caste hindus vs. scheduled castes about

7/25/2019 Caste Hindus vs. Scheduled Castes About

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Caste Hindus vs. Scheduled Castes

About a Colonial Distinction and Its Impact

Jakob De Roover

Ghent University, Belgium

One of the most peculiar dimensions of the Indian legal system lies in its legislation related to caste.

The Constitution gives equal rights to all citizens and hence prohibits discrimination on grounds of

caste, religion, race, sex or place of birth. However, it also foresees a series of special provisions which

appear to discriminate precisely on grounds of caste. Some examples:

Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of caste, but also adds that nothing in the

relevant article shall prevent the State from making any special provisionfor the advancement

of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and

the Scheduled Tribes.

Article 16 says: There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to

employment or appointment to any office under the State. It says that no citizen shall on

grounds only of caste be discriminated against in respect of any employment or office under

the State. But then it adds that nothing in the article shall prevent the State from making

special provisions in public service for reservation in matters of promotion in favour of the

Scheduled Castes and Tribes, which, in the opinion of the State, are not adequately

represented in the services under the State.

Article 17 concerns the abolition of untouchability and says its practice in any form is

forbidden: The enforcement of any disability arising out of Untouchability shall be an

offence punishable in accordance with law.

Part XVI of the Constitution stipulates special provisions relating to certain classes. These

provide for the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Tribes in the national parliament

and the state-level legislative assemblies. One of the articles also says that the claims of the

members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes shall be taken into consideration,


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to distinguish the caste groups that belonged to this privileged set? If the selection was not to happen

in a haphazard way, how could one recognize those groups that deserved reservations and other legal

benefits?

Section 1:The article will first examine how this issue confronted the Constituent Assembly in

its work between 1947 and 1949. Many Assembly members spoke in terms of an opposition between

two communities or groups in Indian society: Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes. This split was

supposedly founded in the practice of untouchability, that is, the Depressed Classes could be

recognized because they were considered untouchables. However, several Assembly members

pointed out problems in this distinction and its use of the notion of untouchability. Still, the process

of framing the laws on caste continued without addressing these problems. It was as though the

existence of Depressed Classes that deserved special benefits in contrast to the Caste Hindus who

did not was self-evident.

Section 2:Why could the Constituent Assembly consider this a self-evident fact? Possibly, the

existence of these two distinct groups in Indian society had been established long before these debates

of the late 1940s. Like Scheduled Castes, Depressed Classes was a categorization that post-

Independence India had inherited from British colonial rule. In the first decades of the 20thcentury,

colonial institutions systematically made use of the distinction between Caste Hindus and Depressed

Classes. Therefore, the second section of the article will examine as to what allowed the British to

recognize these two distinct groups (or sets of groups) among the Hindus. Once again, the notion of

untouchability played a central role here and again it met with fundamental difficulties. Much like the

Constituent Assembly, the British papered over these difficulties and proposed separate electorates

and other benefits for the Depressed Classes. To them, it appeared equally obvious that it made sense

to divide the Hindus into Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes.

Section 3:To find out what made this categorization so evident, we need to examine the general

discourse about the caste system of this era. During the 1930s, the most important debate on the issue

of caste and untouchability was that between Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi. They both

shared the idea that Hindu society was divided into two groupings: Caste Hindus and Untouchables.

To begin to answer this question, I will briefly show how this terminology emerged from certain

contingent steps taken by British census officials. In the process, they discovered that empirical

identification of the Untouchables as a distinct group or set of groups in Indian society turned out to

be impossible and that the distinction lacked conceptual coherence.


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In the conclusion, we will take one last step in what is beginning to appear like an infinite

regress to answer the question: How did the conviction emerge that the Scheduled Castes should be

considered as a distinct class or community in Indian society, which should retain special benefits and

provisions in post-Independence India? The answer will turn out to be surprising, given the fact that

India declared itself independent almost seventy years ago.

1. Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes

In todays India, it is common parlance to speak of Dalits and Caste Hindus as two distinct sections

of the population. This way of speaking is especially popular among academics, activists, journalists,

and political leaders. Even though these two sets of people consist of a huge number of very different

jatis and other groups, there is a sense in which they are said to make up two distinct groups or even

communities. Dalits, one often hears, is the name preferred by the castes formerly called

Untouchables to refer to themselves. Going by the meaning of this name, they are the oppressed.

Of course, many people are oppressed in all kinds of ways, so it cannot just be the state of being

oppressed that characterizes this group.

In one sense, the criterion is clear: to count as a Dalit one should belong to one of the

Scheduled Castes. This means that one should be a member of one of the more than one thousand

groups listed in the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, which is essential to the functioning of

the caste-related laws of India. Now, to understand the rationale behind these laws and schedules, the

most obvious step is to turn to the legislative body that framed them: the Constituent Assembly. How,

then, did the Assembly discuss this matter and which problems came up during these debates?

One of the very first things that the Assembly had to do was to elect a permanent chairman.

After the members had elected Dr Rajendra Prasad on 11 December 1946, they congratulated him

profusely. One Assembly member said he spoke on behalf of the 60 millions of untouchable classes,

the tillers of the soil and hewers of wood, who have been in the lowest rungs of the ladder of political

and economical Status of this country. What is interesting about this intervention is that the

Assembly member uses a series of different terms to refer to the classes he says he represents. He uses

the following terms as equivalents: untouchable classes, Scheduled-Castes, Harijans, Harijan

communities, Scheduled Classes, untouchables. He says that the 60 millions of untouchables form

the backbone of Hinduism and expresses his certainty that all the disabilities of these Harijans will


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be remedied in a manner that they may enjoy equal privileges in this great country. Note the claim

here: the untouchables or Harijans are followers of Hinduism who suffer certain disabilities.

