38 Chapter 3 Depressed Classes: An Overview 3.1. Introduction: There are many depressed classes in Karnataka in general and Gulbarga district in particular. They are still backward in terms of socio-economic, political, education and such other aspects, even though the government has already formulated social welfare policies for their overall development. These farmers are depressed due to their lower occupation or ‗impure‘ occupation since the immemorial days. Hence, it is essential to study the historical background of Scheduled Castes in Karnataka. 3.2. Historical Background of Depressed Classes: The stone age history of Karnataka revealed that the population was increasingly divided into different professional groups from the peasant to the pastoralist, from the rearer of sheep to the keeper of cattle, from the iron smith to the gold smith, from the copper smith to the carpenter, from the glass maker to the weaver, from the tribal autarch to the horse-borne soldier and from the shaman to the sorceress. Iron age society was not only the outcome of the split and thus the development between agriculture and cattle rearing between the sexes, but its dawn led to the further division of tribes into different professions and to the division within tribes into various professions. All these professional groups, protoclasses, to be more precise, must have come together in the settlements since the increasing division within and between tribes only imposed on them the joint need to collaborate and cooperate. One must expect the end of barter and the beginning of trade during this period. The settlement was thus a welter. It was the forge of the iron age in which the layers of tribes were beat and carbonised by what blacksmiths of Komaranahalli used—the lamination technique—to yield an amalgam that would serve as the model for
60
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38
Chapter 3
Depressed Classes: An Overview
3.1. Introduction:
There are many depressed classes in Karnataka in general and Gulbarga
district in particular. They are still backward in terms of socio-economic,
political, education and such other aspects, even though the government has
already formulated social welfare policies for their overall development. These
farmers are depressed due to their lower occupation or ‗impure‘ occupation
since the immemorial days. Hence, it is essential to study the historical
background of Scheduled Castes in Karnataka.
3.2. Historical Background of Depressed Classes:
The stone age history of Karnataka revealed that the population was
increasingly divided into different professional groups from the peasant to the
pastoralist, from the rearer of sheep to the keeper of cattle, from the iron smith
to the gold smith, from the copper smith to the carpenter, from the glass maker
to the weaver, from the tribal autarch to the horse-borne soldier and from the
shaman to the sorceress. Iron age society was not only the outcome of the split
and thus the development between agriculture and cattle rearing between the
sexes, but its dawn led to the further division of tribes into different professions
and to the division within tribes into various professions. All these professional
groups, protoclasses, to be more precise, must have come together in the
settlements since the increasing division within and between tribes only
imposed on them the joint need to collaborate and cooperate. One must expect
the end of barter and the beginning of trade during this period. The settlement
was thus a welter. It was the forge of the iron age in which the layers of tribes
were beat and carbonised by what blacksmiths of Komaranahalli used—the
lamination technique—to yield an amalgam that would serve as the model for
39
the evolution of what has continued into this day—the town and its muddied
reflection, the village1.
With the transformation from food gathering-hunting to pastoralism-
primitive agriculture, the role of the environmental factor begins to gradually
grow less important. - The ‗social factor‘ or rather the ‗man made factor‘
begins to gain prominence and with the emergence of class society after its
passage through the Iron Age, the social factor gains the ascendant and the
environmental factor is pushed to the background2.
The culture of the pastoral-primitive agricultural stage also revealed as
one of its significant traits, the man-woman division within society; their
spheres of activity and perceptions. Prolonged periods of inactivity among
males who carried on hunting in the Paleolithic period itself often afforded
them greater opportunities than the woman to engage in nonproductive activity
such as art3.
Regarding the question of the emergence of social grades in society and
their ultimate polarisation into distinct classes as reflected in the burials
characterised by a modification and development of megalithism, Sergei
Tokarev draws a god inference from Egypt. He writes: ―Burials in the pre-
dynasty epoch in Egypt were similar to those of other countries. The dead were
buried in small oval pits in a crouched position on their sides, and a few
personal items were buried with them; sometimes the body was cut into pieces.
But burial rituals changed considerably during the earliest dynasties, especially
in the case of the pharaohs. Graves and tombs gradually became larger and
more complex, rising above the ground, and taking the shape of a mastaba [or
megalith], a tomb with a rectangular base and sloping sides; and from the third
dynasty, the shape of a huge pyramid. The pharaoh's corpse was embalmed,
40
and turned into a mummy. Later the bodies of the pharaoh's close officials,
and subsequently members of the middle class, were mummified too‖4.
