Dunkin Jalki
Independent Researcher, Independent Researcher, Department Member
- Colonialism, Indian Traditions, Lingayat, Indian studies, Post-Colonialism, Religion and Colonialism, and 16 moreComparative Science of Cultures, History of Colonial India, Hinduism, Shaivism, Caste system, Karnataka, Kannada language and literature, Comparative Religion, S.N. Balagangadhara, Indology, South Asian Studies, South Asian Religions, Śaiva Siddhānta and Early Āgamic Śaivism, Religious Studies, Indian Christianity, and Indian Christian Theologyedit
- Independent Researcheredit
Ancient Greek writers wrote for several centuries about “Indian philosophers”, also referred to as Gymnosophists and Brachmanes. Scholars studying India today argue that these thinkers were Brahmins and other Indian ascetics. They further... more
Ancient Greek writers wrote for several centuries about “Indian philosophers”, also referred to as Gymnosophists and Brachmanes. Scholars studying India today argue that these thinkers were Brahmins and other Indian ascetics. They further assert that Greek writings on India and the descriptions they provide of these philosophers and their social contexts bear witness to the existence of the caste system, its properties, and its functioning. However, an examination of the Greek texts, even in their 19th-century translations, would call this reading into question. The ancient scholars do not talk about the caste system familiar in mainstream sociology today. If so, how and when did the view that the Greeks discussed the Indian caste system emerge? For an answer, we need to go back to how European writings depicted the Brahmins over a millennium. This history is filled with many intriguing developments. Until around the 16th century, the contemporary Brahmins were seen as the descendants of the ancient Gymnosophists. Soon, however, under the influence of the anti-clerical views of the Christian Reformation, Europeans began to differentiate between the ancient and contemporary Brahmins. They lauded the former for their austere lives and condemned the latter as immoral bigots. As the story of the degeneration of Hinduism and Indian civilisation emerged in the 17th century, scholars began looking for the roots of this degeneration in India’s ancient past. However, in the absence of a unified and dominant narrative of the caste system as we understand it today, no link between the Greek descriptions of India and the Indian “caste system” was posited at this time. As the story of the caste system crystallised in the 18th and 19th centuries and Buddhism was discovered, scholars began to press the ancient Greeks into the service of providing witness to the existence of the caste system.
Link: https://oriental-world.org.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/706/686
Link: https://oriental-world.org.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/706/686
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When we talk about the caste system today, among other things, we talk about the wily, crafty, and ostentatious Brahmins who founded and maintained a set of self-serving rules that effectively took the form of the caste system. How do... more
When we talk about the caste system today, among other things, we talk about the wily, crafty, and ostentatious Brahmins who founded and maintained a set of self-serving rules that effectively took the form of the caste system. How do social scientists know about these Brahmins? As a set of new scholars are demonstrating today, the ancient Indian texts – such as the Vedas or the Mahabharata – do not talk about the caste system or the domineering priestly class of Brahmins. These texts do not even exhibit an impulse to put into place a system that even remotely resembles the so-called caste system. From where does this idea of the Brahmin emerge then? This paper sifts through the earliest available Islamic writings on India, from the early 8th century to Al-Biruni’stime, to chart a genealogy of the figure of the law-making, crafty Brahmin that emerged in 11th-century Muslim writings.
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... In less than hundred years, we have found new uses for what has remained of these traditions today. We have successfully turned these drainage cisterns into our battlefields-cum-flea market-cum-bedrooms. We use the remains of the... more
... In less than hundred years, we have found new uses for what has remained of these traditions today. We have successfully turned these drainage cisterns into our battlefields-cum-flea market-cum-bedrooms. We use the remains of the pipes as tools to beat each other up, when we are not busy begging in the name of these traditions for state benefits, like lower-caste status, reservations and minority-religion status. The only requisite is our ability to formulate our greed in the language of 'social justice' and represent our traditions as 'social reform movements' of some kind. ...
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... One of the ways in which caste studies have continued to uphold the picture of widespread caste atrocities in India in the face of challenges that emerge from the hard data is by relying on the popular caveat that the data is... more
... One of the ways in which caste studies have continued to uphold the picture of widespread caste atrocities in India in the face of challenges that emerge from the hard data is by relying on the popular caveat that the data is unreliable because caste violence is under-reported. ...
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"...Taking off from the research insights of S.N. Balagangadhara, who has been critiquing the orientalist roots of scholarship on India, the book attempts to show how the caste system became one building block in a much larger Orientalist... more
"...Taking off from the research insights of S.N. Balagangadhara, who has been critiquing the orientalist roots of scholarship on India, the book attempts to show how the caste system became one building block in a much larger Orientalist story about Indian history, which remains the only story about India available today. The main hypothesis is that the dominant descriptions we have today are results of originally Christian themes and questions; they reflect European historical experiences and European thinking about society much more than the real state of society and its domestic understanding in India. ..."
