to buy milk. People were sitting and talking about the fighting the day before. So I stopped to hear what they were saying.
Were they Hindus?
No, they were Muslims. I heard them say, “We'll fight.” I said, “No, why is it necessary to quarrel? It's better to compromise. Local people, the matabbar, and the chairman will decide it” They said, “Don't talk to us. Go and do your work.”
Then I saw that in the Namasudra area, at some distance, there was another group sitting together. I thought, “It will not stop; there will be another fight.” So I hurried to my house.
Just as I reached my house, I could hear the fight begin. The two groups were running after each other with knives and other weapons. But we were neutral, so we stayed at home. From a distance we observed the fight. One side ran at the other, and when they had a chance, they ran at the other side.
All this time Mr. Ghosh had been speaking in an even tone, while the roomful of people listened politely. Basantibala, thoroughly upstaged, slipped out to arrange another round of refreshments, since our visit was clearly taking on major proportions.
Castes, Fixed and Mobile
As he described how the fight escalated and the sides arranged themselves for combat, Mr. Ghosh introduced a significant distinction: “Then I saw that in the Namasudra area, at some distance, there was another group sitting together.” This was the first time he had mentioned that the Hindus involved were Namasudras. They were “at some distance,” and Mr. Ghosh hurried to distance himself even further: “I thought, ‘It will not stop; there will be another fight/ So I hurried to my house.”
As a metaphor for relations between high—and low-caste Hindus, Mr. Ghosh's description was perfect. He both identified with the warriors as Hindus and at the same time distinguished himself decisively: “[W]e were neutral, so we stayed at home. From a distance we observed the fight.” We in this case clearly did not mean Hindu but caste Hindu.
Mr. Ghosh was delineating distinctions of caste, class, and culture so complex they intertwine like columbines climbing an ancient wall. He and the man with the cow-ravished plant were and were not of the same group. Caste is easy to deplore, difficult to understand. Its complexities are legendary. Nehru repeated a popular conception of caste when he likened it to the medieval trade guilds of Europe.2 But to imagine that caste is simply a hierarchy of occupations is soon to become bewildered by modern-day exceptions. Indeed, exception was probably the rule even historically. To describe caste by economic function is to fail to describe much that is important about it. Caste is a rich mixture of ideology, ritual, highly internalized group identity and aversion, and practical community association.3
Of all that might be said about caste, three qualities are especially important to the Panipur story. First of all, caste is a paradox. It describes crystal-clear distinctions, and also a strong generic unity. At one and the same time it defines social distance and religious association. Almost everything about daily life signifies distinctions of caste identity: names (most surnames are caste identifiers); adornment (Brahmin men, for instance, wear a thread around their chests; certain painted marks on faces, or bracelets, or styles of draping clothing connote caste membership); food habits (what people eat and with whom); protocols of touch and proximity. The number of these signposts to membership in a caste testifies to the seriousness with which caste identity is taken.
But caste is more than distinction. It is also hierarchy. Caste is an endless ranking of status, Brahmins at the top, Untouchables (renamed harijans, or “children of god,” by Gandhi, but more commonly known by their post-Independence bureaucratic designation, Scheduled Caste) at the bottom. When Mr. Ghosh separated himself from the plans of the Namasudras, he not only distinguished activities suitable for his caste from theirs but also implied some disapproval.
Nonetheless, there is also a strong sense of an overarching bond among castes. Even as Mr. Ghosh disassociated himself (in the plural, “we”), he expressed a strong bias in favor of a fellow Hindu done wrong.
The second characteristic of the caste system significant in the Panipur drama is status mobility. As fixed as caste delineation is, as infinitely often described and thoroughly legislated by myriad details of ritual and universally understood distinctions, it is also changeable. Castes have throughout the centuries sought to upgrade their status. Western stereotypes of fatalistic Hindus passively accepting their plight in the lower reaches of an oppressive status map are simply untrue.
Finally, caste continues to have strong associations with economic privilege, even if it does not coincide with precise occupations. In East Bengal until 1947, when the British left and Pakistan was formed, landlords, moneylenders, professionals, educated people in generala category know as bhadralok, literally “gentlefolk,” an ill-defined word which every Bengali understands precisely-tended to be upper-caste Hindus, whereas peasants, artisans, serving people were Muslims or low-caste Hindus. To be sure, the correspondence was not one to one: “In East Bengal, the landlords…consisted of a few big zamindars and numerous petty talukdars. Most of them belonged to the upper Hindu castes, but there were also a handful of Muslims”4 In his autobiography the East Bengali writer Nirad Choudhury mentions a Muslim za-mindar and a low-caste Hindu zamindar who figured large in his turn-of-the-century rural world.5 Nor were these relationships static. Throughout the twentieth century changes were afoot as the upper classes were threatened by economic reversals and Muslims campaigned for improvements in their status. But the majority of big landlords continued to be upper-caste Hindus, and the majority of poor cultivators were Muslims and Namasudras.
The coincidence of caste and class produces an overdetermined set of social relationships. The gulf between poor, low-caste cultivators and economically advantaged, high-caste Hindus is enormous. The latter constitute a little world of their own. In a village they enjoy an easy social familiarity, even though they may individually belong to different castes or occupations. Mr. Ghosh is a Kayashtha; Basantibala's family, the Majumdars, are Brahmins. The Majumdars are small landlords and schoolteachers, the Ghoshes small landlords and merchants. They are near neighbors and are in and out of each other's houses-witness Mr. Ghosh's arrival during my visit. The friendliness of the two caste-Hindu families is bounded by the many ways in which they maintain caste distinction. I do not know the Majumdars' practices specifically, but Brahmin families commonly keep separate cups and silverware for other-caste visitors, and it would not be unusual for a Brahmin woman like Basantibala to refuse food and drink in Mr. Ghosh's house even though she serves him freely in her own.
Social Location
This endless delineation of relations and distinctions among groups of people reflects a very important aspect of an agricultural society like Bengal. Knowing exactly how your group, be it caste or community or class, is expected to behave vis-a-vis every other group establishes your own social location, a process which in the industrialized world is to a much larger extent left to each individual to accomplish. Indeed, the defining social transformation wrought by industrialization is precisely this dislocation of working individuals from their groups, their “liberation” into a wage economy. Each one, with an emphasis on the word one, must establish her own status and interactions with others, and the field on which that happens is believed to be primarily economic
But in an agricultural society economic position is far more fixed-although, as I've commented, not exactly cemented. The process of determining where people fit in is therefore given over to a much greater extent to groups. There is a common understanding of where any given group stands in relation to every other, and once an individual's membership in a group or a series of groups is ascertained, so also is her place in society. When changes happen, often they are group changes, not individual ones. Of course, individual lives
