Being Casteless: A Catholic Myth
Alancia Menezes
SYBA, 2021-2022
In a country like India, with its rich history, a concept as old as ‘caste’ continues to permeate our everyday lives even in the 21st century. With the importance given to discussions around the caste of a person, one would think that every citizen is allied with this identity. However, for me, as a middle-class Roman Catholic living in a metropolitan city like Mumbai, caste was never a subject of my daily life. My experience with caste was confined to the textbook. More so, I considered the caste system- the chaturvarnas, and jatis limited to the Hindu religion. It was easy to assume a state of caste-lessness when your school documents ticked the ‘open’ category. It is also safe to say that most people assume Christians don’t have a caste, simply because they’re non-Hindus. But this unawareness of caste, to an extent, indicates the privilege to be ‘unaware’. Is the fact that caste has had no bearing on my life a call to question my ancestral history? Do I, in fact, have a caste, just not one that needs an official recognition for reservations, not one that had been oppressed in the past? One that granted a life of privilege to my family? Yes, I do.
I’m a Brahmin. I’m also a Mangalorean Catholic. This duality of identity might perplex people. It is important to delve into the historical background of my identity in order to understand it. Mangaloreans belong to the formerly known South Canara, which is now the state of Karnataka. Although it is difficult to pin when Christianity first came to India, the Goan Inquisition by the Portuguese followed by the Christian Deportation by Tipu Sultan were responsible for the bulk migration of Christian converts to South Canara (Silva and Fuchs, 1965). While the Portuguese persecuted anyone that practiced pagan religions, which in their view included Hinduism; the Catholic converts that retained the caste practices fled to different regions including South Canara in order to preserve their practices (Mascarenhas, 2018). In the later years, Tipu Sultan severely tormented the Christians in Canara, who then went on to retain their Hindu cultural practices in order to resist their deportation (Tyagi, 2018). Mangalore, the then capital of South Canara, consisted of immigrants as well as local converts. As a result of these events, four castes existed among the Christian converts in Goa and Canara-Bamans (Konkani word for Brahmin), Charodis (Claimed to be associated with Kshatriyas and Vaishyas), Shudhras and finally the Gaudis (lowest caste) (Miranda, 1977). These castes were overtly linked to the Hindu chaturvarnas. However, derogatory practices such as untouchability, food and dining customs were gradually eradicated due to the Church’s encouragement of fraternal values and dignity.
Fast-forward to the present day, I didn’t feel the presence of my caste identity for the longest time until a few months back. The deconstruction of my reality and its contradiction to the notions I held was a difficult process. From the words of everyday conversation to the traditions and festivals celebrated today; each source their origin to the caste I formerly believed was limited to Hinduism. Since my caste is Baman, my cultural practices inherently are a variant of the Brahmin customs. Observing the daily life as well as ceremonies of a Mangalorean Catholic family like mine, gaining historical insight through orally transmitted beliefs and literature on the same, one is able to identify its parallels. I will now give an account of the intersectionality between my caste, religion, and history in the present day.
When I look at my social and cultural positionality, through a retrospective lens, the traces of my Brahmin, or rather, Baman caste begin to unfold. When I first asked my grandfather about our caste, he immediately indicated that we belong to the upper caste, namely Bamans. Yet, on being asked the number of castes that existed, he said that there were only 2, namely Bamans and Gaudis. This can be evidenced, however, by the fact that the Christians in Mangalore retained their caste identities only as a marker of social class and economic status (Silva and Fuchs, 1965). With the shared cultural practices and the lines of caste getting blurred, the ones in middle-order castes began to be associated with either the Bamans or Gaudis based on their occupations. Circling back to my ancestors, economically we were the property-owning middle-class but identified as Bamans. This is an explanation of the weakening of caste rigidity.
Another indicator of caste was the spoken language. Now, the Basel Mission attempted to eradicate everything that kept the fragments of caste alive among the converts (Shiri, 2009, as cited in Koudur, 2020). The Christian converts were forced to learn and speak Konkani in order to converse with the Priests (Silva and Fuchs, 1965). Hence, Konkani now became the common language among the people in Mangalore along with Kannada, while Tulu took a backseat. Tulu was predominantly spoken by the lower castes, especially those involved in fisheries and living on the outer banks. Systematically, there arose a linguistic difference between the Gaudis and Bamans. Hence, another reason why my grandfather is sure that we belong to the Baman caste lies in the fact that Konkani and Kannada are our mother tongues.
Among my ancestors, my great-grandfather was an upper-caste male while my great-grandmother belonged to a relatively lower caste. Moreover, she belonged to a different village. On being asked why that mattered, I was told about the popularity of the following Konkani quote : “Chedun zai poische, Moshi zai lagiche” which loosely translates to “A bride should be from a distant place, but a bullock should be from the neighborhood”. This was because every village was a parish under the church and lived like a family (Silva and Fuchs, 1965). So marriage within the same village was stigmatized. This was a form of village exogamy practiced among the Mangalorean Catholics even after their conversion from the Hindu fold. Moreover, widow remarriage too was banned because the church viewed it as non-sacramental, further continuing the custom of Brahmanical patriarchy. This explains why my great-grandmother chose to refrain from re-marrying when her spouse passed away at the age of 50. These were however instances of the past where I do not have any first-hand experience. In present times, however, the wedding ceremony is still significantly similar to the traditional Baman Catholic wedding. The songs sung by women for the bride on the day before the wedding called oviyo were actually composed during the medieval period and sung by the eldest Brahmin woman in the house (Silva and Fuchs, 1965). The day after the wedding, called porthapon (meaning 'bring back') is similar to the Hindu custom of Pag Phera where the bride returns to her maiden home and is then accompanied back by her brothers / older males. On the day of the wedding, Mangalorean Catholic brides wear a red saree called the sado, which is similar to the Hindu red saree. However, influenced by Western Christian culture, now the bride wears a white dress but changes into the sado only towards the end of the ceremony.
