The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.1

c16.1

Who says India says caste, or so it seems. The first problem is, of course, what precisely one is saying when invoking caste and, second, whether this will give a sufficient basis for analyzing Indian society. If one considers that caste purports to an exhaustive ordering of Indian society in exclusive groups, the answer to the latter would indeed seem to be affirmative. If one further considers that caste should account for both the socioeconomic aspects of a society, such as division of labor, and the religious or ideological ones, it may seem superfluous to try and look elsewhere. Caste, then, in the eyes of the observer, is the hallmark of Indian society. However, this has not always been the case. Although particular features, especially restrictions regarding commensality, connubium, and means of subsistence, did not fail to draw the somewhat puzzled attention of foreign observers, the Portuguese word *caste* for a long time kept its general, nontechnical meaning, remaining interchangeable with words like "tribe," "race," or "nation."¹ It was only in the nineteenth century that it acquired its exclusive and specific meaning to the point where it even could be considered by some as an Indian word with a (spurious) Indian derivation.² It was only then that caste began to loom large, until it became in our century a shorthand expression for Indian society at large: Indian society is caste.