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Caste, Social Change, and the Social Scientist: A Note on the Ahistorical Approach to Indian Social History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Lucy Carroll
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The disciplinary dissection of Indian studies has divided Indologists into diverse academic unions, each with its own in-group jargon, research interests, and intellectual traditions. It has also created discontinuities in the units of analysis selected by scholars of different disciplines, which create in turn discontinuities between contemporary and historical studies of Indian society. Thus historians have generally not focused on caste or caste associations, while a central referent of anthropologists has been precisely the caste (jati) unit. Partly this reflects a difference in levels of analysis, the historian taking a more encompassing perspective while the anthropologist in the course of his fieldwork concentrates on the grass-roots social world of village India. Partly it reflects the bias of the historical discipline in general toward formal institutions and. toward political, as opposed to social, change.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , November 1975 , pp. 63 - 84
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1975

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References

This essay is based on research conducted in India, 1971–72, under a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. I also wish to thank Professor Kenneth Ballhatchet, John Harrison, and Barbara Flynn, who read and commented helpfully on an earlier draft of this essay. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for the deficiencies of style and argument that remain, and also for the views expressed.

1 The work of Karen Leonard and Ronald Inden represent refreshing exceptions to this general statement.

2 Srinivas, M. N., Caste in Modern India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1962)Google Scholar. Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

Rowe, William L., “The New Cauhans: A Caste Mobility Movement in North India” (hereafter abbreviated “TNC”), in Silverberg, J., ed., Social/Mobility in the Caste System in India (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), pp. 66–77Google Scholar. “Mobility in the Nineteenth Century Caste System” (hereafter abbreviated “MNCCS”), in Singer, M. and Cohn, B., eds., Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 201–207Google Scholar.

3 “TNC,” p. 67.

4 “MNCCS,” p. 202 (italics altered).

5 “TNC,” p. 71.

6 “TNC,” pp. 71–72.

7 Arya Samajists and members of other heterodox sects were extremely important in the Kayastha movement from the 1870s on. For a discussion of religious heterodoxy and the Kayastha movement— and many other points touched upon in this essay— see my forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, and my forthcoming essay “Swami Shivagun Chand: Kayastha Conference Organizer,” Indian Economic and Social History Review. See also, Hardgrave, Robert L. Jr., The Nadars of Tamilnad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 43–94Google Scholar, for a discussion of the importance of Christian Nadars in the “sanskritization” of the Tinnevelly Nadars.

Much of Rowe's “paradox” follows from categorizing the Arya Samaj (in “TNC”) as a “western” as opposed to a “sanskritic” agency, posing these as mutually exclusive in his approach to social change: The Noniyas of the present young generation “now look more frequently to a model of Western or 'modern' values. Members of the Jaunpur City Cauhan Sabha, for example, are also active in the Arya Samaj, a socioreligious organization which opposes the ritual and caste orthodoxy which is so basic to the Cauhan movement” (”TNC,” p. 75). (Whether or not this is, in fact, a new development would appear from Rowe's own data to be an open question: the Jaunpur Noniya activists seem to have been involved with the Arya Samaj since at least 1936.)

The difficulty in categorizing the Arya Samaj— distinguished for its advocacy of Sanskrit learning, purification of Hindu observances by rejection of Muslim-derived social and religious practices, and militant Hindu fundamentalism based on the Vedas, but also for its advocacy of education, (including for females), widow marriage, and modification of the caste system to allow recognition of conversion and individual merit)—as “sanskritic” or “western” in a simplistic either/or approach to complex social reality raises serious questions con- cerning the validity of the categories and of the dichotomy they forcibly impose upon the material. This difficulty and the resultant ambiguity is manifest in Rowe's work: although obviously categorizing the Arya Samaj as “western” in “TNC,” he describes it in another article as a movement which “stressed a return to the principles of the Vedic age [and] rejected all Western ideas” (“The Marriage Network and Structural Change in a North Indian Community,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, XVI, 1960, p. 308Google Scholar fn.).

