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Sheesh are people still quoting that post-modern gibberish? No “colonialism” didn’t cause the rigidity of the caste system except incidentally. Social mobilit

Sheesh are people still quoting that post-modern gibberish? No “colonialism” didn’t cause the rigidity of the caste system except incidentally. Social mobility in traditional India did occur but very slowly and at the group level for the most part. How it worked is an upcoming group would adopt elite behaviors e.g. vegetarianism, Sanskrit, their Gods would be equated with those of the high tradition and so on. Over time no one in the group or its neighbors would remember that they had ever behaved otherwise. Voila, upward mobility. The printing press changed that. Now when you say I am Y, someone can point out “but it says here that a century ago you were X.” Same effect with archaeology, genetics etc. Historically, the British brought in these technologies but in an alternative timeline where Clive lost at Plessy, the same process would eventually have occurred. It benefits both the far left and far right to find a scapegoat instead.

abhiyerra 7y ago
I think you are basically paraphrasing what the book says. :) The technologies that the British brought through colonialism, including their own class structure, lead to what you described. It likely would have happened without the British but because of the power structures in place that came with colonial rule. This process accelerated so a lot of the rigidity that we can attribute now was the upper castes trying to hold onto their power which was magnified by the British giving them more power in colonial India. It is also why it was the upper caste Hindus that eventually rebelled against British rule. They received the best economic and political benefit from British rule.
- jaldhar 7y ago
  That doesn’t follow. Take Dr. Ambedkars neo-Buddhist movement for instance. By calling themselves Buddhist, upwardly mobile untouchables could identify with a socially prestigious “world religion” that was still identifiably Indian. Never mind that there was no connection to actual historical Indian Buddhism which had gone extinct centuries earlier. But it could be recovered (or reimagined) from books. Read his works and you will see that he appeals to and rebels against colonialist notions just like any other contemporary Indian thinker. To assume it was all about upper castes and the British is more trendy academic bullshit IMO.
  - abhiyerra 7y ago
    Ambedkar was a response to Gandhi and his caste Hindu movement. The Independence movement is split into three groups: 1) Upper Caste Hindus 2) Untouchables (or Harijans as Gandhi called them) 3) Muslims. Most untouchables did not like Gandhi because he sought to keep the caste power structure, hence the response from Ambedkar to escape that hierarchy altogether by moving to Buddhism. The initial organized independence movements which were largely confined to Bengal during the 1900-1918 timeframe were very much an upper-caste movement.

abhiyerra 7y ago

I think you are basically paraphrasing what the book says. :) The technologies that the British brought through colonialism, including their own class structure, lead to what you described. It likely would have happened without the British but because of the power structures in place that came with colonial rule. This process accelerated so a lot of the rigidity that we can attribute now was the upper castes trying to hold onto their power which was magnified by the British giving them more power in colonial India. It is also why it was the upper caste Hindus that eventually rebelled against British rule. They received the best economic and political benefit from British rule.

jaldhar 7y ago
That doesn’t follow. Take Dr. Ambedkars neo-Buddhist movement for instance. By calling themselves Buddhist, upwardly mobile untouchables could identify with a socially prestigious “world religion” that was still identifiably Indian. Never mind that there was no connection to actual historical Indian Buddhism which had gone extinct centuries earlier. But it could be recovered (or reimagined) from books. Read his works and you will see that he appeals to and rebels against colonialist notions just like any other contemporary Indian thinker. To assume it was all about upper castes and the British is more trendy academic bullshit IMO.
- abhiyerra 7y ago
  Ambedkar was a response to Gandhi and his caste Hindu movement. The Independence movement is split into three groups: 1) Upper Caste Hindus 2) Untouchables (or Harijans as Gandhi called them) 3) Muslims. Most untouchables did not like Gandhi because he sought to keep the caste power structure, hence the response from Ambedkar to escape that hierarchy altogether by moving to Buddhism. The initial organized independence movements which were largely confined to Bengal during the 1900-1918 timeframe were very much an upper-caste movement.