Two days later, the term caste Hindu also made its appearance in the Assembly debates,

when several members expressed their indignation at a debate that had taken place in the House of

Lords in London. Some members of the British Conservatives in the opposition had dismissed the

Constituent Assembly as a Caste Hindu institution, which would threaten India with a Hindu Raj

if it continued the work of framing a constitution for the country. Indeed, on 16 December, the British

Parliament had held a debate about the Constituent Assembly that had just been constituted in Delhi.

This debate is very interesting for our purposes, because much of it revolved around the status of the

so-called Depressed Classes as against the Caste Hindus.

It all started when Viscount Simon of the Conservatives first claimed that the Assembly was

but a body of Hindus and then addressed the following question to the Secretary of State: do the

Government regard what is going on in Delhi at this moment as the Constituent Assembly? This is

not a hypothetical question, he added, since these people are meeting now, at this minute, all by

themselves, and the most recent declarations of Pandit Nehru show how much importance he attaches

to the idea that he and his caste Hindus should constitute the Constituent Assembly which the

Government propose. Could this meeting of caste Hindus at Delhi be regarded as the Constituent

Assembly at all? Viscount Simons concern was that the attempt to establish a Government in India,

not by co-operation between the major communities, but by reliance on the Hindu majority, threatens

India with civil war, with anarchy and bloodshed on an unlimited scale. His next statement shows

which communities he was referring to: To the Caste Hindus we should say that the British

Parliament well understands the inspiration that is drawn from the prospect of complete freedom, but

that the freedom must be for others, the 90,000,000 Moslems, the 50,000,000 Untouchables, as well

as for themselves.

We learn a lot from these words: first of all, Viscount Simon views the Caste Hindus, the

Muslims, and the Untouchables as three separate communities that need to cooperate in establishing

the Indian Government. Consequently, he sees the Muslims and Untouchables as two minorities,

distinct from the dominant Hindu majority. In the case of Muslims, it is relatively clear how the

different Muslim groups could be viewed as making up a religious minority, since they share a religious

affiliation of some kind. But how could one say the same for the hundreds of jatis that this British Lord

unites into a community? What made them into a community as opposed to another community called

the Caste Hindus? This distinction between communities was extremely important, according to


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Viscount Simon: not taking it into account in the creation of the new constitution for India could lead

to civil war, anarchy and bloodshed on an unlimited scale.

This was not the idiosyncratic view of Viscount Simon. The Earl of Scarborough joined him in

raising the question of the position of the Scheduled Castes in the Constituent Assembly. Though

not a vital problem, he said, it is one which the House of Lords would do well not to ignore, for this

communityor rather this collection of communitiesis not well organized. It does not command

the resources with which it can press its case, and its immemorial plight demands that its voice should

be heard. My contention is, the Earl added, that the manner in which the Scheduled Castes are

represented in the Constituent Assembly does not reflect the wishes and the opinions of the Scheduled

Castes themselves. Here, we see a qualification: the Scheduled Castes (no longer called the

untouchables) form a community or rather a collection of communities. Yet, the Earl assumes, this

community or collection of communities not only shares one voice, but also another fundamental

property, namely, its immemorial plight.

Of course, this immemorial plight is a rather mysterious reference. It related to the

subsequent discussion, where the focus shifted to the following issue: according to the British

Parliament, are the Scheduled Classes or Scheduled Castes one of the minorities in Indian society that

would be protected under the new Constitution? Another Viscount said he had met Ambedkar and

reported that this issue was the latters major anxiety: Ambedkar wanted the Scheduled Castes to be

recognized as a minority in Indian society, so that they would get the special status accorded to

minorities by colonial law. In response, one member of the House of Lords said: The Scheduled Castes

are technically a minority, but they are a very numerous one; there are some 60,000,000 of them

(972). For Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Governor-General of India, there was no doubt:

The Government certainly regard the Scheduled Castes as a minority. They are certainly one of

the principal peoplesto whom the statement made in the course of our Mission in India applies

and in respect of which the British Government would require to be satisfied. There have been

debates and fine points taken as to whether they are a minority or not, but, from our point of

view, it is certainly our intention that they are one of the peopleswith whom the Minorities

Commission would deal. (987-8; emphasis added.)

That the Scheduled Castes counted as a minority deserving certain protections might be a technical

decision of the British Government. Nevertheless, it does presuppose that the set of groups grouped

together by the British Government in India could be seen as a minority community in some relevant


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sense. In fact, the Governor-General calls them one of the peoplescoming under minority protection. So

the Scheduled Castes now constitute a people. For all of this to be possible, this variety of groups should

share some recognizable characteristics that could make them into a minority people or community.

From London back to Delhi then. Some Constituent Assembly members reacted with

indignation to these statements and to similar claims made by Winston Churchill, who had among

other things said that the Assembly represented only one major community in India, referring to the

Caste Hindus. However, the discussion did not challenge the view that one could sensibly speak of

two communities in Indian society, the majority Caste Hindus and the minority Scheduled Castes. It

merely focused on the concern that such allegations about inadequate representation for the Scheduled

Castes would prevent the latter from joining the nationalist forces in India.

In fact, throughout the Assembly debates, one notes that members speak of the Depressed

Classes or Scheduled Castes as a community of some sort, as opposed to the Caste Hindus. Especially

those representing these groups often began their interventions by saying that they spoke in the name

of the community which they represented: that of Depressed Classes, Harijans, or Untouchables.