8 M. Singer, “Preface,” Structure and Change …, p. x.

9 My assumption here was based on Rowe's articles on the Noniya/Chauhans: “TNC “and “The Marriage Network,” pp. 299–311. Rowe does not mention sub-castes, and the implication that emerges is that they do not exist among the Noniyas. It is clear, however, that the Noniya “community” is far from integrated: “In both urban and rural settings, a wide range of rank may be observed. Some rural Noniya communities are almost entirely landless, … In both the rural and urban setting interaction between the relatively small group who have ‘passed’ as Cauhans and the mass of those who have been largely unsuccessful in establishing that status, is very infrequent, uncomfortable and difficult” (“TNC,” p. 68). “A tendency toward hypergamy is noticeable but is limited to a consideration of economic and social factors” (“The Marriage Network,” p. 300).

Rev. M. A. Sherring, in a work published in 1872, found at least five endogamous sub-castes among the Noniyas of the United Provinces. It is particularly of interest, in the context of Rowe's work, to remark that two of these Noniya sub-castes bear the name “Bach Gotra Chauhan,” and that these two identically named divisions are distinguished one from the other by the fact that one wears the sacred thread (apparently not a recent innovation—even then!), while the other does not (Tribes and Castes, Vol. I [London: Trubner and Co., 1872], pp. 347–50Google Scholar). Sherring's comments raise some very important questions concerning Rowe's work on the Noniya/Chauhans: Firstly, precisely whom did Rowe study? How are his Noniyas related to the other Noniya sub-divisions, and particularly to the Bach Gotra Chauhans? How did the thread-wearing Bach Gotra Chauhans react to the assumption of the sacred thread by another Noniya group?

Were they supportive? Indifferent? Or were they angered to see their prestigious name and the symbol of their superior status among Noniyas usurped by pretenders? If, indeed, the endogamous sub-caste system among the Noniyas had broken down (which would appear unlikely) by the time of Rowe's study, this in itself would have been a change of considerable importance to the kind of analysis he has attempted. Indiscriminate use of the inclusive “caste” category has obscured both important groups that should have been studied, and important questions that should have been asked. Secondly, given the fact that there was among the Noniyas a prestigious group calling itself “Bach Gotra Chauhan” and wearing the sacred thread, is it necessary to look further for the “model” the status-aspiring group(s) emulated?

10 “MNCCS,” p. 204.

11 The term is Rowe's. Because I dissent both from the terminology itself and from his interpretation of the history of the Kayastha institutions in reference to which he employs the term, I have throughout this essay placed the phrase in quotation marks.

12 “MNCCS,” p. 205.

13 Koh-i-Nur (Lahore), 25 Oct, 1 Nov, 1873; in Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers Published in the Punjab, North-Western Provinces, Oudh and Central Provinces (Hereafter abbreviated Selections NWP or, from 1902, Selections UP), 1873, p. 652. In a previous article I incorrectly dated the founding of the KS as 1872 (“The Kayastha Samachar: From a Caste to a National Newspaper,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, X, [Sept 1973], p. 281Google Scholar).

14 The Lucknow correspondent of the Lahore Tribune (12 Jan 1887), in noticing Kali Prasad's death, referred to the KP “which had its first locale in Lucknow and which some years ago was removed to and is now flourishing in Allahabad.”

15 Kayastha (Agra) (hereafter abbreviated K(A)), II, Jan-Feb 1897, p. 33. Murli Dhar, The Kayastha Pathshala, Allahabad. Its Origin, Objects and Progress. Revised by Dr. Anant Prasad (Allahabad: Kayastha Pathsahala, 1912), p. 14.

16 K(h), II, Jan-Feb 1897, p. 34. Murli Dhar, The Kayastha Pathshala, p. 15.

17 Hindu Prakash (Amritsar), 14 Aug 1874; in Selections NWP, 1874, p. 338.

18 Vakil—an India-trained legal practitioner entitled to plead before the High Court. By contrast, a barrister had been called to the bar in England.

Allahabadi—an individual whose major connections and interests were concentrated in the Allahabad district, who was involved in the personal network of Chaudhari Mahadev Prasad Singh, and who supported the Chaudhari and his faction (the Allahabadi faction) in the internecine struggles among the KP Trustees. The non-Allahabadis—largely residents outside Allahabad—differed with the Allahabad is in regard to such questions as the priority that should be given to development of the KP into a college, and expansion of boarding facilities as opposed to expansion of school facilities. The non-Allahabad is tended to be geographically mobile men, and to be connected with broad social and political movements (e.g., the Indian National Congress). Although some prominent non-Allahabad is resided in Allahabad, they were interlopers who had come to Allahabad for educational, professional, etc. reasons (and often left again for the same reasons); and they remained largely outside the localized, personalized style of patronage and control within the Allahabad Kayastha biradari.