Historically, the Catholic castes practiced the same occupations as their Hindu counterparts. The only exception being easier social mobility and the lack of rigid boundaries. My great-grandfather, being a Baman, had easier access to education and geographical mobility. He worked at the well-known Imperial Hotel, New Delhi. This sense of independence and an economically forward status associated with the Bamans allowed the next generations to live prosperously. My family’s current ‘open’ category status can be thus traced back to the privilege held by our ancestors. While the caste identities began to fade through the second and third generations, the transmission of its inherent historical positionality molds our present status.
The observance that a simple action of combing one’s hair would be associated with their caste, demonstrates the permeation and transmission of traditions over the years despite the abolition of structure. At home, a comb is called dantoni. This word stands for the gold combs worn by married Baman Catholic women. However, the term isn’t common among all Mangalorean Catholics, which possibly indicates their lower caste roots. Although I am still highly unaware of every aspect of my caste-based roots, this everyday occurrence still holds significant bearing while drawing parallels.
Having now realized that being from a non-Hindu religion doesn’t necessarily mean secession from the Hindu chaturvarnas, one is tempted to question the continuance of caste-based identities of the Christian converts, including my ancestors. The answer lies within the functionalist framework of society. Durkheim argues that social structures necessitate a certain mode of acting, a particular way of being and of organizing social life whose effects, in turn, function to maintain society, and which make other modes of being almost impossible (Durkheim, 1995 as cited in Dillon, 2014, p. 79). The different practices and customs followed by the castes helped the village function smoothly. The lines drawn were certain and assigned to each person within their capacity. Even when caste lines were blurred and accepted as a statement of class, they assigned occupational roles. Moreover, it helped the families and village parishes to maintain their purity, especially in the terms of lineage, sanguinity, and affinity.
While plentiful literature on the caste of Mangalorean Catholics mentions the emphasis on brotherhood and morality under the Canon Law, it doesn’t discount the hegemonic power displayed by the latter (Miranda, 1977). Dowling (2002) tells us that hegemony is the attempt of the ruling class to gain consent by normalizing a set of values/practices, without the use of force. “The range of values becomes hegemonic when is it widely promoted and accepted as ‘the way things are’, inducing people to consent to practices and institutions dominant in their society and way of life as ordinary common sense, an unquestioning belief that this is the way things are supposed to be with no need for justification” (Dowling, 2002, p. 17). The aforementioned metamorphosis of language in the South Canara region illustrates the attempt of the church to establish cultural hegemony. Language seeps through caste, which further concretizes the distinctions in them. Moreover, the community priests were primarily Bamans. Priests from lower castes were frowned upon (Miranda, 1977). Thus, though the Church attempted to eradicate the traces of caste, it did so through a buffet system, picking only the aspects that served them bureaucratically and eradicating the ones that didn’t. Moreover, gauging it through a conflict perspective, the caste system represented a capitalistic mode of production. Despite the community’s claim to have retained caste only as a criterion for economic status and social class, its historical effect still persists. Those from the lower strata of the hierarchy continued to be disadvantaged economically, but now as a class. In extension, this supposed freedom from the caste system is a sham, similar to Marx’s (as cited in Dillon, 2014) argument stating that, “The freedom under capitalism is really an illusion.”
Exploring one’s caste positionality after years of assuming it as null and void is an enlightening process. Caste is one of the most trending words in the Indian socio-political sphere and has always held weightage through the eons. However, most of us will never fully be able to understand it. Caste is the framework that seeps through all surfaces, be it religious, political, cultural, economic, or educational. Ambedkar, in one of his speeches, said, “Subtler minds and abler pens than mine have been brought to the task of unraveling the mysteries of castes ; but unfortunately it still remains in the domain of the 'unexplained’, not to say of the un-understood” (2004, p. 2 ). Personally, realizing my caste background has exposed the intricacies of my privilege. For the longest time, discussions around caste have held the Hindu savarnas accountable for the modern-day repercussions. While that may be justified, it doesn’t discount other citizens of their role in the caste system. A change of religion changes the faith one practices. However, it doesn’t erase their ethnographic roots and their prerogative. No amount of sociological theories would be enough to analyze the mechanism of caste. An individual or community’s caste-based experience changes with every walking mile. It wasn’t difficult to trace back my caste identity, all I had to do was ask. However, given the melting-pot culture that India is known for, the awareness of caste identities may be muffled. Caste, thus, isn’t just another topic for political debate, it isn’t a dead practice, it is, however, an identity, one that doesn’t cease to exist even when left unacknowledged.
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