Some made this very explicit and suggested this division of community had a racial foundation. On

the 20thof January 1947, Sri S. Nagappa of Madras put it as follows:

We, the Harijans and Adivasis are the real sons of the soil, and we have every right to frame

the Constitution of this country. Even the so-called Caste Hindus who are not real Indians,

can go, if they want. (Interruptions.) Sir, today we are asking the Britisher to quit. For what

reason? Is he not a human being? Has he not a right to live in the country? We ask him to quit

because he is a foreigner. So, Sir, we have also a right to ask the Aryan, the migrator to go. We

have a right to ask the Mohammedan, the invader, to go out of this country. There is only one

consideration. The Caste Hindus of this country do not have any other place to go to. That is

the only consideration that they deserve.

In this passage, we note one element that contributed to presenting Caste Hindus and Harijans as two

communities. For Nagappa, the now completely discredited Aryan Invasion Theory showed that

Harijans and Adivasis could be distinguished from Caste Hindus on racial grounds: they were the

communities consisting of the original inhabitants of India, while the Caste Hindus were the Aryan

invaders, who could be asked by the original inhabitants to go and leave the Indian soil.


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The next day, one Mr. H.J. Khandejar (C. P. and Berar: General) stepped in to say he was a

Harijan and would place before you the voice of 90 millions of Harijans in India. These Harijans

constituted a community, he added: The Harijan Community is accepting this Resolution with great

pleasure for the sole reason that the Resolution, embodies safeguards for all the minorities in India.

However, in contrast to Ambedkars claim I am not a Hindu, this Assembly member asserted that,

even though the Harijans have been and are still being subjected to endless oppressions and

cruelties, they never thought of abandoning their faith: We are Hindus, will remain Hindus and will

secure our rights as Hindus. Somewhat more confusingly, he added: Undoubtedly we are Hindus

and we will, as Hindus, fight the Hindus and secure our rights. Khandejar repeated the same claims

in the discussion on the resolution about the new flag for India, where he said, as the President of the

All India Depressed Classes Union, that saffron represented the colour of his community, the

Depressed classes.

Similarly, Srimati Dakshayani Velayudan (Madras: General) complained during another

session that no Harijans name was included among the Hindu representatives in the Muslim

Provinces: We, Harijans, consider ourselves one with the Hindu community and we have every right

to represent the Hindus in the Muslim Provinces. Later, she referred to the Harijans as a community,

a vast regiment of people who are subjected to untold miseries for so many centuries. Here, a new

question is added to the claim that one can distinguish two communities, Caste Hindus and Harijans:Are they both sub-communities of the Hindus? Or do the Harijans or Untouchables fall outside the

Hindu community?

Of course, there are cases where a sub-section of a religion could possibly be considered a

minority: say, Shias in a Sunni-dominated Islamic country may count as a minority community, even

though both groups are Muslims. However, in those cases, we can explain what makes both groups

into Muslims (the belief in Allah and Mohammad as the last prophet, for instance) and what

distinguishes them as two communities (the conflict about the role of Ali as the Caliph, for instance).

In the case of Caste Hindus and Harijans, however, how could this issue be settled? The name Hindus

had been introduced by Europeans to refer to the heathens or idolaters of the country that lay

beyond the Indus. In the late eighteenth century, they developed the idea that there was a religion

named Hinduism and that its followers were Hindus. From the early nineteenth century until today,

scholars have agreed that it is impossible to say which common properties (beliefs or practices) allow

one to distinguish Hindus as the followers of this religion. Did the Constituent Assembly members

then have any coherent way to establish whether or not Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes are

two communities within the larger category of Hindus?


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Untouchability appeared to play a crucial role as a property that distinguished the Depressed

Classes (or Scheduled Castes or Harijans) from the Caste Hindus. But then it was unclear what this

meant. The obscurity surfaced in several sessions of the Assembly. Take the exchange on 29 April

1947 about the Fundamental Rights constitutional article that asserted the abolition of untouchability.

A participant said that he did not understand how untouchability could be abolished without

abolishing the very caste system: Untouchability is nothing but the symptom of the disease, namely,

the caste system. Of course, a symptom should be recognized in order to provide a correct diagnosis

of the disease. And here came the rub. One Assembly member said the article did not properly define

the offense it wanted to abolish: As it stands, the word untouchability is very vague. Another

member pointed out that the claim that untouchability in any form is an offence required a

definition: One magistrate will consider a particular thing to be untouchability, while another

magistrate may hold a different thing to be untouchability, with the result there will be no uniformity

on the part of the magistracy in dealing with offences. But the problem went beyond definitions:

Moreover, untouchability means different things in different areas. In Bengal, untouchability means

one thing, while in other provinces, it means an entirely different thing. Dr. S.C. Bannerjee of Bengal

explained the problem in some detail:

Mr. President, the word untouchability actually requires clarification. We have been

accustomed to this word for the last 25 years, still there is a lot of confusion as to what itconnotes. Sometimes it means merely taking a glass of water and sometimes it has been used

in the sense of admission of Harijans into temples, sometimes it meant inter-caste dinner,

sometimes inter-caste marriage. Mahatma Gandhi who is the main exponent of

untouchability, has used it in various ways and on different occasions with different

meanings. So when we are going to use the word untouchability, we should be very clear in

our mind as to what we really mean by it. What is the real implication of this word?

Bannerjees intervention points to an intruiging fact: On the one hand, the word untouchability

apparently had been used for only 25 years, so it must have been a newly introduced term that had no

obvious equivalent in Indian languages. On the other hand, after using it for 25 years, it was still

completely unclear what the word meant and which practices it referred to. Even the English term was

used in very different ways in different regions and provinces, it turned out. How could it then count

as a property to distinguish the community or community of communities called the Depressed

Classes or Untouchables?