19 K(A), II, Jan-Feb 1897, pp. 33–34; Murli Dhar, The Kayastha Pathshala, pp. 2, 14–15.

20 KS, III, Jan-Feb 1901, p. 65.

21 Hindustan Review and Kayastha Samachar (hereafter abbreviated HRKS), VIII, July-Aug 1903, p. 158.

22 1 have compiled a month-by-month record of the publication of the KS from Selections NWP and UP, 1873–1903. This information should be regarded as correcting my previous statement that the Urdu periodical appeared “somewhat irregularly” (“The Kayastha Samachar,” p. 281). Unfortunately, less than half a dozen issues of the KS of the pre-1899 period are extant.

23 “The Kayastha Samachar,” pp. 280–92.

24 Abkari, July 1898, p. 97.

25 Rowe states that, in the 1899 issues of the KS, “the elements of (1) Sanskritization, (2) Westernization, and (3) national political integration are present as styles for emulation” (“MNCCS,” p. 204). I am unable to accept this statement; indeed, it would seem quite unlikely that such “elements” would find a place in an educational journal edited by a Brahmo Samaji Brahman who had specifically excluded political, religious, and “socio-religious” topics from the publication (KS, I.July 1899, pp. 14–15). Part of the confusion may stem from the apparent non-availability in London of any issues of the KS prior to March 1901.

I am equally unable to accept Rowe's comment concerning “articles expressing pious hopes of attaining Kshatriya status for Kayasthas” appearing “[in] almost every issue” (“MNCCS,” p. 205). Perhaps the reference is to the serialization of the Kayastha Ethnology, which appeared in 1900–1901. The Kayastha Ethnology was a pamphlet written by Kali Prasad in the 1870s; it should not be surprising that the English journal subsidized and published by the trust established by Kali Prasad should publish (in “The Kayastha World” section) the English translation of this pamphlet when a revised English edition became available—and, incidentally, at a time when the classification scheme of the 1901 Census gave the caste-varna question an immediate relevance. The serialization, however, was never completed; only six short installments appeared (KS, II, Dec 1900, pp. 30–31. III, March 1901, pp. 166–69; April 1901, pp. 255–58; June 1901, pp. 498–503. IV, July 1901, pp. 94–97; Sept-Oct 1901, pp. 326–28). It seems a bit extreme to characterize the journal over a five-year period on the basis of six very short items, which appeared in only six of the fifty issues of the journal published in the 1899–1904 period, and which cannot possibly be taken as representative of the contents of the journal during this period.

26 KS, II, Sept 1900, inside front cover.

27 Hindustan Review (hereafter abbreviated HR), LIII, July 1929, p. 1. In a personal statement in the first issue of the reorganized journal, Sinha articulated his proposed editorial policy and journalistic format as follows: “Besides all news of interest to the Kayastha Community which will be published in each number under the heading of ‘The Kayastha World,’ … I propose publishing in each issue various articles on all current topics of the day, from the pen of competent and distinguished writers from all parts of the country. I further propose publishing exhaustive reviews of all important English publications of the day, including new legal text books. These reviews will, it is hoped, be found a new and interesting feature of the present publication. They will be written by critics, especially qualified to deal with the topics, forming the subject matter of the books under review; and a glance at the names of our reviewers in the present issue will satisfy our readers on that point. For the benefit of students, an article on some purely literary topic will be included in each issue, for instance, that on Tennyson in the present number, from the pen of my able and esteemed friend, Babu Satish Chandra Banerji, M.A., LL.B. (Prem Chand Roy Chand Scholar) and who I am glad to announce has promised to give me material assistance in conducting this Journal. Besides these articles and reviews, there will be in each issue short paragraphs on Literary, Scientific, Educational and Legal Topics. A column headed ‘Correspondence, Notes and Queries,’ will deal with all current controversies, and will attempt to supply information on all questions printed in the previous number. Attempt will be made to meet the growing demand amongst the reading public, by reproducing choice extracts and selections from English Periodical Literature. A column of gossip of men, measures and books, under the heading of ‘The Editor's Armchair,’ will complete each number…. I hope 1 shall receive in the discharge of my onerous duties such assistance and sympathy from members of the Kayastha Community, in particular, and the entire Educated Community in general, as will strengthen my hands to realize my idea of publishing a first class English Monthly Magazin e and Review in Upper India” (KS, II, July-Aug 1900, pp. 3–4).

