Ambedkar presented his paper Castes in India:Their Mechanis, Genesis and Development at an anthropology seminar, in which he started with the following statement: “ I need hardly remind you of the complexity of the subject I intend to handle. Subtler minds and abler pens than mine have been brought to the task of unravelling the mysteries of Caste; but unfortunately it still remains in the domain of the unexplained, not to say of the un-understood. I am quite alive to the complex intricacies of a hoary institution like Caste, but I am not so pessimistic as to relegate it to the region of the unknowable, for I believe it can be known. The caste problem is a vast one, both theoretically and practically. Practically, it is an institution that portends tremendous consequences. It is a local problem, but one capable of much wider mischief, for as long as caste in India does exist, Hindus will hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse with outsiders; and if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem. Theoretically, it has defied a great many scholars who have taken upon themselves, as a labour of love, to dig into its origin. Such being the case, I cannot treat the problem in its entirety. Time, space and acumen, I am afraid, would all fail me, if I attempted to do otherwise than limit myself to a phase of it, namely, the genesis, mechanism and spread of the caste system. I will strictly observe this rule, and will dwell on extraneous matters only when it is necessary to clarify or support a point in my thesis. ” Genesis Ambedkar believed that ethnically, all people are heterogeneous. According to him, the Indian Peninsula has not only a geographic unity, but also a deeper and a much more fundamental cultural unity. The unity of culture is the basis of homogeneity, which makes the problem of caste difficult to be explained. If the Hindu society were a mere federation of mutually exclusive units, the matter would be simple enough. But, the caste is a parcelling of an already homogeneous unit, and the explanation of the genesis of caste is the explanation of this process of parcelling. Ambedkar views that definitions of castes given by Mr. Senart, Mr. Nesfield, Sir H. Risley and Dr. Ketkar as incomplete or incorrect by itself and all have missed the central point in the mechanism of the caste system. Mr. Senarts idea of pollution is a characteristic of caste in so far as caste has a religious flavour. Mr. Nesfield states that absence of messing with those outside the Caste is one of its characteristics, but Mr. Nesfield has mistaken the effect of the cause, as caste is a closed group that naturally limits all social intercourse outside of ones caste, including messing etc.. Sir H. Risley makes no new that deserves special attention. He elucidates that the definition of Dr. Ketkar of prohibition of intermarriage and membership by autogeny as two characteristics of caste are two aspects of one and the same thing but not two different things. The prohibition of intermarriage means limiting membership to those born within the group. Ambedkar has evaluated that the endogamy (absence of intermarriage) is the only one that can be called the essence of caste and only characteristic that is peculiar to caste. No civilized society of today presents more survivals of primitive times than does the Indian society like the custom of exogamy. The creed of exogamy, is not that sapindas (blood-kins) cannot marry, but a marriage between sagotras (gotras or clans of the same class) is regarded as a sacrilege. In spite of the endogamy of the castes within them, exogamy is strictly observed and that there are more rigorous penalties for violating exogamy then there are for violating endogamy. Thus the Superposition of endogamy on exogamy means the creation of caste.[2][3]
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 07:30:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015