Caste as Symbolic Capital in Political Ethnicization

Recent historical studies of caste groups carry out a radical reconceptualization of the institution of caste and, by implication, raise serious questions about the adequacy of the standard social science view. I refer, in particular, to analyses that fall under such rubrics as the "substantialization," "ethnicization," or "racialization" of caste: the alleged twentieth-century transformation of caste from one kind of social formation into another. Research on this phenomenon raises questions, both about the kind of social formation caste is taken to have been prior to its transformation and about the kind of social formation it is said to be in the process of becoming. In both cases, the most frequent answers reflect a distinctive analytic bias.

Historical treatments of the changing nature of caste appear most prominently in connection with more broadly defined historiographic concerns about the growth of Indian self-rule prior to independence (Gallager, Johnson, and Seal 1973). Within this context, it is not surprising that historians have focused their attention on the twentieth-century emergence and role of caste associations: sodalities that seem to integrate aspects of caste organization with aspects of organization in Western-style political parties. The growth of these sodalities marks an apparent watershed in the way members of subcastes sharing a common name interact with one another, and this change has led influential historians of South India (including Baker 1976; Stein 1980; and Washbrook 1975, 1976, 1982) to raise important doubts about the putative corporate status of castes, the collective action of castes, and sometimes, it almost seems, the very relevance of caste groups within South India, at least for any level of territorial organization larger than a village.^[2]

As an alternative, these radical historians argue that, prior to the late nineteenth century, South Indian castes constituted unintegrated clusters of localized, endogamous subcastes that had little in common except name. This view of caste is one that follows in the wake of an anthropology that emphasized village studies without giving adequate attention to extravillage and regional social phenomena. Because of the absence of regional caste studies, and because of their predisposition to look for the impact of caste in the Indian independence movement, some radical historians have based their findings on investigations of the twentieth-century development of caste associations formed for political purposes (e.g., Hardgrave 1969; Rudolph and Rudolph 1967).^[3]

If I understand the arguments of these historians correctly, South Indian caste identity has gradually been shaped into a vague umbrella concept that covers a range of potential practical and moral linkages, but that entails no specific rights or obligations among people who share a common caste name. Rather, caste identity defines a category of people who are candidates for alliance in virtually any common cause. They do not exist as permanent corporate groups, but they can be mobilized in temporary political factions (Boissevain 1968) or quasi groups (Mayer 1966) on an occasional basis by powerful politicians pursuing individual ends. Caste identities, in this view, constitute a form of what Bourdieu (1977) called symbolic capital , available for investment by politicians with the skill to manipulate its meanings.^[4]

The most elaborated version of this position is represented in a series of papers and books by David Washbrook (1975, 1976, 1982, 1984). Developing a sophisticated comparative model of ethnicity and social stratification, Washbrook carefully orients himself within the luxuriant literature about Indian castes. For example, with respect to sociological and historical theories about the "modernity of tradition" (Rudolph and Rudolph 1967), Washbrook sees postconquest and colonial caste associations as the results of novel manipulations of traditional symbols. At the same time, Washbrook is too good a historian to posit a timeless tradition. Rather, along with scholars such as Cohn (1960, 1983, 1987) Carroll (1978), and Dirks (1987), he theorizes that "traditional" Indian symbols and ideas about caste may themselves have been recent inventions, born out of interaction between European conquerors and indigenous elites. In this view, the apparent nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernization of caste represents a continuation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century processes.

Washbrook is also careful to place his viewpoint in relation to more culturally based theories of caste. Thus, despite a sustained critical attack against the theories of Dumont (1980), he shares a number of Dumont's interpretations of Indian society, especially as elaborated by Stephen Barnett (1973). Like Dumont and Barnett, Washbrook finds that precolonial caste identity fits more or less closely with what I have characterized as the standard model of caste society. In particular, he holds that precolonial caste membership applied only disjointedly to distinct social identities within localized caste hierarchies. The social obligations of membership were wholly specified by the local situation and were not generalized to caste members belonging to regionally disbursed subcastes sharing nothing other than a common name. By contrast, the "substantialized," "ethnicized," or (in Washbrook's terms) "racialized" systems of caste identity in colonial and independent India have reversed this emphasis. That is to

say, subcastes have come to be identified on the basis of kinship within a commonly named caste cluster; clusters as wholes are ranked with respect to legal and ritual prerogatives that are sanctioned by pan-regional, governmental authorities; and finally, interactions between members of the same local subcaste and between members of different subcastes sharing a common caste name are free from all caste-defined regulations, except those preserving endogamy.^[5]

Washbrook marshals a number of arguments that complement those of Dumont and Barnett. These, however, are incidental to his primary interest in explaining "the rise of ethnic and racial sentiment" as "a characteristic response to certain kinds of economic and political instability" (1982: 153). In his view, the evolution of a caste cluster into an ethnic group within a racially stratified system reflects a complex political process. Elite cluster members create and "sell" a myth of cluster solidarity to the emerging colonial government, position themselves as brokers of political influence for members of their caste clusters, and employ these newly created patronage resources to build a base of political support.^[6] As the multicaste members of caste clusters cooperate to support an elite member, they create temporary political factions whose memberships change with the political fortunes of their leaders. Such cluster-based factions exemplify regional caste units that never existed in pre-colonial India. Their members disregard local variation and conceive of themselves in substantialized, ethnicized, and racialized terms that are equally novel and that, in fact, resemble Western-style ethnic or racial groupings. In Washbrook's apt restatement of Srinivas, "the djinn (of caste) was released from the bottle [of little kingdoms].... All hell broke loose as society began to form itself into 'castes' which, so far from accepting the hierarchy of the varna scheme, began furiously to contest their own places within it" (1988: 26–27).^[7]