28 “It would be observed that the greatest latitude is to be allowed in the range of subjects to be chosen. From discussions on current social, political and legal topics to abstract discussions on principles and theories, from studies on poets and prose-writers to dissertations on the latest developments of Art and Science, all contributions woul d be welcome, so long as they are couched in sober and temperate language” (“Prospectus,” KS, II, Sept 1900, inside front cover). In contrast, Chatterjee, upon assumin g editorship of the English KS in 1899, had announced: “We solicit contributions in English on all subjects except current politics, religion, theology and such as are of a socio-religious character” (KS, I July 1899, p. 15).

29 KS, VI, Aug 1902, p. 213.

30 Selections UP, 1902, pp. 5–6, II–18, 176–78, 180–81, 183–85, 194–96, 202–5, 220–22. The extraction from the KS decreased in 1903, when the Indian People—an English weekly—was started in Allahabad by Sinha and Nagendra Nath Gupta. The Indian People was similar in tone and content t o the (post-June 1900) KS/HR and was heavily extracted by the Government Reporter.

31 “MNCCS,” p. 204.

32 KS, II, Dec 1900, pp. 29–30.

33 KS, V, Jan 1902, pp. III ff.

34 The other North Indian organs invited were: Behar Times, Bankipur; Advocate, Lucknow; Agra Akhbar, Agra; Bharat Jiwan, Benares; Oudh Akhbar, Lucknow; Tribune, Lahore; Observer, Lahore; Civil and Military News, Ludhiana; and Victoria Paper, Sialkot (Advocate, 28 Aug 1902, in Selections UP, 1902, p. 532).

35 “In appreciation of this acknowledgment by the Government, the Trustees … agreed to my proposal to confer upon it the appropriate and comprehensive designation of the Hindustan Review” (S. Sinha, HR, LIII, July 1929, p. 2; LXXXII, March 1948, p. 239). At the same time the KP authorities undertook to publish an Urdu periodical under the old name, Kayastha Samachar. This journal, the first issue of which appeared in March 1903, was a monthly edited by the Persian professor at the KP, Munshi Sital Sahay (HRKS, VII, Jan 1903, pp. 98–99; May 1903, p. 499).

36 Quoted in HRKS, IX, Feb 1904, p. 202.

37 KS, III, June 1901, p. 501; HRKS, X, July 1904, pp. 100–1; Aug 1904, pp. 214–15.

38 HRKS, VII, Jan 1903, pp. 98–99.

39 See, for instance, the letter from Munshi Chhail Behari Lai, headmaster of the district school in Fatehpur (KS, II, Nov 1900, p. 25, and quoted in my earlier essay, “The Kayastha Samachar,” pp. 287–88). “Quoted in HRKS, VIII, Sept 1903, p. 275.

41 Ibid.

42 HRKS, X, July 1904, p. 110.

43 “Conservative” in regard to: (1) the question of the identification of Kayastha institutions (i.e., the KP and the KS) with Congress politics, and (2) the expansion and development of the KP and the administration of the KP Trust.

44 HRKS, XI, April-June 1905, p. 408. Ownership-transfer took effect 1 July 1905.

45 HR, XII, July 1905, p. 96.

46 KS, II, Oct 1900, p. 27. Commenting on the state of education among the Kayasthas in his introduction to the Triennial Report of the Education Committee, Kayastha Sadar Sabha, Hind, 1900–1903, Sinha wrote: “As a matter of fact, the present low level of intellectual progress in the Kayastha community in Upper India [,] the fact of its not having hitherto produced a single first-rate man in any walk of life, a man of towering personality who could be said to have influenced for the better, by his conduct and activities, the men of his generation, is a sad commentary on the boasted educational progress of the Kayasthas and it bespeaks, to my mind, an amount of backwardness and degradation which is wholly inconsistent with the plea so persistently put forward on behalf of the Kayasthas being an educated community….

