Linguistic
derivation of ‘caste’:
It is well known
truth that the word ‘caste’ derived from ‘casta’ a Portuguese word. But with
the arrival of the Iberians to Asia and the Americas, they began categorize
people by a new order ‘caste’.
These
close-knit, normatively endogamous groups have a long history in Southern Asia.
But the division had no bitterness and hate. For centuries, they have been described
with the Sanskrit “varna”, or “jati”, Arabic “qaum”, Persian “zat” and others.
But there is no equivalent word for “caste” in any Indian or Asian language. It
was imported by Christians and missionaries as a loan-word but is today firmly
set in Indian public and policy system. All know that the original users of the
term (as casta) were Iberians – Portuguese and Spanish, first in the European-Iberian
Peninsula and then it was exported to Asia and the America. But one thing is
very clear neither Indians nor Hindus were in any way related with this word
and system. Later on due to the political reasons the term became very popular –
descriptively, administratively, and sociologically.
Two Iberian
Empires began and, those for more than a century, controlled all the
trans-Oceanic business enterprises of modern Europeans. These were the Spanish
in the Americas and the Portuguese in Asia. Several Iberian kingdoms had begun
a brutal religious persecution against Jews in the 1300s. A large numbers were
converted by force. But to the dismay of many “old Christian” churchmen in high
positions, the educated and affluent among the Jewish converts then controlled
the Church and royal service.
Classification
by descent
Furthermore,
converts’ importance among tax-collectors naturally made them unpopular with
poorer Christians. The interests of clerics and lower class thus joined
together first in pogroms and then in justifying their hostility towards
converts via a doctrine of “purity of blood.”
A new idea was forced that only “old Christians” were superior and worthy
of favour in Spanish and Portuguese society.
Leaders of the new idea had to contend against long-established Church
dogma that all humans are redeemable through Christ. Quite remarkably, they
nonetheless succeeded in prioritising original Christians above converts.
It was widely
practiced that “New Christians”, “conversos” etc., particularly those belonging
to the “casta de judios”, or lower castes were excluded from high positions. (The
above is drawn mainly from Albert Sicroff, Le Controverse de Statuts de Pureté
de Sang 1960.) This became a harsh prejudice
that deepened into the 19th century. “Casta” before 1500 was used to refer to type
or breed of plant or animal: but it now came to denote a class of human separated
by birth. It was thus accepting on the rising concept of race or caste. Even
now an ordinary dictionary mentions its denotation with the idiom “eso me viene
de casta” illustrating as “it’s in my blood”.
It is natural
that when the Iberians, Christians, and missionaries came to Asia and the
America, they quickly began grading people by birth and descent. Converted
Christians were treated as inferiors. Indians did not have this grading of
lower or higher. They only used “varna’ to marry within a specific set of
families and later on it was translated by Iberians, Christians and
missionaries as “caste” defined as a “marriage-pool”. Iberians however swiftly misinterpreted
that this was practiced by a desire to maintain the purity of their “blood”. American
anthropologist, Morton Klass propagated the same views. Not only this, The Portuguese and Spanish also
began grading a “sistema de castas”, a caste system in the Spanish colonies in America
at the same time.
Influence of
migration on Language
From 1580 to
1640 Portugal and Spain were one united nation under one monarchy. More
significantly, both were controlled by authoritatively, by the dominant racial
dogma well entrenched in the Iberian Catholic Church. The Portuguese initiated later-migrating
Europeans to the Indian subcontinent and Indians to a new class of
Westernization. Asian languages borrowed many Portuguese words.
One of these
was casta, anglicized to cast or caste. Most discussion has accepted that the borrowed
-word was used to a pre-existing and very old indigenous “varna’ system, and
intruded the sense of bitterness in the Indian social system that was
strengthen by the political maneuvering by the political parties and
intellectuals propagating secularism and social justice.
In the 20th
century, with the increasing influence and cultural clout of the west and USA, supporters
of this idea have ever more mixed caste to the Western division of race and
colour. They have also forced it to be prevalent to the Hindu system in the
Indian population. This has been a potent and relentless argument, even though
many unbiased authorities, such as the expert sociologist Joseph Elder, have
pointed out many faults in the accepted Western perceptive of Hindu caste.
Thinkers
erroneously claim that “Castes are exclusively Hindu”. But in India, “castes
exist among Christians, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists.” Another system about
marrying within one’s caste and evading relations with other castes are much
more strict among Muslims or Christians, as amid Hindus. This system is also
has an important point of its stability. The British colonial rule – the most
powerful of South Asian realms – used it in its legal, administrative and
political system.
The American
anthropologist Morton Klass pointed out that the Portuguese and Spanish were
creating a system of ethnic and social stratification by genetic or birth descent;
it was for this motive that they instantly thought that Indian jāti or varna endogamous
linage were intended at preserving “purity of blood”.
Europeans, did
not try to eradicate caste but to ease most traits of it to a disquiet of
critics, not related with the faith (adiaphora). Converts of diverse castes
were thus forced separate churches and graveyards.
Jesuit missionary Nobili motioned, this was a well-known
practice by 1615. Even, Nobili quoted a Brahman convert who had faced
discrimination after conversion, reacted to the analysis that Nobili’s coluor
was proof to his being a wicked “prangui” (barbaric Westerner).
“You
reproach the saniassi [ascetic, meaning Nobili] with being a vile Prangui and
cite his color as proof...by that argument I prove that you are a paria [a
Dalit caste-name]. You are black; parias are black so you are therefore a
paria. What! Can you not conceive that in another country where all men,
brahmans and parias alike are white, there will be among the whites the same
distinction of castes, the same distinction between nobles and
commoners? Everyone applauded this reply, which was as substantive as it
was spirited.”
The word casta
to stand for any category of descent group penetrated other European languages.
For example, the Dutch were by 1640 relating the wives of some sailors as of
“Portuguese casta”. It also penetrated into English too.
Early
colonial governments in Asia misused the administrative worth of caste as a way
to organize and divide “civil society”. The Dutch conquered Sri Lanka from the
Portuguese and imposed a stern caste structure there. Even separate labour and
tax laws were framed for each caste in order to prolong Dutch colonial rule. The
customs and peculiarities of caste were meticulously imposed by Dutch penal set
of laws. The British rule not only
continued this but strengthened it in Sri Lanka.
Similarly,
in the first British colony in India, in Bombay island, the administration divided
the local people into the “severall nations at pres[ent] inhabiting on the
Island of Bombay be categorized or identified into so many castes or tribes and
that each group or nation may have a Cheif (sic) or Consull of the same group
or nation chosen over them by the Gover[nor] and Councell”.
In 1900, the
British government in India brought the controversial Land Alienation Act, an
important agrarian act controlling property sale-purchase among two particular categories
of “Tribes and Castes” depicted as ‘agriculturist’ and ‘non-agriculturist’. They
incorporated Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. This was the legalizing the caste and
tribe enclaves and villages in India. The British government also commissioned
regiments, educational institutions, government jobs etc. denoting castes and
tribes. The British also classified castes on the basis of profession, skills
like priestly, business, martial and even branded some as criminal tribes.
This article
is based on the article and blog of Sumit Guha, Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin first on
blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
For more
details read his: (European) Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia,
Past and Present (Indian) Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past
and Present.
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