The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.8

c16.8

This had another unfortunate consequence, namely, the notion of Indian immobilism and stagnation. Was not caste a religion-based and therefore unchangeable institution and was not the village perennial, lasting where nothing else lasts? It was precisely this quality of supposedly unchanging stability that had recommended caste and village to the bureaucracy. The obstinate “tradition” of caste and village was then no tradition at all, but a consequence of the modern state, which needed immutable basic entities for its own regulating purposes. Paradoxically, whenever the carefully devised construct ran aground on the realities of Indian society, which kept blurring, overflowing, and generally subverting the neat dividing lines in true Schweikian manner, the resulting confusion tended to be blamed on the benighted traditionality of caste and village attitudes. The dichotomy of state and society implied that leadership for change, development, and the millennium devolved on the state, which had precisely for this purpose developed its unchanging system of categories, institutions, and regulations.