Thus it is clear that the rise of the megaliths in place of the chalcolithic
urn burials on the one hand marked the start of a new phase in culture. Burials
bee an indication of status and status as we know very well was marked along
It is but evident from the host of megalithic burial practices recorded from
people living in the stage of tribal autarchy, yet drawn from contemporary
times, that each type of megalithic burial was distinct for each different tribe.
Further, the remains tell that there is female deity before civilization, probably
due to reproductive function of women. The devotion with the god and tantra
were also evolved by the time.
Bridget and Allchin write that ―Our information concerning the religion
of the peoples of the southern Iron Age is derived almost entirely from these
graves. The many excavations show a baffling assortment of burial practices.
In some instances simple inhumation was found; in others, the unburnt bones
were collected after they had been excarnated and placed in an urn or in a stone
cist; in others again only fragments of bone were deposited, and often
fragments of many individuals are found in a single grave; cremated bones are
encountered in rare cases. It may be remarked that in modern practice burial
rites vary from caste to caste, and ethnographic reports from South India can
show just as great a variety as the Iron Age graves. Through the whole series
runs the idea, present in the earliest Tamil literature and in modern practice, of
a dual ceremony. The initial funeral leading to the exposure, burial or
cremation of the corpse is followed by a second ceremony, perhaps taking
place after many months, when the collected bones are deposited in their final
resting place. Another detail which links some of the graves with modern times
is the use of lime in the infilling. The orientation of port-holes and entrances on
the cist graves is frequently towards the south, although in some burial grounds
41
it is toward another quarter, and the grounds themselves are most frequently
found to be to the south of the settlements. This demands comparison with the
later Indian tradition where south is the quarter of Yama. Among the grave
goods, iron is almost universal, and the occasional iron spears and tridents
suggest an association with Siva. The discovery in one grave of a trident with a
wrought iron buffalo fixed to the shaft is likewise suggestive, for the buffalo is
also associated with Yama; and the buffalo demon was slain by the goddess
Durga, consort of Siva, with a trident.... The picture that we obtain from this
evidence, slight as it is, is suggestive of some form of worship of Siva, but it is
too early to say more5.
Various studies by anthropologists give a glimpse of the structure of gens
or clans or kulas of the time. The exogamic kula identified by totems or bali
were present within each endogamous tribe (or caste).
Syed Hassan‘s ethnographic studies from the Hyderabad Karnataka
region speak of the Bedas being divided into 101 exogamous totemic clans6.
Edgar Thurston and K Rangachari report of 13 balis among the Bunts of
Dakshina Kannada7, 66 among the Kurubas
8, 23 among the Madigas
9, 12
among the Holeyas10
and 50 among the Bakudas of Dakshina Kannada11
.
It is evident that the balis kept dividing once after they were formed
leading to the progressive addition of new balis into the tribe. From the
exogamous balis of the Holeyas it maybe said that all of them, by the objects
they signify, can easily be traced to the mode of hunting-food gathering. Again,
most Madiga and Bunt balis refer to a similar culture-world. This only
confirms Engels‘ periodisation for the start of the punauluan family. All castes
of Karnataka have reported their balis as being patrilineal in descent. But this in
no way disputes the matrilineal origin of the Bali since ‗they have been
42
recorded after the conversion of tribes into castes, and under the conditions of a
patriarchal feudal order‘.
Closely related with the development of language and culture is the
movement of peoples, or in other words, race movements. While race
movements are related to the development of language and culture, it would be
wrong to equate the two. The two are related, yet they followed their own
independent courses of development. There were six races and of which
Dravidian race was most important to study the caste origin in Karnataka.
The Harappan valley contributed to the creation of a Dravidian language
identified by archaeo-linguists as Proto-Dravidian, peninsular India was the
region for the emergence of a new race called Dravidian and identified by
physical anthropologists as Dravidoid. The Dravidoid or Dravidian race thus
came to possess the following features: long headed, short to medium stature,
wavy to straight hair, black to brown eyes, flat to pointed nose and from dark to
olive skin. In short the Dravidoid which later even absorbed some Nordic
elements was the result of centuries of mutual intermixing, a literal hybrid.
The spread of agriculture with the use of the iron hoe, the pick and the
spade, and at the same time the construction of tanks for irrigating this land
raised the material standards of society in general and gradually the wealth of a
section in particular as seen in the inequalities in grave goods of particular
megalithic burial sites. At Brahmagiri a coulter was also found, which only
indicates that agriculture could slowly, before the plough as such had arrived,
create a narrow surplus, thereby providing the material basis for social groups
such as artisans, warriors, priests and traders to rise. In other words, there was a
visible stratification that was taking place; a trend which countered the laws of
existence of the clan based primitive communal society12
.
