IX - Caste and Purity: A Study in the Language of the Dharma Literature

Summary

With this volume on the theme of tradition, pluralism, and identity, we celebrate the life-long achievements of Professor T. N. Madan both as scholar extraordinaire and wonderful human being, a man who is as secure in his own identity when he is talking with a villager in Kashmir as when he is addressing a scholarly audience in Texas. The Indian tradition down the centuries, however, has managed pluralism primarily within the context of interlocking group identities, the most basic of which is caste. And the caste system, according to the currently prevalent view, is based on purity, each caste being located on a hierarchical gradation of purity. The higher the caste the greater the degree of purity.

This thesis was laid out most boldly and most compellingly by Louis Dumont in his seminal work Homo Hierarchicus first published in 1966. Purity, according to Dumont, is the basis of hierarchy in traditional India and is, therefore, the ideological principle behind the caste system. Quigley (1993: 1), in his critique of the Dumontian thesis, acknowledges that the prevalent view among both Hindus and outside observers considers castes to be “hierarchically ranked on a purity-pollution scale”. Madan (1989: 365) himself states that “according to traditional caste ideology, which is obviously the brain-child of Brahmins, the key to the rank order lies in the notion of ritual purity.” Dumont's thesis has not gone unchallenged.