Viewed in this light, the prospect before the cormmunity is dark and gloomy, unrelieved by any streaks of silver lining—unless it be the one solitary ray represented by the Kayastha Pathshala” (Quoted in HR, XII, Oct-Nov 1905, p. 390).

47 KS, III, April 1901, p. 251.

48 KS, May 1901, p. 389.

49 “Presidential Address,” in HR, LII, April 1929, p. 60 (italics added). “Except on two occasions, it ha s not been my privilege to be associated with the work of this Conference and it, therefore, came upon me as rather an agreeable surprise when I was informed by the Secretary of your Reception Committee that almost all the local committees … had recorded their votes for me [as President of the session]” (Ibid., p. 53).

50 For biographical dat a on Sinha, see his serialized memoirs published in the HR, July 1946 to Sept 1948; and Sinha, Bagishwar Prasad, Sachchidananda Sinha (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1969)Google Scholar. For Sinha and the Bihar movement, see Chaudhary, V. C. P., The Creation of Modern Bihar (Patna: Yatin Press, 1964)Google Scholar. I have given a brief summary of Sinha's activities in “The Kayastha Samachar,” pp. 290–92.

51 In noticing the draft prospectus of yet another Kayastha journal in December 1900, Sinha cautioned the would-be editor that “he should first feel his ground quite secure, and be prepared to carry on the journal—if not for ever, at least for a very long time—with his own unaided pecuniary resources, before starting the journal, and counting upon the patriotism of the community. There are already so many Kayastha journals in the field, that there may be one too many.” (KS, II, Dec 1900, p. 29).

Many of the Kayastha journals appear to have been spokesmen for specific factions within the Kayastha movement. The Kayastha Mitra (Lahore), for example, was the journal of the faction opposed to Swami Shivagun Chand, Lakshmi Narayan, and their supporters. In referring to the Kayastha Hitkari and the Kayastha Pratap, the Kayastha (Agra) observed in 1896: “It is a matter of regret that an unwholesome spirit of partisanship and rivalry has overtaken our Urdu national papers, and surely it cannot be a happy sign of the times if three or four editors cannot pull on amicably, and cannot distinguish clearly between what is national and what is personal” (K(A), II, Aug 1896, p. 7).

52 Despite its journalistic and literary merits, the journal was never commercially viable. After it lost the subsidy of the KP Trust, it was supported by Sinha's own money. It survived as an independent journal because Sinha was independently wealthy (his wife was sole heir to her grandfather's modest fortune). In 1906 Sinha wrote that “the loss on keeping up the review during the last twelve months has been rather heavy” (HR, XIV, July 1906, p. 95). Journalism was Sinha's “first love.” [H]e had spent very large sums in conducting and maintaining several journals at his own cost. Journalism had been his hobby; it had not been a trade with him, yielding the producer's surplus. On the contrary, he spent from his own pocket on practising journalism very much more than any professional journalist could ever expect to earn in his lifetime” (Amrita Bazar Patrika, quoted in Bagishwar Prasad Sinha, Sachchidananda Sinha, p. 52.) Among the journalistic enterprises in which Sinha was involved, besides the KS/HR, were the Indian People and the Leader (Allahabad); the Behar Times, the Beharee, the Indian Nation, and the Searchlight (Patna).

83 Lloyd, and Rudolph, Susanne, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 125Google Scholar.

54 Rowe did not claim to have reviewed these volumes, and I am not criticizing him for failing to peruse them (very few of the Urdu issues are extant anyway). He did make certain assumptions concerning the KC of the nineteenth century without any evidence; the Rudolphs adopt the assumptions and inadvertently create the “evidence” by crediting Rowe with “reviewing” things he neither “reviewed” nor claimed to have seen. This is an example of what I have above referred to as an unproductive, self-perpetuating cycle that has legitimated and reinforced the assumptions of the ahistorical perspective.