43
Piracy, trade and the plunder from colonies constituted important sources
for the primitive accumulation of capital catalysing the transition to capitalism
and heralding the rise of a bourgeois order. Similarly, war waged by the iron
using tribal oligarchs which laid claim to the meager property of the
vanquished tribes stimulated the rise of classes in prehistoric society and
contributed to the formation of class society in Karnataka13
.
Saki remarked ―We would however like to clarify that pre-Satavahana
Karnataka starting from 2500 BC onward based on pastoralism-primitive
agriculture was particularly from the iron age phase starting 1200 BC, not yet a
class divided society and thus did not yet possess a state. Yet this period,
characterized as a tribal oligarchy and coming in the upper stage of barbarism
already tended to display elements of the future society that it was to procreate
such as stratification, the growing division between mental and manual labour,
the rise of warrior ganapathis and patriarchy. The growing incidence of war by
itself does not imply the existence of a state. The state can only be the result of
the rise of a class of exploiters. Thus this period may be characterised as the
period of tribal oligarchy. The society of this time through iron weapons, war
and the horse based on an increasingly stratifying economy created the
preconditions necessary for the rise of class society and its instrument of
oppression, the state‖14
.
The new class divided order of this early historical period rested on the
institution of chaturvarna. The chaturvarna system was developed in the central
Ganga plain with the development of an iron using plough-agriculture based
class society. RS Sharma says that: ―…the Satavahanas were one of the
earliest Deccan dynasties to be Brahminised. As new converts they came
forward as the zealous champions of the varna system…15
.
44
The origin of the four class varna division—the Shudra, Vaishya,
Kshyatriya and Brahmana during Vedic period revealed that, starting with Rig
Vedic society ―which was basically tribal in character‖ there was a gradual
break up of Aryan society into classes starting form 1100 BC in
particular16
.The taking of slaves obtained enhanced meaning with the
completion of the transformation of Vedic society from pastoralism to
agriculture by the beginning of the sixth century BC. In this process, starting
from 1800 BC to 600 BC, there was a great intermixing of the Aryan people
with the various Indian Dravidian tribes.
Sharma presented ―In the first flush of the Aryan expansion the
destruction of the settlements and the peoples such as the Dasyus (slaves)
seems to have been so complete that very few people in north-western India
would remain to be absorbed in the new society.... While the majority of the
survivors and especially the comparatively backward peoples would be reduced
to helotage, the natural tendency would be for the vis of the Aryan society to
mix with the lower orders and for the Vedic priests and warriors to mix with
the higher classes of earlier societies‖17
.
R.S. Sharma is of the opinion that priesthood, consolidated into
Brahmanism in later times is a pre-Aryan institution which could have emerged
after the mixing of Aryans with pre-Aryan tribes of India18
. The Kshatriya was
an Aryan institution, clearly manifested in the Aryan Indira of the Rig Veda.
Shudra was the name originally of an Aryan tribe belonging to the Dasa Aryans
who came to the north west of India a little before the Vedic Aryans did19
. The
Vis, from which Vaishya was later derived, were an independent peasantry,
their name again, signifying the name of a tribe originally.
45
The first slaves were drawn from among the Dasa and Shudra tribes.
With the expansion of the Vedic Aryans to the Ganga valley, they intermingled
with the Dravidian tribes, developed the institution of chaturvarna and by the
time of the rise of class society in the central Ganga plains by the sixth century
BC, they had reduced a great number of local tribal peoples to bondage having
commenced this process with the Aryan tribes initially. These vast masses of
toilers were called Shudras and were inhibited from marrying among the other
three Varnas. Hence the Varna system at once provided for the supply of a
ready madelabour force for expanding agriculture undertaken by the state,
agriculture taken up by the Vis, and the need for domestic hands in the houses
of the Kshatriyas, Brahmanas and traders20
. This it achieved by reducing the
Shudras to a form of servile labour. ―It is difficult‖ writes RS Sharma ―to
define the position of the Sudras in the Vedic period in terms of slavery or
serfdom. Although the references found in very late Vedic texts give the
impression of they being the labouring masses, generally they do not seem to
have been slaves or serfs owned by individuals. Apparently just as the
community exercised some sort of general control over land, so also it
exercised similar control over the labouring population. And, in this sense, the
sudras may be very roughly compared to the helots of Sparta, with the
difference that they were not treated with the same amount of coercion and
contempt‖21
.
Thus the Shudras came to be collectively treated as helots of the rest of
the varnas and the state. The element of coercion was far more emphatic than
under feudalism. Classed among the Shudras, at this period were the ‗Antyas‘
or ‗Bahyas‘or those residing outside villages and towns or the Untouchables.
The Nishadas and Chandalas, both tribes initially, were among the first
Untouchables of India22
.