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The problem of the obscurity of the term untouchable kept coming back in the debates. More

than one year later, on November 29th, 1948, a Muslim representative from West Bengal, Mr.

Naziruddin Ahmad, stated it as follows:

The word untouchability has no legal meaning, although politically we are all well aware of

it; but it may lead to a considerable amount of misunderstanding as in a legal expression. The

word untouchable can be applied to so many variety of things that we cannot leave it at that.

It may be that a man suffering from an epidemic or contagious disease is an untouchable; then

certain kinds of food are untouchable to Hindus and Muslims. According to certain ideas

women of other families are untouchables. Then according to Pandit Thakurdas Bhargava, a

wife below 15 would be untouchable to her loving husband on the ground that it would be

marital misbehaviour. I beg to submit, Sir, that the word untouchable is rather loose.

Ahmad tried to give the term a better shape, he said, by inserting that no one on account of his

religion or caste be regarded as untouchable. Untouchability on the ground of religion or caste is what

is prohibited. This leads to the next question: How do we recognize untouchability on the ground of

religion or caste and distinguish it from other forms of untouchability?

This was a vexing issue because untouchability had to count as the criterion that distinguishes

the Depressed Classes from the Caste Hindus. Among the many groups included in the Depressed

Classes, many of these practiced untouchability towards other groups also belonging to the

Depressed Classes. The so-called untouchability was practiced among and between these castes,

which seemed to consider each other as untouchables. Inevitably, this would also count as

untouchability on the ground of religion or caste. But how could this property then distinguish the

Untouchables from the Caste Hindus?

A typical rebuttal to such doubts suggested that originally untouchability had been practiced

by Caste Hindus towards the Untouchables and the latter just started imitating it later on. But this is

a red herring, since it already presupposes that we can recognize Untouchables and distinguish them

from Caste Hindus. In fact, the entire route leads to a vicious circle: There are all kinds of situations

where human beings seem to consider each other untouchable. Basically, the claim is the following: If

one human being refrains from touching or approaching another human being, this becomes caste-

based untouchability when the former belongs to the Caste Hindus, while the latter belongs to the

Untouchable Castes. And how can one recognize these Untouchable Castes? Well, they are the ones

that are subject to caste-based untouchability. This is like saying: When one person declares his love


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to another, it is true love only when that second person is lovable. And how do you recognize a lovable

person? Well, they are the persons that others feel true love for.

In the end, the general modus operandi of the Constituent Assembly was to paper over such

problems. No real need was felt to think about how it made sense to view the Scheduled Castes as a

minority community that needed special provisions and protection. By which characteristics could one

recognize groups belonging to this community or community of communities? This was not seen

as a serious cognitive question, but as something that could be solved by appointing a committee,

which would stipulate some ad hoc definition and then add a number of castes to an already existing

schedule. Yet, as we know, this did not solve the problem, since more and more new groups have

begun to claim that they should also count as Scheduled Castes.

In May 1949, in the end phases of the Constituent Assemblys work, Shri Mahavir Tyagi put

things in a sharp way: The term Scheduled Castes is a fiction. Factually there is no such thing as

Scheduled Castes. There are a variety of castes with different problem situations, he said: All their

names were collected from the various provinces and put into one category Scheduled Castes. In spite

of the category being a fiction it has been there for so many years. He asked: How is Dr. Ambedkar

a member of the Scheduled Castes? Is he illiterate? Is he ill-educated? Is he an untouchable? Is he

lacking in anything? There were many similar cases, he added: There are thousands of Brahmins and

Kshatriyas who are worse off than these friends belonging to the scheduled castes. So by the name of

Scheduled Caste, persons who are living a cheerful life, and a selected few of these castes get benefit.

This is no real representation. No caste ever gets benefit out of this reservation. It is the individual or

the family which gets benefited.

Its all a fiction, Tyagi repeated again and again. These remarks point to an important fact:

Scheduled Castes was a category created by legal decree, not even by the Constituent Assembly of

post-Independence India, but by the state apparatus of the British Raj. The Government of India Act of

1935 introduced the terminology, as it provided lists of groups for every province of British India in

schedules attached to the main texts of the act. In the Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order

of 1936, the Kings Excellent Majesty orderedthat the castes, races or tribes, or parts of or groups within

castes, races or tribes specified in Parts I to IX of the Schedule to this Order shall, in the Provinces to

which those Parts respectively relate, be deemed to be scheduled castes so far as regards members

thereof resident in the localities specified in relation to them respectively in those Parts of that

Schedule. In other words, King Edward VIII, Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and


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Ireland, ordered which people in Indian society were to become members of Scheduled Castes. This is

how the Scheduled Castes had come into being and not any other way.

Now, there are two options: either King Edwards order was a reflection of the factual structure

of Indian society that is, the list of castes in His schedules corresponded to an existing community,

category, or social grouping in Indian society; or this order had simply invented a community or

distinction between communities where there was none. If the first was the case, then the Scheduled

Castes Order of 1936 should be the result of research that proved the existence of such a division of

social groups or communities in Indian society. If the second is true, then the caste legislation of

contemporary India simply enforces a decree of the British King and his government that commanded that the Indian

people should be divided along certain lines a decree which in turn rests on conceptual and empirical quicksand.

Hence, it becomes all the more important to find out how the British government officials had come

to their distinction between Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes and how they had on that basis

drafted the Scheduled Castes lists.

