Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century Caste System

2017 ◽  
pp. 201-208
Author(s):  
William L. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Caste System

scholarly journals Colonial State as ‘New Manu’? Explorations in Education Policies in Relation to Dalit and Low-Caste Education in the Nineteenth-Century India

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-107
Author(s):  
Parimala V. Rao
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Lower Castes ◽  
Priestly Class ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Implementation Stage

The colonial state always asserted itself as a harbinger of ‘modernity’ and emphasised its role in India as a ‘civilising mission’. The 1811 Educational Minute of Governor General Minto, declared Hindus and Muslims of India as inherently corrupt and insisted on the British role as ‘civilising’. Conventionally the terms ‘modern’ and ‘civilising mission’ have been considered as offensive, and scholars have critiqued them as Eurocentric and racist. However, these terms have not been analysed at the implementation stage in India. The colonial government used these terms to actually strengthen the structures of the traditional hierarchy. When Minto declared that the education policy was to civilise Hindus and Muslims of India, it was through the ‘the dread of their religion in this world and the next’ and through strengthening and empowering the priestly class of Hindus and Muslims (Sharp, 1920, pp. 19–21). The colonial administration regarded this kind of education as the corner stone of its education policy. This article looks at the education policies of the colonial state towards lower castes in the nineteenth-century India and how these policies upheld and reinforced the caste system.

Upper-Caste Conversions (1500–1900)

2020 ◽  
pp. 517-549
Author(s):  
David W. Kling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Pandita Ramabai

After tracing the early Christian presence in India and discussing the nature of the caste system, this chapter profiles individuals—well-known upper-caste nineteenth-century converts from Hinduism. As in China, the missionary presence in India was a necessary but not sufficient factor in Christianity’s spread. Missionaries initiated the first conversions, but within a generation or two, Indian Christians became the primary instruments for the spread of the gospel. Communication never flowed in one direction, from missionary to Indians. Increasingly, Indians converted on their own terms and adapted Christianity to meet their own particular concerns and to indigenize their faith by separating Christ from the trappings of Western, colonial Christianity. Converts discussed include Krishna Mohan Banerjea, Baba Padmanjee, Krishna Pillai, Narayan Vaman Tilak, Pandita Ramabai, and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay.

The Roots and Varieties of Political Conservatism in India

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Jaffrelot
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Political Conservatism

A country that has not gone through a revolution, India has been the crucible of several reform movements as early as the nineteenth century. But none of them intended to break with the past. They even sometimes prepared the ground for revivalism. In parallel, Hindu traditionalism developed in reaction to social and cultural change. In the twentieth century, these schools of thought found political expressions in the Congress party where they inhibited the fights against the caste system and land reform. These trends continued after 1947, in reaction to Nehruvian views, till conservative Congressmen created the Swatantra party and then the Congress (O).

Hindu Kingship and the Origin of Community: Religion, State and Society in Kerala, 1750–1850

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Bayly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Ghats ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
General Sense ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Malabar Coast ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Western Ghats

Until recently the Malayalam-speaking region of southern India—once known as the Malabar coast and now the state of Kerala—was portrayed as a bastion of orthodox high Hinduism. The region's caste system was famous for its intricacy and supposed rigidity; its temples were rich, numerous and heavily patronized by Malayali rulers; and there was a general sense of the area as a picturesque backwater hidden away behind the western Ghats, untouched by the turbulent forces at work elsewhere in south Indian society. According to this view Kerala was a static society, ‘pure’ in culture and religious tradition, and ripe for drastic modernization once British suzerainty was established during the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Caste, Reading-habits and the Incomplete Project of Indian Democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Subro Saha
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
The Many

Emphasizing on the functioning of caste as embodiment, this paper attempts to show how the internalization of dominant caste-based framework(s) shapes our habits of thinking which include epistemological and pedagogical orientations as well. The paper briefly traces how such frameworks have settled through historical shifts and shaped dominant imagination of the nation’ that has appropriated caste-system as its essence. To show such making of a dominant framework of caste and Hindu-nation, the paper briefly turns towards nineteenth century Bengal, both as a reminder of the many forms of dwelling within vernacular communities and how such multiplicities came to be reduced within a hegemonic framework of majoritarian Hindu- nation. Such making, the paper submits, shapes a doubleness of the decolonial project of nation-making which finds its paradoxical settlement within the postcolonial democratic framework through the embodiment of the majoritarian (casteist) framework of Hindu-nation. The paper, therefore, examines how such problems of embodiment become an infrastructural problem that haunt one’s everyday imagination, and therefore calls for creation of infrastructures that can enable a training of imagination to unlearn such embodied frameworks of segregation. As one such small onto- epistemological possibility, the paper examines the role of aesthetic education and its suspending potentials.

The Tribals and Outcastes Hit Back

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-102
Author(s):  
Biswamoy Pati
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Survival Strategies

This chapter focuses on the survival strategies adopted by tribal folk, as well as the shifts in their identity in course of the nineteenth century. Tribals and outcastes coped with the severe pressures unleashed upon them by the colonial agrarian interventions by retreating further into the hills. Fluidities in caste identities resulted in affluent sections amongst the tribal folk getting incorporated into the caste system as Khandayats/Kshatriyas. At the same time, this process saw the poorer sections among the tribals becoming further impoverished and increasingly classified as ‘criminal tribes’ or castes. Other forms of resistance included critiquing and questioning inequalities through movements such as the Mahima movement. This period was also marked by several tribal uprisings among various tribal groups in the hilly western interiors, including during the 1857 rebellion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document