55 This view regarding nineteenth-century caste associations is extremely popular. Especially as there has been virtually no historical work done on caste associations, it poses an interesting historiographical question as to why this belief has attained such a wide currency. I would suggest that the answer is to be found in a historical works (1) which project views and explanations of contemporary Indian social change back into the historical past, in an attempt to substantiate by pseudo-history the author's interpretation of these contemporary social events, and (2) which consider the census controversies of 1901 to be a sufficient indication as to what caste associations were about in the nineteenth century. It is not insignificant that considerable space in Rowe's “MNCCS” is devoted to the census of 1901, and that this subject forms not the conclusion of the essay but the taking-off point.

The reforms advocated by caste associations, Srinivas states, “were generally aimed at Sanskritizing the style of life and ritual, and occasionally at reducing the expenditure on weddings and funerals” (Social Change …, p. 92). At least as far as North Indian nineteenth-century caste organizations are concerned, the generalization would be more accurate were the priorities reversed: they were basically concerned with reduction of the expenses incurred on marriage and other ceremonial occasions. Professor Lala Ruchiram, for example, reporting to the National Social Conference in 1899 on social reform in the Punjab, commented: “The programme of reform work followed by the various Biradari associations in the Punjab is very nearly the same…. Curtailing expenditure on festive and other ceremonial occasions.—This has been the main item of reform taken up by the Biradari as- sociations” (Report of the Thirteenth National Social Conference, 1899 [Poona: 1900]Google Scholar, Appendix C, p. 36). During the second half of the nineteenth century, the provincial governments of North India—also of Bombay and Bengal—were actively encouraging voluntary action by caste groups to deal with the problem of marriage extravagance. The government saw a direct relationship between extravagant expenditure on marriages and female infanticide; middle-class Indians saw a direct relationship between reduction of marriage expenditure and the resources wherewith to finance the education of their sons, Significantly, in the nineteenth-century North Indian caste associations, emphasis on reduction of marriage and other ceremonial expenditure was paralleled by an emphasis on education. I would contend that these two issues—marriage expenditure and education—constitute the basic and central themes of these organizations.

56 An English translation of Kali Prasad's will may be found in the K(A), II, Jan-Feb 1897, pp. 38–40; and Murli Dhar, The Kayastha Pathshala, pp. 16–18.

57 K(A), II, Jan-Feb 1897, p. 45.

58 HR, LII, April 1929, p. 54.

59 K(A), I, April 1896, pp. 7–8. The Kayastha was recognized as an official organ by the Kayastha Sadar Sabha, Hind, (the executive body of the KC), and subsidized by it to the amount of approximately Rs. 100 a year. See also: Lahore Tribune, 24 Dec 1890; and A Short Account of the Aims, Objects, Achievements and Proceedings of the Kayastha Conference (Allahabad: Reception Committee, Muttra Conference, 1893), pp. 3–16Google Scholar.

60 See my forthcoming essays: “Origins of the Kayastha Temperance Movement,” Indian Economic and Social History Review; and “The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform,” Modern Asian Studies.

61 Nor do these terms meaningfully define lines of faction within other North Indian caste movements. Manoharlal Zutshi, in reporting to the National Social Conference in 1900 on the history and progress of reform among the Kashmiri Pandits, wrote: “Among the Lucknow Pandits, the name most revered was that of Mr. Shiva Narayan who published a monthly Magazine in Urdu, Muraslai' [sic] in 1872. In this journal social questions were discussed, and it became the organ of the advanced party. Through its efforts, reforms in curtailing marriage expenses were carried out and child marriage was stopped among the Pandits…. In 1881, a Kashmiri club was started at Lucknow by Pt. Prana Nath who is now Principal of the College at Gwalior. The members of this club took pledges to abstain from gambling, intemperance, Nautch parties, smoking and Holi obscenities. Of course these young reformers had their orthodox opponents who' regarded the reforms with dislike and raised the cry of religion' in danger. The Mursalai party of reform who joined this club … maintained the fight and the opposition was exasperated greatly when the reformers succeeded in encouraging Pt. Bhisan Narayan Dar to visit England for the purpose of study” (Report of the Fourteenth National Social Conference, 1900 [Poona, 1903], Appendix A, pp. 64–65Google Scholar). Which side shall be deemed “sanskritic”: the anti-drink, -smoking, -nautch, and -obscenity, pro-sea voyage party? Or the anti-puritan, anti-sea voyage party?