2. The Colonial Classifications

In 1932, the British Prime Minister gave the instruction to the Indian Franchise Committee led by

Lord Lothian to find out the extent to which the depressed classes would be likely, through such

general extension of the franchise as you may recommend, to secure the right to vote in ordinary

electorates. The Committees inquiry into the general problem of extending the franchise was also

expected to produce facts which would facilitate the devising of a method of separate representation

for the depressed classes. In the chapter of its report that dealt with these instructions, the Committee

stated: The first problem which confronted us was to decide who the depressed classes are (Indian

Franchise Committee Report, 1932, pp. 112-3, 279).1

In 1916, the report recounted, the Government of India had already addressed a letter to local

Governments stating that some definition was required of the term depressed classes. The Indian

Legislative Council suggested that the expression depressed classes should include: (a) criminal and

wandering tribes; (b) aboriginal tribes; and (c) untouchables. In 1917, Sir Henry Sharp, Educational

1East India (Constitutional Reforms): Indian Franchise Committee, Vol. 1: Report of the Indian Franchise Committee 1932.

Presented by the Secretary of State for India to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, May, 1932. London: HisMajestys Stationery Office.


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Commissioner with the Government of India, prepared a list of the depressed classes, while pointing

out some problems in the use of the term:

The depressed classes form the unclean castes whose touch or even shadow is pollution. But

a wider significance is often attached to the expression, so that it includes communities which

though not absolutely outside the pale of caste, are backward and educationally poor and

despised and also certain classes of Muhammadans. Some have interpreted it as simply

educationally backward. The task of defining is made difficult by doubt as to where the lines

should be drawn and the elastic differences of such classes as dwell on the borderland of

respectability. Sometimes the whole community declares itself to be depressed with a view to reaping

special concessions of education or appointment. (p. 113, 279; italics added.)

The Committee members made no secret of the fact that the term depressed classes grouped together

widely variegated sets of people. However, it said: The grouping together of such diverse elements

for the administrative convenience of Government in dealing with questions relating to the social and

economic uplift of these people gave rise to no public criticism.

In 1919, the Southborough Franchise Commiteee divided the Hindu community into three

classes, Brahmins, non-Brahmins and others, and in the category of others, it included only the

untouchables. It adopted the test of untouchability to identify the depressed classes, while the

Statutory Commission defined this criterion as causes pollution by touch or by approach within a

certain distance. The Indian Central Committee also confined the term depressed classes to those

who are classed as untouchables. The Lothian Committee decided to follow the same route: If the

depressed classes are to be recognised as a distinct element of the population for political purposes,

it is necessary, so far as possible, to have a more precise classification of them. It suggested that the

term should not include primitive or aboriginal tribes, nor should it include those Hindus who are

only economically poor and in other ways backward but are not regarded as untouchables. For the

purpose of the present inquiry, its chairman had said, the term should be interpreted as meaning

untouchability, that is to say, pollution by touch or approach. The Committee members agreed that

this appears to be the nearest approach to a general formula that can be laid down to define the

depressed classes and using this test they would collect definite population figures of these classes

(pp. 113-4, 280-284).

This first series of remarks in the Lothian Committee report gives us a first look into the way

the British had dealt with the issue of identifying the Depressed Classes. On the one hand, they saw

the grouping together of these so-called classes as a matter of administrative convenience. They said that


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these classes were to be recognized as a distinct element of the population forpolitical purposes. That is

why a precise classification was needed. If such a grouping happens for administrative convenience

and political purposes only, it refers to a practical classification that should allow the colonial state to

deal with certain sets of the population and not to an empirically existing community. It is a

classification like many others for purely administrative purposes: all citizens who have a secondary

education degree or, say, the self-employed or people older than 65. On the other hand, however, this

appeared to shift when they used the term Depressed Classes only to refer to the untouchables. The

British saw these untouchables as a sub-section of the Hindus and did seem to suggest that these

constituted a distinct group or community in society.

Even in the second case, the question of identifying the untouchables remained. To draft the

lists of Depressed Classes, the Lothian Committee turned to the colonial governments census reports:

The actual classification of castes by the application of certain social criteria or tests can be undertaken

on detailed and scientific lines only during a census of the whole population, and we must therefore

turn to the census reports for guidance in this matter. The Committee took what they called two

generally accepted tests of untouchability from the 1911 Census Superintendents, who had been

instructed to enumerate castes and tribes classed as Hindus who do not conform to certain standards,

or are subject to certain disabilities. The tests that people who lived up to the following criteria should

be considered untouchables: (7) are denied access to the interior of ordinary Hindu temples, (8) causepollution, (a)by touch, (b)within a certain distance (p. 114, 285).

Turning to the census results was a dubious move, since their classification of depressed

classes had met with all kinds of difficulties. The 1921 Census Commissioner had prepared a list of

depressed classes, but this appeared to be rather arbitrary, since he had not laid down any definition

or criteria for the guidance of provincial superintendents. The Lothian Committee instead decided to

draw upon a note written by Dr. Hutton, the Census Commissioner of the 1931 census, who had

described his procedure. For this census, the Government of India had expressed its desire for

information conducive to a better knowledge of the backward and depressed classes and of the

problem involved in their present and future welfare. Therefore, the commissioner had given the

following instructions to the various Superintendents of Census Operations in India:

For this purpose it will be necessary to have a list of castes to be included in depressed classes

and all provinces are asked to frame a list applicable to the province. There are very great

difficulties in framing a list of this kind and there are insuperable difficulties in framing a list

of depressed classes which will be applicable to India as a whole. I have explained depressed


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castes as castes, contact with whom entails purification on the part of high caste Hindus. It is

not intended that the term should have any reference to occupation as such but to those castes

which by reason of their traditional position in Hindu society are denied access to temples for

instance, or have to use separate wells or are not allowed to sit inside a school house but have

to remain outside or which suffer similar social disabilities.

