Struggle Against Caste-Based Exploitation

At a Glance

• What it is Efforts to end caste discrimination and untouchability
• Helping factors Equality before law, land market, secular education, urbanisation
• Leaders Phule, Narayana Guru, Naicker, Ambedkar, Gandhi
• Outcome Constitution of free India abolished untouchability
• Exam link UPSC Prelims, Modern History: Socio-Religious Reform Movements: General Features

Where Does It Fit?

This is the fifth and last topic of the category on the general features of socio-religious reform. The previous topic dealt with women, the first point of the reform agenda. This topic takes up the second, caste. The next category begins with the individual reform movements and their leaders. Previous topic: Reform Movements and the Position of Women.

What Was the Caste System?

The later-Vedic conception of a four-fold division of Hindu society was further subdivided into numerous sub-castes through racial admixture, geographical expansion and the diversification of crafts, which created new vocations. The concept of chaturvarnashrama dictated that a person’s caste determined status and relative purity. It determined who could get education or own land, which profession to follow, with whom to dine or marry. Caste decided a person’s social loyalties even before birth, and regulated dress, food, residence, sources of drinking and irrigation water, and entry into temples.

The worst hit were the untouchables, called scheduled castes or dalits later. The disabilities imposed on them were humiliating, inhuman and based on the principle of inequality by birth. The social conditions are also covered in Factors Giving Rise to the Desire for Reform.

How Did British Rule Weaken Caste?

British rule, perhaps without intention, created conditions that undermined caste consciousness to an extent. Some measures had negative effects in one way but positive in another.

What Did the Reform Movements Do?

From the mid-nineteenth century, numerous organisations and individuals, including the Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophists and the Social Conference, worked to spread education among the untouchables and to remove restrictions on their entering temples or using ponds and tanks. Many of them defended the chaturvarna system but criticised untouchability. The reformers attacked the rigid hereditary basis of caste distinctions and the law of karma, which formed the religio-philosophic defence of the caste institution. They called on people to work for betterment in the real world, not for salvation after death.

The Arya Samaj, while crusading against the disintegration of Hindu society into myriad sub-castes, aimed at rebuilding it on the original four-fold division and upholding the right of even the lowest castes to study the scriptures. See Dayananda Saraswati and the Arya Samaj and Temple Entry Movement and the Indian Social Conference.

What Was the Role of the National Movement and Gandhi?

The national movement took inspiration from the principles of liberty and equality against the forces that divided society. National leaders and organisations opposed caste privilege and fought for equal civic rights and the free development of the individual. Caste divisions were diluted, though in a limited manner, by mass participation in demonstrations, meetings and satyagraha. After 1937 the Congress governments in various provinces did useful work for the depressed classes; free education for Harijans was introduced in some provinces. The rulers of Travancore, Indore and Devas opened all state temples by proclamation.

Gandhi always aimed at eradicating untouchability root and branch, on grounds of humanism and reason. He argued that the shastras did not sanction untouchability and, even if they did, they should be ignored, since truth cannot be confined to the pages of a book. In 1932 he founded the All India Harijan Sangh.

How Did the Lower Castes Organise Themselves?

Phule’s work is in Satyashodhak Samaj and Jyotirao Phule, and the southern movements are in SNDP Movement, Vokkaliga Sangha, Justice Movement and Self-Respect Movement. The struggle of the depressed classes led to the provision of special representation for them in the Government of India Act, 1935.

What Was the Mahad Satyagraha?

Dr Ambedkar led the Mahad Satyagraha in March 1927 to challenge the regressive customs of caste Hindus. He stressed removing ideas of high and low and inculcating self-elevation through self-help, self-respect and self-knowledge. He led a procession of some 2,500 untouchables through the town of Mahad to the Chawdar tank, a public water source from which untouchables were not allowed to draw water. Ambedkar took water from the tank and drank it, and caste Hindus protested in large numbers. In December 1927 he and his colleagues burnt the Manusmriti at the same place as a gesture of getting rid of inequalities. In 1924 he had established the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha to highlight the grievances of the dalits before the government, with the motto Educate, Agitate and Organise.

Why Could the Struggle Not Succeed Under British Rule?

The struggle against caste discrimination could not succeed during British rule. The foreign government had limits: it could not afford to provoke the orthodox sections by radical measures. Besides, no social uplift was possible without economic and political uplift, which could be realised only under a free India’s government.

The Constitution of free India makes equality and non-discrimination on grounds of caste imperative. It abolishes untouchability and declares the enforcement of any disability arising from it unlawful. It forbids any restriction on access to wells, tanks, bathing ghats, hotels, cinemas, clubs and similar places. One of the Directive Principles directs the State to promote the people’s welfare by securing a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, informs all national institutions.

As an analytical point, the topic shows three routes to the same goal: indirect change through colonial economy and law, moral appeals by reformers and Gandhi, and the self-organisation of the lower castes. The third was the most radical, since it demanded rights rather than reform from above.

Why Is This Topic Important?

• Leaders and movements Phule, Narayana Guru, Naicker and Ambedkar are asked in many formats
• Dates Mahad 1927, Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha 1924, Harijan Sangh 1932, GoI Act 1935
• Mains theme Caste and the national movement, and the limits of colonial reform

What Came Next?

The next category covers the individual reform movements, beginning with Raja Rammohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj. Next topic: Raja Rammohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj.

Key People and Terms

• Chaturvarnashrama The four-fold division of society and life stages
• Untouchables The lowest groups, later called scheduled castes or dalits
• Harijan Sangh The organisation Gandhi founded in 1932
• Mahad Satyagraha Ambedkar’s 1927 action to draw water from the Chawdar tank
• Self-Respect Movement The 1920s non-Brahmin movement under E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker
• Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha Ambedkar’s 1924 body for the welfare of the excluded

Exam Corner

Mains Angle

Questions ask for the role of reformers and the state against caste. These points add depth.

• Unintended effects Colonial law and economy weakened caste links
• Self-assertion Lower castes demanded rights and entry to public places
• Limits The foreign government could not act radically