Srinivas appears to equate “a puritanical style of life” with “sanskritization” (Social Change …, pp. 25–26). I think a very strong case can be made for the argument that much of the puritanism of nineteenth-century caste and religious movements derived more from “western” sources than from traditionally Hindu ones. The reference was often explicitly made, especially in the earlier period when reformers were less shy about praising the West and condemning the moral degradation of Indians. For example: “The Aftab-i-Panjab (Lahore) of the 14th May [1884] says that a statement is going the round of the Indian newspapers to the effect that an English woman at home has been lately sentenced to three months' imprisonment for composing an indecent song which she intended to sing at a theatre. In this country there is a general custom among native women of indulging in the most obscene songs at their houses and also in the public streets and thorough fares on marriage occasions. But it is to be regretted that neither their husbands and parents protest against this shameful practice, nor do the Government officers take any notice of the matter. Some native associations have made it a point to endeavour to check the evil, and their efforts have not been altogether in vain; but the evil is so universal that nothing short of the interference of the magistrates under the Penal Code will put a stop to it. Surely the use of indecent language in public is an offence under the Code” (Selections, NWP, 1884, p. 520).

See also the memorial submitted to the Viceroy as late as 1900, by the Hindu Social Reform Association of Madras: “The humble memorial of the Hindu Social Reform Association of Madras most Respectfully Sheweth:—(1) That there exists in the Indian community a class of women commonly known as nautch-girls…. (5) That a strong feelings springing up among the more thoughtful of the educated classes of this country against the prevalence of this practice of employing nautch-girls, as tending to lower the moral tone of society and as inconsistent with social propriety and those ideas of self-respect which are coming to be adopted under the influence of modern education” (quoted in the Pioneer, 7 Jan 1901).

62 KA(A), I, April 1896, p. 7.

63 K(A), II, Jan-Feb 1897, p. 45.

64 K(A), Sept-Oct 1896, p. 14.

65 See, for example, the remarks of Hargovind Dayal, K(A), Jan-Feb 1897, p. 45; and the speeches of Iswari Dayal (brother of Hargovind Dayal) and Sri Ram at a Lucknow meeting, Dec 1899, as reported in the KS, I, Jan 1900, pp. 17–18.

66 KS, II, Sept 1900, p. 36; Oct 1900, pp. 4, 7, 40.

67 KS, II, Nov 1900, p. 22.

68 KS, II, July-Aug 1900, p. 2; HRKS, VII, June 1903, p. 615.

69 “MNCCS,” p. 205. Rudolph and Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition, p. 125.

70 “Caste Conferences and National Progress,” KS, III, June 1901, p. 434.

71 “Moral Education of Indians,” HR, XII, Oct-Nov 1905, pp. 365–66.

72 “MNCCS,” p. 204.

73 I have cited some examples in “The Kayastha Samachar,” pp. 283–84. Articles by Salahuddin Khuda Buksh and Shah Din, appearing in the KS in early 1902, were, for instance, widely reproduced by other organs of the Indian press at the time (KS, V, May-June 1902, p. 560).

74 A correspondent wrote to Sinha in September 1905, expressing his appreciation of Sinha's retention of “The Kayastha World” section. “It has been very kind of you to retain a few pages of the Review for news, notes and comments relating to the Kayastha community. Without a doubt the Review has got nothing to do, now with the Kayastha community as a body, or its institutions, but considering the past connection of the Review and the Kayastha Pathshala and the fact that the Review was first the Kayastba Samacbar and then the Hindustan Review, the step you have taken, of allowing a few pages of it to go for the Kayastha World, is very advisable, and I beg to congratulate you for the same” (HR, XII, Sept 1905, p. 292). In Sinha's independent (post-June 1905) journal, however, “The Kayastha World” section was filled largely with his press notices and the texts of his speeches, as well as with reproductions of appreciative comments on the HR and reviews of its articles appearing in various organs of the Indian press. Sinha's speeches, it may be noted, dealt with Bihar politics, Indian national politics, etc., without a single mention of the Kayasthas. The only reason for their inclusion in “The Kayastha World” was that their author was both a Kayastha and the editor of the journal.