Then followed a remark that would turn up again and again, namely that these disabilities vary in

different parts of India. Still, the Commissioner was optimistic: At the same time the castes which

belong to this class are generally known and can in most parts of India be listed for a definite area,

though perhaps the lists for India as a whole will not coincide (pp. 114-5). Yet, the problems would

come back whenever colonial officials had to prepare the lists of these groups in particular provinces:

No specific definition of depressed castes was framed and no more precise instructions were

issued to the Superintendents of Census Operations because it was realised that conditions

varied so much from province to province and from district to district, even within some

provinces that it would be unwise to tie down the Superintendents of Census Operations with

too meticulous instructions. The general method of proceeding prescribed was that of local

enquiry into what castes were held to be depressed and why, and the framing of a list

accordingly.

While reviewing the different regions of India, the Committee said that there was consensus in some

regions on the distinction between the depressed and other classes of the Hindu community, but

admitted that there were huge difficulties in other regions. In the United Provinces, for instance, there

was tremendous disagreement as to which groups should be considered depressed (pp. 116-8).

Different officials applied different criteria and the resulting lists were also very different.

Going by the actual statements made by the officials, even the so-called agreement on the

question of identifying the depressed classes in certain provinces was dubious. In a Minute on the

depressed classes dated 12th March 1932, Mr. M.B. Mullick, a Member of the Bengal Provincial

Franchise Committee, started by giving indications of Hindu topography. The term Hindu, he

wrote, does not indicate any homogenous race and the various castes coming under the term have

hardly anything in common between one and another, except that they all profess the Hindu religion

and are governed by Hindu laws:

It is therefore impossible to try to find out any community of interest between these various

castes. But even with various differences, there are certain castes which can be grouped


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together in consideration of their enjoyment of political and social privileges in common with

one another. For instance, the three topmost castes under the Hindu topography, namely, the

Brahmin, the Vaidya, and the Kayastha, practically go together; and though there is no

intermarriage between the three castes and even amongst the several sub-sects of each of

them, they enjoy all other privileges, social and political, together in that they have the

common social servants, the priest and the barber, to serve them, and in matters of education

and state patronage they have jointly got the largest share in between themselves. (p. 251)

These three he called Caste-Hindus and he said: It is almost an admitted fact that the said three

castes have so far determined the hierarchy of various Hindu castes on account of their privileged

position and that they have always exercise a very great influence upon the ruling authorities of the

country. Note how an apparent certainty about the identification of these Caste-Hindus goes hand

in hand with language use that expresses uncertainty and doubt: there are certain castes which can be

grouped together and it is almostan admitted fact that these have determined the hierarchy.

Things got worse when Mullick moved to his next question: Depressed classesWho they are

(p. 252, 3). There has been no attempt made so far, he said, to define the term depressed class.

I am also obliged to concede that it is not quite possibleto give a cut and dry definition of the term.

There cannot be a correct definition, Mullick concluded. Still, one could refer to the above classification

of Caste-Hindus to see that looking at the events as have happened certain indications can surely

be given of the castes who would come under the depressed classes. Then followed the typical

indications: it concerned castes from whose hands the Caste Hindus could not accept water or whose

presence in the kitchen would be considered polluting, castes not allowed into any public temple,

castes not allowed to enter dining rooms or hotels run by the Caste Hindus, etc. The terms

untouchability and unapproachability had often been used to refer to these indications. But the use

of these terms had caused some confusion as being the only defining factors of the depressed

classes. It is not the same consideration, Mullick said, that would make a particular caste a depressed

class in all the different parts of India; the factors differ in different provinces. What then was the

common property that made these castes into depressed classes? Mullick again:

But the common indication remains, namely, that it is the external expression of an internal

feeling of odium by which certain sections of the community are precluded from having

anything in common with others in social matters and as a result of which, they are also

debarred from the enjoyment of their political rights. (pp. 252-3)


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This one common factor of internal odium is expressed in a variety of practices, different in different

parts of India, which all lead to show that these castes are refused enjoyment of their political rights.

In spite of his problem of distinguishing Depressed Classes according to any property or set of

properties by which they can be recognized, Mullick then goes on to say which castes should be

counted in for Bengal. Of course, internal odium that expresses itself externally is not a very clear

property to identify a class of people and neither is the refusal of political rights. In the colonial India

of the 1930s, many if not most groups of people were subject to both such internal odium and the

refusal of political rights by the British rulers. Yet, these groups were clearly not all classified as

depressed classes.

What is striking is that the demand for some kind of empirical criteria came only whenever

colonial institutions had to practically decide which groups in which region of India should count as

Depressed Classes or Scheduled Castes. But the existence of such a distinct set of castes appeared to

be considered self-evident and not something that needed to be established before framing the relevant

lists and laws. More accurately, the British colonial bodies continuously wavered between two stances:

on the one hand, they considered the depressed classes a grouping purely for administrative

purposes and therefore one needed some kind of indicators to include or exclude groups of people

from this classification. Here, the problem of finding the common empirical properties that defined

these groups kept coming back again and again. On the other hand, the British shared somepresupposition that there was a distinct class of people among the Hindus who had been victims of

injustice and oppression for centuries. And here, there seemed to be a certainty that such a class

existed, which did not require any empirical evidence or further proof.

