Caste In The Colonial Era
How The British Capitalised On Caste
1860–1920
British occupation in India began in approximately 1757 under the East India Company, with the British Crown officially taking over a century later in 1858. While the United States reflects settler colonialism, British Raj in India was exploitation colonialism.
The British Crown had a single goal — exploiting the people and resources of the Indian subcontinent to the maximum extent for profit.
As Prof. Sanjoy Chakravorty explains, “the colonisers invented or constructed Indian social identities using categories of convenience to serve the British Indian government’s own interests — primarily to create a single society with a common law that could be easily governed”. Thus, the caste system was reinvented and legitimised to be a central mechanism of British administration.
Prof. Chakrovorty discusses how “a very large, complex and regionally diverse system of faiths and social identities was simplified to a degree that probably has no parallel in world history, entirely new categories and hierarchies were created, incompatible or mismatched parts were stuffed together, new boundaries were created, and flexible boundaries hardened.”
Colonial administrator and outspoken believer of race science, Herbert Hope Risley, measured the ratio of the width of a nose to its height in order to divide Indians into multiple castes. This data was released as a part of the 1901 census. Simultaneously, between 1860 and 1920, the British granted administrative jobs and senior appointments only to Christians and certain uppercastes, especially brahmins.
Regardless of whether the caste system was extensive, minimal or non-existent in an area, it was instilled as a uniform measure across India to advance colonial motives.
1920–1947
Ongoing anti-caste agitations led to the 1932 Poona Pact. It instituted positive discrimination policies for those categorised as depressed classes, including reserving 18% of the seats in the general electorate and allocating separate provincial funds for education.
These anti-caste struggles were led by social reformers such as Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya — a Dalit, Shudra and Brahmin. While Gandhi has been projected as being anti-caste, he constantly clashed with the ideas of these reformers, especially Ambedkar.
By the time the British were done with India, the caste system was integral to the socioeconomic functioning of the newly formed nation. While India became independent of the British Crown on August 15, 1947, it in no way became a free country for all its people.
The British took advantage of the superiority felt by uppercastes and reinforced it to serve at pleasure of the Crown. While there was a rich history of anti-caste struggles in the preceding millennia, these stories had to be erased for the system to meet its new purpose.
