Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India "d0e12178"

Ambidexterity in the Nakarattar Varalaru

There have been very few systematic studies of South Indian caste histories. In fact, their discussion is most typically confined to ethnographic paraphrases of the relevant versions collected eighty years ago by Edmund Thurston (1909). Brenda Beck (1972) offers an important exception to this generalization in the same book to which I have already referred. It is her

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view of Indian society and its extension to the analysis of merchant caste varalarus that I now address.^[15]

As in the case of variation in South Indian social organization, Beck interprets most South Indian caste histories as corresponding not only to the varnic classification scheme of the sastras but also to a mercantile/agrarian or "left-hand/right-hand" division of society. It seems to me that the current unqualified acceptance of this specific model of South Indian society is ill-considered. It is true, as Beck asserts, that high-ranking, left-hand varalarus in Kongu share some common motifs with South Indian mercantile varalarus from other regions. But the overlap is by no means so extensive as Beck makes out. In the case of the Nakarattar, for example, the shared motifs number only three out of the seven that Beck proposes as core motifs for all 'left-hand' varalaru , namely:

1.	An angry king who tries to destroy the caste
2.	The caste's escape from the king
3.	Intermarriage with another caste and the start of a new descent line

Moreover, in other notable respects, South India's merchant varalarus frequently diverge from one another. In the case of the Nakarattar varalaru , the differences suggest that Beck's economically based, binary classifications of left- and right-hand castes should not be generalized beyond the Kongu region. The following list identifies distinctive contrasts between the motifs that Beck suggests characterize all merchant varalaru and the motifs that actually figure in the Nakarattar varalaru:

1.	There is reference to Kaveripumpattinam, but not, as Beck suggests, exclusive reference, and greater emphasis is placed on the Nakarattar homeland of Chettinad.
2.	There is no reference to alliance with any other block of castes in Chettinad, either left-hand or right-hand; indeed, there is no reference to a left-hand or right-hand classification at all.
3.	The caste is almost destroyed by a king in Kaveripumpattinam, and it does reestablish its status, but it does so on the basis of its ritual functions in the royal coronation, not on the basis of its members' skill in business.
4.	There is no reference to classical mythology.
5.	Finally, the Nakarattar story of the caste's settlement in Chettinad exhibits a pattern of legitimization by historical (or putatively historical) kings: a trait that not only fails to appear among Beck's distinctive features for left-hand varalarus , but which, in fact, is among the features that she says characterize right-hand varalarus .

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In sum, the difficulty with Beck's "economic" theory^[16] of a left/right division associated with occupational specialization is that it fails to predict the right-hand stylistic features of Nakarattar histories—stylistic features which root their mercantile origins and migrations in the actions of men and kings rather than gods. In other words, Nakarattars seem to give more weight to political considerations connected with their position as a dominant caste in Chettinad than to any ritually unblemished origin. This is not to say that Nakarattars thereby adopt an unambiguously right-hand style. On the contrary, Nakarattar myths almost go out of their way to avoid ranking Nakarattar clans and lineages: an avoidance characteristic of Beck's left-hand castes. There is, at most, a single event in the Nakarattar myth of arrival and domination in Chettinad that singles out a Nakarattar subclan for preeminence over any other clan, and even this event highlights the relative equality of all clans.

In other words, just as in the case of their kinship organization, Nakarattars represent an ambidextrous anomaly in terms of Beck's principal diagnostic features for distinguishing between left-hand and right-hand varalarus . We should not be surprised. The anomaly is striking only as a consequence of the present widespread acceptance of Beck's model of South Indian society. But she presents no persuasive evidence to support her generalizations from the specific region of Kongunadu to all of South India. Moreover, a careful review of the distribution of indigenous historical uses of the left/right metaphor for social relations shows (a) that it occurs sporadically in time and space, (b) that it is employed most frequently in urban, not rural, centers, (c) that within these centers, it is employed as a political idiom, often marking a difference between establishment and arriviste contenders for various ritual privileges, and finally, (d) that on those occasions when political combatants are classified by the left/right metaphor, they do not invariably break down into mercantile and agrarian communities (Appadurai 1974).^[17]