Purity in Re-making :Sanskritisation of the Orientalists’ Caste among Low Caste Villagers in West Bengal, India

Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate how the Oriental construction of India has been remade, rather than challenged by the lower caste and class groups who are often excluded from the Orientalists’ depiction. Many scholars who employ postcolonial view argue that the Orientalists’ attempt to unify Indian culture, though diverse in nature, into a monolithic culture provides an unrealistic portrayal of India. One of the products of this portrayal is the depiction of ‘India’ as a caste-based society and caste becomes a fundamental symbol for India. Louis Dumont (1911-1998), a French anthropologist, claimed that Indian caste is fundamentally hierarchical and it is guided by the notion of purity and pollution. His view on Hindu caste has been heavily criticised.  Later scholars disagreed with him arguing that there are many factors that form the Hindu caste system and Dumont’s view on caste is not based on reality of India. Drawing on the process of Sanskritisation, which demonstrates how dominant values and culture are reproduced by the lower caste and class groups in order to uplift their social status, this paper argues that Dumont’s notion of Hindu caste and therefore the Oriental tropes are not always invalid. In fact, the Oriental construction of India has been remade, even if in an incomplete form, among the lower caste villagers who are not included in the Oriental depiction. Therefore, a well-grounded ethnographic study on purity and pollution practiced among lower caste villagers in West Bengal, India, will be used to demonstrate that the social value prescribed for the high caste are also practiced among the lower caste and class people. This consequently suggests that the Oriental portrayal of Hindu caste is not merely an imagination of the West. Instead, it relates to the reality of Hindu lives in rural villages. The process of Sanskritisation also entails that the Dalit and lower caste groups’s reaction to the upper caste hegemony is not only done in the form of resistance but also acceptance.