apologies for just quoting at length at you. I fear that presenting info this way will give the sense that I am lecturing you, but that is not my intention; a large part of why I share this info is because I learned of this relatively recently and I was astounded by how significant Britain’s role was.
The common knowledge among those interested in the history is that Britain insitutionalized and entrenched caste in an administrative framework that never before existed in India.
They generally saw their colonial subjects as tools for financial gain and wished they could stay out of the messy sociologic aspects of how different people may relate to each other. On a more fundamental level, they didn’t see them as people.
They also implicated skin color in caste in a way that it was not previously. Their perception of the world at the time was very much “white = good” and “anything other than white = bad” and they couldn’t help but apply that framework to all human relations.
Typical colonizer move, though Britain is certainly the biggest one, they all did this. The Rwandan genocide, for one of many examples, is a direct result of Germany and later Belgium reinforcing an artificial split between the long-since homogenized Hutu and Tutsi “ethnicities”.
Before they did that, the difference between “hutu” and “tutsi” mostly came down to “do you own cattle?”
I don’t think their point is that the caste system didn’t existed before English colonization, but that India was not an unified and centralized country.
You’re right. They also didn’t create colorism, which has existed in every human society since the dawn of time.
What they did do is institutionalize and entrench caste. They applied their racialized view of the world and interpreted caste as “low caste = dark skin = bad” and “high caste = fair skin = good” There is nothing in ancient Indian literature that connects caste to skin tone.
There is however significant literature tying caste to virtue. Low caste individuals in India are disenfranchised similar to African Americans in the US.
The British didn’t help the issue by identifying certain castes as innately criminal, subjecting them to constant police surveillance and even imprisoning them premptively.
The Indian government, at its inception, outlawed caste discrimination and there are several affirmative action plans in place to provide increased oppurunities to disenfranchised castes but, similar to the African American community in the US, execution of such plans and positive outcomes are still lacking.
During his visit to Kerala, India in 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. was being introduced by a school principal: “Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America” Initially shocked, he reflected and then responded: “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States is an untouchable”
It’s weird because there is an internalised class hierarchy in the UK that even the traditional working class seem to adhere to very strictly. And yet the concept of the Dalit seems simultaneously abhorrent.
The British did not create the caste system.
The British didn’t create the caste system from scratch, but they had a huge role in shaping what became the modern caste system. I’m sleepy, so I’m going to quote direct from this BBC article (though it’s a good amount article, if you have the time. It does a good job for a summary, imo)
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Apologies for just quoting at length at you. I fear that presenting info this way will give the sense that I am lecturing you, but that is not my intention; a large part of why I share this info is because I learned of this relatively recently and I was astounded by how significant Britain’s role was.
The common knowledge among those interested in the history is that Britain insitutionalized and entrenched caste in an administrative framework that never before existed in India.
They generally saw their colonial subjects as tools for financial gain and wished they could stay out of the messy sociologic aspects of how different people may relate to each other. On a more fundamental level, they didn’t see them as people.
They also implicated skin color in caste in a way that it was not previously. Their perception of the world at the time was very much “white = good” and “anything other than white = bad” and they couldn’t help but apply that framework to all human relations.
Typical British move. Divide and conquer. They invented entire countries and flags so that the Arab World can never reunite.
Typical colonizer move, though Britain is certainly the biggest one, they all did this. The Rwandan genocide, for one of many examples, is a direct result of Germany and later Belgium reinforcing an artificial split between the long-since homogenized Hutu and Tutsi “ethnicities”.
Before they did that, the difference between “hutu” and “tutsi” mostly came down to “do you own cattle?”
Interesting, it sounds like a topic I could learn more about.
I don’t think their point is that the caste system didn’t existed before English colonization, but that India was not an unified and centralized country.
You’re right. They also didn’t create colorism, which has existed in every human society since the dawn of time.
What they did do is institutionalize and entrench caste. They applied their racialized view of the world and interpreted caste as “low caste = dark skin = bad” and “high caste = fair skin = good” There is nothing in ancient Indian literature that connects caste to skin tone.
There is however significant literature tying caste to virtue. Low caste individuals in India are disenfranchised similar to African Americans in the US.
The British didn’t help the issue by identifying certain castes as innately criminal, subjecting them to constant police surveillance and even imprisoning them premptively.
The Indian government, at its inception, outlawed caste discrimination and there are several affirmative action plans in place to provide increased oppurunities to disenfranchised castes but, similar to the African American community in the US, execution of such plans and positive outcomes are still lacking.
During his visit to Kerala, India in 1959, Martin Luther King Jr. was being introduced by a school principal: “Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America” Initially shocked, he reflected and then responded: “Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States is an untouchable”
It’s weird because there is an internalised class hierarchy in the UK that even the traditional working class seem to adhere to very strictly. And yet the concept of the Dalit seems simultaneously abhorrent.