When it came back to the question of enfranchisement and its recommendation that there

should be separate electorates for the depressed classes, the Lothian Committee gave expression to

both stances in one sentence: Though there is wide difference of opinion in some provinces regarding

the castes which should be classified as depressed, there is no dispute that the depressed classes

constitute a substantial portion of the population of India as a whole. They made it amply clear that

they did not mean by this that the largest part of the population was very poor. No: As untouchability

is a social or religious and not an economic test a considerable number of the depressed classes will

find their way on to the electoral roll, for in some provinces numbers of them are both prosperous and

well educated (p. 124, 301-302). The Depressed Classes now fell together with the Untouchables,

a group defined by the social or religious criterion of untouchability.


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Since everything now hinged on the claims about a group called the Untouchables and the

criterion of untouchability, it is of supreme importance to find out the empirical and conceptual

foundations for postulating the existence of such a group, category or community in the structures of

Indian society. Once again, we need to travel some decades further back in time to find out how this

distinction between castes had originated.

3. The Invention of the Untouchables

From the 1930s, the so-called division of the Hindus between touchables and untouchables was

presented as though it was an age-old split made by Hinduism and its followers. The same goes for

the idea that untouchability was the common factor that explained certain kinds of behaviour and

actions in Indian society and which divided one set of castes from another set of castes. Indian political

leaders also wrote and talked in this way. The most important debate on the issue of caste and

untouchability was that between Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi. Generally, this is viewed

as a clash between a social reformer and untouchable leader, who wanted to rid Indian society of the

Hindu caste system, and a Hindu apologist who defended the varna system but rejected untouchability

as an unfortunate blot on Hinduism.

However, if we look beyond this disagreement, we find fundamental agreement in the basic

ideas about caste shared by Ambedkar and Gandhi. Once again, one of these ideas was that the caste

system divided the Hindus into two distinct classes: Caste Hindus and untouchables in the words

of Ambedkar; Savarnas and Harijans, in the terminology preferred by Gandhi. Both to Ambedkar

and Gandhi, the claim that Hinduism had discriminated between these two sets of castes seemed a

self-evident truth. Its self-evidence was constituted by the fact that the Hindus had instituted a practice

and property called untouchability. According to Ambedkar, Hinduism as a religion was responsible

for this, since it regarded the caste system as a divinely sanctioned institution and prescribed caste

discrimination as a religious obligation. According to Gandhi, the Hindu varna system had its virtue,

but treating certain people as untouchables was a corruption that now needed to be removed. This had

to happen through the conversion or transformation of the Savarna Hindus, he said.

Was the distinction between Caste Hindus and Untouchables really an age-old division within

Hinduism? No, it was not. In fact, as Simon Charsley argues in his interesting article Untouchable:

What is in a Name (1996), the Untouchables and Untouchability had been invented by the British


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colonial administration in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It had emerged in the course

of the entire caste census exercise.2To understand this, we need to take one more step back.

In the course of the nineteenth century, European orientalists had developed the idea that the

structure of Indian society was determined by a fourfold caste hierarchy, which was sanctioned by the

Hindu religion. Evidence for this they claimed to have found in texts like the Purushukta hymn from

the Rig Veda and the Maanavadharmashastra. However, British colonial officials soon discovered that,

empirically, the structure of Indian society did (and does) not reflect any such fourfold caste hierarchy.

In fact, they came to this conclusion when they launched a caste census aimed at classifying the many

j!tisalong the lines of the var"a hierarchy. Some tried to place eachj!tiinto one of the var"acategories;

others stipulated a larger number of categories for the classification of castes; yet others devised

complex schemes that arranged groups and sub-groups in terms of some principle of classification of

castes. But, as these British administrators often admitted, this excercise merely mirrored the

classificatory scheme they decided to use and not the structures of Indian society.3For most j!tis, it

turned out to be impossible to attribute a stable location in the hierarchy. Even worse, it was often

impossible to find out to what caste Indians belonged. When asked the question What is your

caste?, officials complained, some Hindus would mention one of the four var"as, others would say

they belonged to some endogamous sub-caste, yet others would mention some caste-title or add

vague and indefinite entries. In short, the Hindus seemed to be ignorant of their own caste system.4

In this dubious context of the caste census, the idea that there was a distinct class of Hindus

called the Untouchables crystallized. Charsley reveals some of the historical steps in this process. Sir

Herbert Risley became Census commissioner for the 1901 Census in India. His procedure was to

send to every Census Commissioner, in each province, presidency, princely state, and so forth, a

standard scheme, inviting them to set up committees of native gentlemen to consider its local

applicability and to propose modifications as required. As a part of his standard scheme, he included

2Simon Charsley, Untouchable: What is in a Name?, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 2, no.

1 (1996), pp. 1-23.

3For a striking example, see John C. NESFIELD,Brief View of the Caste System of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh,

together with an examination of the names and figures shown in the census report, 1882, Allahabad 1885, which the author

presented as an attempt to classify on a functional basis all the main castes of the United Provinces, and to

explain their gradations of rank and the process of their formation.

4See Sir Edward A.H. BLUNT, The Caste System of North India, with special reference to the United Provinces of Agra and

Oudh, Madras, Oxford University Press 1931, pp. 8-9; Nicholas B. DIRKS, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Makingof Modern India, Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002, pp. 49, 202-212; J. Strachey,India, pp. 328-330.


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four Sanskrit-named Shudra categories, of which the last was Asprishya Shudra, glossed as castes

whose touch is so impure as to pollute even Ganges water (p. 1). As had always happened in the caste

censuses, Risleys general scheme failed. The committees and commissioners came up with a wide

variety of schemes and often fell back to greater or lesser extent on alphabetical lists. Risleys

category of notto-be touched Shudra did not prove to be useful. His major criterion of Brahmins

willingness to take water turned out to be irrelevant in many regions. Yet, he took the two reports

from Rajasthan as a (very thin) basis to create a unified classification including a Class VII: Castes

untouchable. As Charsley puts it: From this unpropitious start, representing as it did more of a

rebuff than a successful initiative, the career of a key term in modern India was launched (pp. 2-3).

