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by BASIL FERNANDO
Reply to Andre Beteille article Race
and Caste published in The Hindu on March 10, 2001
Andre Beteille’s article “Race and
Caste”, published in The Hindu on March 10,2001, concludes
with the following classic sentence, which exposes the entire
style of the author: “Treating caste as a form of race is
politically mischievous; what is worse, it is scientifically
nonsensical.” How does the anthropologist who quotes
from many books distinguish “scientifically nonsensical”
from “nonsensical”? What does he add to the
meaning of nonsensical by adding ‘scientifically’
before it?
The whole article bears that same style. The
gist of the argument is that there is no such thing as race,
anthropologically speaking, so why should there be a world
conference about it? Secondly, as there is no such thing as
race, how can caste be called race? The questions, couched in
anthropological terms, are in fact metaphysical. In this sense
there may be nothing call Brahmins anthropologically speaking.
Does that deny the existence of Brahmins? Like all social
constructs, race too has no anthropological meaning but does have
a political meaning. Mr. Beteille’s speaks of
Anthropology as the only science that exists - what about
Political Science? After all, even his article is not an
essay on anthropology but rather a political piece, trying to
attack the world conference in general and the inclusion of
discussion on Dalits (untouchables), using some references to
anthropology in support of his opinion.
Beteille, who has spent many years
conducting research on Castes in areas where this form of
discrimination is expressed sharply, cannot deny its existence.
“The practice of untouchability is indeed
reprehensible and must be condemned by one and all”.
The justification for this reprehensible practice is birth into a
particular group of people who are subjected to a particular from
of treatment. Classifications due to birth are not
necessarily biological: that people born to one family should be
treated in one way, and those born to another should be treated a
different way is a social classification. Politically,
classification based on birth is racial. That is how caste
has no other explanation than race.
The World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is about
elimination of discrimination on the basis of race. It is a
world debate on social practices of racism in their manifold
forms and on the means by which to eliminate these
practices. It is a discussion of the member states of the
United Nations and deliberations are directed not merely to
condemn but to eliminate these reprehensible practices. The
discussions are therefore political and legal.
What Andre Beteille suffers from is not any
scientific confusion but another social practice known as
hypocrisy. His position is not about the classification of
caste, but about preventing a discussion on caste. The most
important rule in maintaining any form of discrimination or
repression is to disallow speech about it. In India, this
process of silencing has gone so deep that those who protested
were exposed to the deepest forms of humiliation such as parading
them naked, throwing human excreta and similar practices. The
practices were so inhuman that the Indian government enacted
legislation prohibiting such acts by making them criminal
offences. Now a World Debate about the issue will be a
significant break in that silence. Naturally the mud
slinging about the conference will use scientific language.
Brahmins in the past defended their positions on the basis of
Vedas, the books that they raised to the status of a sacred book.
Their method of interpretation was not different to the “Scientific”
explanations of Beteille.
Andre Beteille’s thought on Caste has
always reflected his upper caste bias. In his earlier
writing he speaks of caste as ‘status’, like forma of
status in other societies. This is very much like the
Brahmin explanation of caste as ‘functions’ and ‘division
of labour’. Ambedkar replied to this argument long ago by
saying that caste is a division of labourers. It is not
the first time that refined language has been used to defend and
protect the evil practice of Caste. Whatever the language,
such defenses are nothing but simple nonsense.
Posted on 2001-07-16
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