75 It as not unusual for earlier Conferences to pass innocuous resolutions, such as that of the 1906 Dumraon session: “That this Conference urges upon the community the necessity of observing Dwijdkarrni rites” (HR, XV, Jan 1907, p. 102). C. H. Heimsath cites this resolution to document his state- ment that “A major purpose of the Kayastha Conference and the various sabhas associated with it was to gain public acceptance of all Kayasthas as twice-born” (Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964], p. 281Google Scholar). No attempt was made by the 1906 Conference to define dwijdharmi rites; and Fateh Bahadur Nigam—Secretary of the Kayastha Sadar Sabha, Hind, and author of the report of the Conference appearing in the HR—dismissed the resolution, in the report itself, with the remark that it “is as meaningless as it is superfluous.”

The same Conference passed two resolutions on sea voyage: one congratulating Panna Lai and Mahesh Charan Sinha on their academic achievements abroad and thanking “those gentlemen of the community who, by sending their relatives to England, have given effect to the wishes of the Kayastha Conference”; and the other establishing a fund for sending one student a year to Japan for technical education (HR, XV, Jan 1907, pp. 102, 103). Accepting Heimsath's line of argument, education abroad was obviously twice as important in the Kayastha movement as dwijdharmi rites. Both the dwijdharmi resolution and the first of the sea voyage resolutions were moved from the Chair; the President of the session was Baldeo Prasad, an active Arya Samajist from Bareilly and President of no less than three KC sessions (1890, 1906, and 1913).

76 KS, Jun e 1932, pp. 13–18. (This KS is a publication of the KP Trust, the lineal descendant of the previous publications of this name maintained by the Trust since its establishment in 1874.)

77 “An Account of the Bangadeshiy a Kayastha Sabha,” KS, Nov 1932, pp. 7–9.

78 The Bengali and Hindustani Kayastha movements were completely separate until 1912, when the (Hindustani) KC formally recognized the Bangadeshiya Sabha. In acknowledgement of the enlarged scope of the Conference, due to the inclusion of the Bengalis, the name was changed at that time to the All-India Kayastha Conference.

78 Caste histories should also be viewed in terms of their function in identifying, defining, and creating a “community.” While cultural reforms produced a common cultural present, the caste histories added a further dimension to the “community” by evoking a common historical past. The tendency to regard caste histories as obviously spurious and generally comical bespeaks not only a disregard of the role of history in defining communities in the West—e.g., the role of Black History and Women's History in contemporary social movements in the United States—but also of the very important facts that the Indians who wrote caste histories and submitted memorial s to census superintendents were responding to attempts by non-Indian bureaucrats, ethnographers, and missionaries t o define the Indian community to which these respective authors and petitioners belonged. Census petitions and caste histories referred to these “western” authorities almost as often as they cited more traditional sources, and either attempted to refute their arguments or cited them in support of their own. Since there was not always a unanimity of opinion among Western commentators as to the historical and racial origins of a given caste group, the question was not as simply self-evident as it is sometimes assumed.

80 Many caste organizations were essentially one-man shows. Note Hardgrave's comments on the founding of the Nadar Mahajana Sangam in 1910 by Rao Bahadur T. Rattinasami Nadar: “Rattinasami was motivated in part by his own political ambition. He had requested the government to nominate him to the Legislative Council as a representative of the Nadar community, just as a Nattukottai Chetti had been nominated as a representative of his caste. Rat-tinasami was reportedly informed by the government that the Chetti councilman was a representative of a Chetti association and that there was no comparable organization among Nadars.” The message was clear: Rattinasami set about at once to organize himself a constituency of the type specified by the government. He called together “a number of leaders within the Nadar community” and met the expenses of their board and lodging from his own pocket. An association was expediently formed, under the presidency of Rattinasami's uncle; not surprisingly, one of the first resolutions called upon the government to appoint “a representative of the Nadar community” to the Legislative Council. With Rattinasami's death a year later, the Sangam collapsed, not to be revived until 1917—at a time when important changes in the distribution of political power were being negotiated (Hardgrave, The Nadars of Tamilnad, pp. 130–31).

81 There is obviously nothing “cyclic” about such a “development”; but neither does there appear to be anything “cyclic” about Rowe's proposed “development cycle.”

82 Cletus J. Bishop, “Sachchidananda Sinha and the Making of Modern Bihar,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Virginia, August 1972 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, January 1973, number 72–33, 223).