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This book argues that the dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' are rooted in a Western Christian experience of India. Thus, caste studies scholarship tells us more about the West than about India. It further demonstrates the... more
This book argues that the dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' are rooted in a Western Christian experience of India. Thus, caste studies scholarship tells us more about the West than about India. It further demonstrates the imperative to move beyond this scholarship in order to generate descriptions of Indian social reality. The dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' that we have today are results of originally Christian themes and questions. They reflect European experiences of, and thinking about, Indian culture and society much more than the real state of society or its domestic understanding in India. The authors of this collection explore this hypothesis and show how it is applied beyond South Asia to the diasporic cultures that have made a home in Western countries. The book explores how caste studies has inherited its foundational assumptions from Christianity and how the inheritance of caste studies as structured by European scholarship impacts on our understanding of contemporary India and the Indians of the diaspora. This collection will be of interest to scholars and students of caste studies, India studies, religion in South Asia, postcolonial studies, history, anthropology and sociology. More on the book: This book argues that the dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' are rooted in a Western Christian experience of India. Thus, caste studies scholarship tells us more about the West than about India. It further demonstrates the imperative to move beyond this scholarship in order to generate descriptions of Indian social reality. The dominant descriptions of the 'caste system' that we have today are results of originally Christian themes and questions. They reflect European experiences of, and thinking about, Indian culture and society much more than the real state of society or its domestic understanding in India. The authors of this collection explore this hypothesis and show how it is applied beyond South Asia to the diasporic cultures that have made a home in Western countries. The book explores how caste studies has inherited its foundational assumptions from Christianity and how the inheritance of caste studies as structured by European scholarship impacts on our understanding of contemporary India and the Indians of the diaspora. This collection will be of interest to scholars and students of caste studies, India studies, religion in South Asia, postcolonial studies, history, anthropology and sociology.
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Any attempt to understand Indian society through the scholarship on caste confronts us with a large number of problems. Scholars of the last 150 years have routinely observed and even criticised writings on caste for these problems. Such... more
Any attempt to understand Indian society through the scholarship on caste confronts us with a large number of problems. Scholars of the last 150 years have routinely observed and even criticised writings on caste for these problems. Such criticisms, however, have neither led us towards a confirmation nor the abandonment of the so-called caste theories. How do we explain this curious fact? Caste scholars hold the complexity of the issue as responsible for the lack of a robust theory of the caste system. Hence, they set out to collect more facts in order to buttress the theory. More facts, however, create more problems.
It is not only the quest for more data, which is expected to save the ‘theories’ of the caste system, but also a struggle to match the thus collected field data with the claims about the caste system that unites the colonial and modern writers on the caste system. This paper suggests that the failure of caste scholars to account for field data is not a result of the complexity of the field, but rather an outcome of the kind of entity that the ‘caste system’ is. The so-called caste system is an experiential entity of the West, which can neither be confirmed nor refuted by using empirical facts from India. Any attempt to do so will only generate unproductive debates.
It is not only the quest for more data, which is expected to save the ‘theories’ of the caste system, but also a struggle to match the thus collected field data with the claims about the caste system that unites the colonial and modern writers on the caste system. This paper suggests that the failure of caste scholars to account for field data is not a result of the complexity of the field, but rather an outcome of the kind of entity that the ‘caste system’ is. The so-called caste system is an experiential entity of the West, which can neither be confirmed nor refuted by using empirical facts from India. Any attempt to do so will only generate unproductive debates.
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The paper begins by drawing our attention to the problems in the current understanding of bhakti traditions. By focusing on the way the Lingayat vachanas speak about caste (or jati), this paper suggests that the popular belief that they... more
The paper begins by drawing our attention to the problems in the current understanding of bhakti traditions. By focusing on the way the Lingayat vachanas speak about caste (or jati), this paper suggests that the popular belief that they take an anti-caste stance cannot be proved either through textual analysis of the vachanas or by building a consistent and strong argument. The second part offers an alternative reading of the vachanas. It tries to show that the vachanas saw jati as an obstacle in the adhyatmic journey of a Lingayat seeker and not as a social problem related to hierarchy and oppression.
