Caste As Viewed By Dumont, Berreman And Dirks
For thousands of years, the caste system has always existed in South Asia and has its traditional roots in the Hindu system. Among the people of South Asia, they are divided into four groups which are also known as castes and form the basis of the caste system. These groups are the Brahmins, which consist of priests and scientists, the Kshatriyas consisting of rulers and warriors, the Vaisyas who include the traders and agriculturalists and finally, the Sudras who are mainly the laborers and the citizens. These castes are then subdivided into various sub-castes and groups.
Unfortunately, the Dalits, a group in South Asia falls outside of this system. I call it unfortunate because, as a result, they are considered not part of the society and this is effectively shown by use of untouchability practices. They are commonly reffered to as outcasts or untouchables and on a daily basis, they are exposed to various vices of discrimination, social exclusion and unfathomable violence. Justitia et Pax(2010).
Dalits are prohibited from using wells, temples and in the worst situations, a Dalit cannot touch the shadow of a person from a higher caste. The group that is more vulnerable to this discrimination are the Dalit women. They are often victims of violence, not just because they are Dalits but also because they are women and they are poor, which is viewed as characteristic of inferiority in the society. There are various and severe cases of use of violence such as physical abuse and rape. The rights of Dalit people have continuously been ignored.
Dumont’s work in Homo Hierarchicus leans towards analyzing and understanding how the casted system in India works around the hierarchy concept. Throughout the book, his ideas are centered on the history of caste, concepts concerning the impurity and purity of the people belonging to various castes, not as elements in the caste system but as a structure, the way labor is divided between various castes in the system, the relationship and commonalities between varna and hierarchy, the way marriage was regulated in the system, various rules concerning territories, power and even basic things like contact and food, the government of caste, comparison of the social systems of organization among non-Hindus and the caste system, the roles played by renouncers and finally, he discusses the evolution of caste system and the contemporary trends involved in it.
Berreman, in the article caste in India and the United States, compares India’s Hindu caste systems to the United States issues with race and discrimination for blacks. His definition of caste is as endogamous divisions in form of a hierarchy where membership is permanent and can only be attained through heredity. The significant bit of this description is that, unlike the views of Dumont and other sociologists who base their views on his analysis, it does not refer to ideological homogeneity between people from different castes. This criticizes Dumont’s stand in his analysis, which encapsulates the notion that there is total acceptance and replication of the Hindu caste ideology among all Hindu subscribers and their behaviors.
In his second production in 1981, Berreman has detailed his work in a stratification comparative study. He differentiates between three different concepts which are the status and class, the criteria for particular group membership which he terms as intrinsic and extrinsic and categories and groups which he further analyzes to come up with residual categories of age, sex, stigmatization and servitude. In his efforts to argue against stratification as viewed by functionalists, he asserts that stratification as a human condition is an inevitable feature.
Dirks work on the other hand totally differs from the other two researchers. He traces the originality of caste and tries to explain the many reasons why caste is the main symbol of the Indian community. His suggestion is that caste is more of a modern phenomenon brought about by the contact of India and western colonial rule and is not a reflection of the Indian tradition symbolized by the survival of ancient practices in India. In his work, he clarifies that caste is not an invention of the British, but rather, it became capable of systemizing, organizing and expressing the various forms of India’s community, social identity and organization. This achievement was through solid encounters with the modernity as a result of two hundred years of British colonization.
The applicability of caste to societies other than the South Asian region is dependent on how different people define this term. For instance, those who focus on its foundations in religion are of the view that, the structural organization of caste can only be found among the Indians. This is the same case with Louis Dumont (1970). His view on the caste systems is that they are not comparable to other systems regarding racial stratification because of the ideologies as they are very different. The basis of one of the systems is that of the ideology of hierarchy while the other system has its basis on the ideology of equalitarian.
On the same topic though on a different perspective, Berreman (1981) believes that caste exists as a ranked system in various other societies. That is, there is close resemblance to caste among ethnic groups when their relationship to each other is based on ranked and hierarchical status. In such systems, just like in the caste system, an ethnic group’s identity is regarded as being an outcome of ancestry or birth and is therefore immutable. For subordinate groups, they have restricted opportunities and their members are subjected to low positions socially in almost all societal sectors such as social, economic and political sectors of their respective countries. As a consequence, there is limited social interactions from group to group and the little contact that there is, is filled with difference. This way, race stratification is congruent with caste stratification and also ranked ethnic systems, given the similar practices in their social processes and social structures. Some of the countries outside of South Asia with systems similar to caste include Japan, as viewed with the rigid shogun rule which was experienced during the early sixteenth century all the way to the mid eighteenth century in what was termed as Tokugawa period, Rwanda, a country in Africa which has been the victim of violent and deadly ethnic conflicts as a result of the a caste like form of rule and also in the United States, as argued by Berreman (1981).
According to Berreman, the Japanese Barakumin, the Hutus and Twa of Rwanda, the blacks in South Africa – before independence – an America and the Dalits in India South Asia all live and are subjected to societies which are similar in structure and the effects on the lives of the minority groups who are the most oppressed. In a similar manner, there are similarities in the political outcomes of preferencial policies that give a cultural distinction of societies such as India and the United States, which have taken up measures to see to the ceasation of disparities between various groups.
References
Justitia et Pax(2010). South Asia. Extracted from www.enjustitiaetpax.nl/project/southasia
Berreman, G. D. (1960). Caste in India and the United States. American Journal of Sociology
Berreman, G. D. (1981). Social Inequality; A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Comparative and Developmental Approaches. New York: Academic Press
Dumont, L. (1970). Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Dirks, N. B. (2001). Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.
Prof Halliburton. Peoples of South Asia
Case and Inherited Status. Extracted from www.what-when-how.com/sociology/caste-and-inherited-status/
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