The idea also existed among the British that the Indian caste system consisted of the four

varnas and a fifth section. But this alternative scheme had also not worked to empirically classify the

jatis in the Southern parts of India. Yet the 1871 Census had still adopted the four-plus-one version

of the varnas and accepted without question that it represented the divisions of the Hindu

community. The fifth was labelled out-castes or the Pariah, or Out-Caste, Tribes. The term Pariah

was now used to describe that great division of the people, spoken of by themselves as the fifth

caste (Cornish 1874, cited in Charsley, p. 5). Thus, twentieth-century official colonial discourse used

varna as a scheme of classification but with contention as to whether it was to be in the four or four-

plus-one form. In the first decades of the twentieth century, this scheme was then elaborated withthe Untouchables as the name that referred to the fifth group or to a sub-section of the Shudras.

We need not go further into the career of the terms Untouchables and Untouchability to

see what has happened: these were classificatory terms that had been introduced by a particular

colonial official. Yet, they must have made minimal sense to this official and (at least some of) his

colleagues. The sense and significance of this classification depended on the experiential and

conceptual framework that formed the background to the reasoning of the British and other

Europeans. Of course, the question now is why and how this framework impelled them to create this

particular type of distinction between caste groups.

Whatever may be the answer, the terms Untouchables and Untouchability had no

empirically and conceptually sound reference to a community or grouping existing in Indian society.

Still, the terms came to be used as though they pointed to common empirical properties that could be

used to distinguish a particular community (or set of communities) in this society, which deserved

certain privileges because of its depressed status. This newly invented scheme to make sense of Indian

society had five distinctive features, Charsley points out: it established an all-India standard; it


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subsumed individual castes; it dichotomized society; it gave priority to one particular form of

disadvantage; and it characterized the disadvantaged negatively, as victims only (p. 9). This is the

scheme that constituted the caste laws of twentieth-century India, from the caste reservation system

to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Atrocities Act. It is the same scheme that gave rise to

the Ambedkarite Movement of recent times.

4. Conclusion

What we can now conclude is that the idea that there were two distinct communities or communities

of communities in Indian society, namely Caste Hindus and Depressed Classes (or Untouchables or

Scheduled Castes or Harijans or Dalits) did not correspond to any empirically retrievable structure in

this society. There never were coherent common properties that allowed people to recognize these as

two distinct communities across India. Thus, no research or investigation could ever show that these

two existed as communities in the social world of India. As Charsley points out: There is no question

of individualjaatisbeing submerged into a single Untouchable caste, any more than there is of a new

unified identity of caste Hindu. Only studies which, for the sake of political correctness, merge jaatis

under a single label, either Scheduled Caste, Harijan or Dalit, fail to show this (p. 17).

We cannot fully unearth the conceptual foundations of the opposition between Caste Hindus

and Depressed Classes without dissecting a centuries-old European Orientalist account about India.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, European scholars, missionaries and colonial officials

had developed a standard account about Hinduism and its caste system. By the early twentieth

century, this account had achieved the status of a factual description of Indian culture and society. Yet,

if we look at the conceptual building blocks that form the core of this account, these cannot be

understood without the Christian-theological framework that guided the Europeans in their reasoning

about India. For centuries, it had been obvious to the Christian Europeans that Hinduism was a false

religion and that the caste system was the evil social structure it had instituted. Against the

background of this theological framework, they looked for the victims of the corrupt Hindu religion,

the lowest of the low, who would obviously want to escape from its grips. These victims they claimed

to have found in a group they alternately called the Untouchables, the outcastes, the Depressed

Classes or later the Scheduled Castes.


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In other words, the British (and larger Western) cultural experience of Indian society

crystallized within a background framework constituted by Protestant-Christian theological ideas

about false religion, which had been secularized and thus gradually shaped the common sense of

European scholars and laymen. Within this framework, the British invented a social distinction

between two groups or communities of castes, which was indeed present in their experiential world

but not in Indian society. Through their caste policies and censuses, they spread the idea that Hindu

society was characterized by the opposition between Caste Hindus and Untouchables or Depressed

Classes. Thus, in spite of the recurring discovery that this imaginary distinction did not correspond to

the empirical structure of Indian society, it could not but have its effects in a society under colonial

rule. The crucial step came in the Government of India Act of 1935 and its caste schedules. Eventually,

the Government of India (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1936 ordered that the castes, races or tribes,

or parts of or groups within castes, races or tribes specified in Parts I to IX of the Schedule to this

Order shall, in the Provinces to which those Parts respectively relate, be deemed to be scheduled castes

so far as regards members thereof resident in the localities specified in relation to them respectively

in those Parts of that Schedule.

Strikingly, the Indian leaders and intellectuals of the postcolonial period not only swallowed

the colonial account of Hinduism and the caste system hook, line, and sinker, but also accepted the

social divisions it created among the people of India. It is as though they felt compelled to transformthe imaginary distinctions of the British colonial account into existing social structures in India. The

Kings Excellent Majesty, Edward VIII, had ordered how the people of India should be divided into

Scheduled Castes and others. After 1947, the Indian political and intellectual elites aimed to enforce

this royal decree in post-Independence India and tried to rebuild Indian society along the lines of the

colonial model. This is the mission that the caste legislation and the Ambedkarite movement of

contemporary India are continuing with great fervour unto this day.

caste hindus vs. scheduled castes about

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