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ಒಮ್ಮೆ ನಾನು ಅಲ್ಲಮ ಮತ್ತು ಬಸವರನ್ನು ಖುದ್ದು ಭೆಟ್ಟಿ ಮಾಡಿ ಹೀಗೊಂದು ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವವನ್ನು ಮಾಡಿದ್ದರೆ, ಅವರೇನು ಹೇಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದರು ಎಂದು ಯೋಚಿಸಿ ನೋಡಿ: "ಅಲ್ಲಮ ಮತ್ತು ಬಸವ ಸರ್, ನಾನು ನಿಮ್ಮ ಸೂಚನೆಗಳನ್ನೆಲ್ಲಾ ಅನುಸರಿಸಿ, ನೀವು ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡುವಂತೆ ಬದುಕಲು ಸಿದ್ಧನಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ಆದರೆ... more
ಒಮ್ಮೆ ನಾನು ಅಲ್ಲಮ ಮತ್ತು ಬಸವರನ್ನು ಖುದ್ದು ಭೆಟ್ಟಿ ಮಾಡಿ ಹೀಗೊಂದು ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವವನ್ನು ಮಾಡಿದ್ದರೆ, ಅವರೇನು ಹೇಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದರು ಎಂದು ಯೋಚಿಸಿ ನೋಡಿ: "ಅಲ್ಲಮ ಮತ್ತು ಬಸವ ಸರ್, ನಾನು ನಿಮ್ಮ ಸೂಚನೆಗಳನ್ನೆಲ್ಲಾ ಅನುಸರಿಸಿ, ನೀವು ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡುವಂತೆ ಬದುಕಲು ಸಿದ್ಧನಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ಆದರೆ ನನ್ನದೊಂದು ಅರಿಕೆ ಇದೆ. ನೋಡಿ ನಾನೊಬ್ಬ ಕ್ರಿಶ್ಚಿಯನ್ ಭಕ್ತ. ನಾನು ಕೇವಲ ಜೀಸಸ್ ಅನ್ನು ಮಾತ್ರ ಪೂಜಿಸುವುದು. ಲಿಂಗ ಮತ್ತು ಶಿವನ ಆರಾಧನೆ ನನ್ನಿಂದ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಿಲ್ಲ. (೧) ಇಂತಿರುವ ನನ್ನಂಥ ಕ್ರಿಶ್ಚಿಯನ್ ಭಕ್ತನಿಗೂ ನೀವು ಮುಕ್ತಿಯ ದಾರಿಯನ್ನು ತೋರಿಸಬಲ್ಲಿರಾ? ನನಗೂ ಶಿವಸಾಯುಜ್ಯ ಸಿಗುತ್ತದೆಯೇ? (೨) ಅಥವಾ ನಾನೂ ಲಿಂಗಾಯತನಾಗ ಬೇಕು ಎಂದು ಒತ್ತಾಯಿಸುತ್ತೀರ? ನೀವು ಕಂಡುಕೊಂಡು ತೋರಿಸಿಕೊಡುತ್ತಿರುವ ಆ ಮುಕ್ತಿ ಕೇವಲ ಲಿಂಗಾಯತರಿಗೆ ಮಾತ್ರ ಮೀಸಲಾಗಿದೆಯೇ?”
ಒಂದು ವೇಳೆ ಮೊದಲೆರಡು ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿಗೆ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಉತ್ತರ ‘ಇಲ್ಲ’ವೆಂದೂ ಮತ್ತು ಕಡೆಯ ಎರಡು ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿಗೆ 'ಹೌದು' ಎಂದಾದರೆ, ಈ ಉತ್ತರಗಳು ಕ್ರಿಶ್ಚಿಯನ್ ಮತ್ತು ಇಸ್ಲಾಂ ರಿಲಿಜನ್ ನೀಡುವ ಉತ್ತರಕ್ಕಿಂತ ಬೇರೆಯಲ್ಲ. ...
ಒಂದು ವೇಳೆ ಮೊದಲೆರಡು ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿಗೆ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಉತ್ತರ ‘ಇಲ್ಲ’ವೆಂದೂ ಮತ್ತು ಕಡೆಯ ಎರಡು ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿಗೆ 'ಹೌದು' ಎಂದಾದರೆ, ಈ ಉತ್ತರಗಳು ಕ್ರಿಶ್ಚಿಯನ್ ಮತ್ತು ಇಸ್ಲಾಂ ರಿಲಿಜನ್ ನೀಡುವ ಉತ್ತರಕ್ಕಿಂತ ಬೇರೆಯಲ್ಲ. ...
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"The cultural developments and processes that turned me into a minority did not leave India untouched. ... It is not my Christianity that made me alien to this culture, nor this culture made me alien to my Christianity."
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"No, we Indian Christians are not facing endless persecution. Our problems and worries are of a different nature. The same issues that trouble a Madiga or a Brahmin also trouble us, like corruption, declining educational standards,... more
"No, we Indian Christians are not facing endless persecution. Our problems and worries are of a different nature. The same issues that trouble a Madiga or a Brahmin also trouble us, like corruption, declining educational standards, poverty, and so on. This is not to deny the existence of social differences between Christians and other groups; they do exist and even hold significance in certain contexts. However, in the world we live in, there are more pressing issues that require attention than social differences."
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/no-mr-obama-minorities-in-india-are-not-exploited-by-hindu-majority-12815392.html
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/no-mr-obama-minorities-in-india-are-not-exploited-by-hindu-majority-12815392.html
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... Therefore, the only interpretation possible here of what Reuters is saying is this: criminals engaged in human trafficking, say, in the US and Europe treat women better than Indian criminals, and better than even lay Indians. Why... more
... Therefore, the only interpretation possible here of what Reuters is saying is this: criminals engaged in human trafficking, say, in the US and Europe treat women better than Indian criminals, and better than even lay Indians. Why would Reuters not consider India the most dangerous country in the world for women, then!