46
The institution of chaturvarna and thus the class society that it upheld
stood essentially on the labour of the Shudras. That Brahmanism upheld this
and was its chief architect is beyond dispute. Yet the fact that Buddhism and
Jainism, both of which contended with Brahmanism, did not challenge it in any
way is significant and often goes unnoticed. The defence by Buddhism and
Jainism, of Shudra helotry was cardinal for their rise as religions without which
the merchants and Kshatriyas or the state could not have supported them.
The Satavahana kings were dogged defenders of Chaturvarna since the
basis of their empire rested on it. They built up their polity on this division and
thus may be credited with borrowing this institution from the Mauryas. As RS
Sharma observes: ―…there is no evidence that untouchability prevailed in the
south among the dravidians before their brahminization…‖23
. Hence the
untouchability was developed with Chaturvarna system under the Satavahanas.
Religion is the ideological expression of a society which has been
divided along class lines. During Satavahana rule, Jainism, Buddhism and
Vedic religions were introduced to Karnataka. As written by Saki, the
Satavahana kings although non-Aryan in origin were converts to Brahmanism.
While Buddhism received maximum sponsorship from the ruling classes,
Vedic religion which had already its ideology of chaturvarna was not without
its importance24
.As a result, the Satavahana state took and utilized the best-the
class best-of the two religions, Buddhism and the Vedic. Without allowing for
any overt contradiction to develop between the two, it balanced the interests of
creating a servile Shudra helotry on the one hand by upholding Vedic
Brahmanism, in which direction Buddhism had little to contribute; and at the
same time sponsored Buddhism as a means to trade and a channel to propagate
the karma theory of predestination and thus the irrevocability of exploitation. It
is important to observe that at this point of history none of the rural settlements
47
of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh gave evidence of the practice of Vedic
religion25
.
Hence, it can be generalized that agriculture was the main occupation of
the people during those days. Brahmins and Kshatriyas were mutually
cooperative as the ruling class was Kshatriyas. To do agriculture, they used to
hire slaves and slaves are from Shudra castes or lower classes. Hence, as
masters of slaves, the Brahmins and kshatriyas used to exploit these classes. As
such, there was clear gap between these classes. Saki concluded that, ―from
these four specific features—chaturvarna and Shudrahelotage as the principal
form of labour exploitation; the type and role of the state; the nature of the
ruling classes and the epochal character of the mode with its own self-
perpetuating laws—and the two additional aspects of religion and language
lending this epoch exclusive complexion: one may well conclude that the early
historical period to which Maurya, Gupta and Satavahana belong represented a
mode of production with individual standing and independent merit, although
the Gupta period in particular possessed certain protofeudal features‖26
.
Later, around the third century AD the vaisya-sudra social formation was
afflicted with a deep social crisis. The crisis is clearly reflected in the
descriptions of the Kali age in those portions of the Puranas which belong to
the third and fourth centuries AD. Emphasis on the importance of coercive
mechanism (danda) in the Santi-Parvaand description of anarchy (arajakata) in
the epics possibly belong to the same age and point to the same crisis. The Kali
age is characterised by varanasamkara, i.e., intermixture ofvarnas, or social
orders, which implies that vaisyas and sudras, i.e., peasants, artisans and
labourers either refused to stick to the producing functions assigned to them or
else vaisya peasants declined to pay taxes and the sudras refused to make their
labour available...collection of taxes by royal officers was made difficult…27
.
48
RS Sharma writes of the Kaliyuga which began at the end of the
Mauryan and beginning of the Gupta period that: ―In an inscription of the first
half of the fifth century AD the Pallava ruler Simhavarman is described as ever
ready to save from the sins of the Kali age. This may suggest that the
conception of the Kali age was not very old... the mention of the mlecc has and
of the intermingling of various peoples in the description of the Kali age better
suits conditions obtaining in the post-Mauryan period. The Puranic statements
that the foreign rulers will kill the brahmanas and seize the wives and wealth of
other is generally applied to this period and is in consonance with the spirit of
similar allegations in the Yuga Parana.The descriptions of the Kali age, which
are in the form of complaints and prophetic assertions made by the brahmanas,
cannot be brushed aside as figments of imagination. They depict the pitiable
plight of the brahmanas on account of the activities of the Greeks, Sakas and
Kusanas. It is likely that their invasions caused an upheaval among the sudras,
who were seething with discontent. Naturally they turned against the
brahmanas, who were the authors of discriminatory provisions against them.
How long and in which part of the country this social convulsion prevailed is
difficult to determine for lack of data. But it seems that the intense hostility of
the brahmanas towards the heretical ‗sudra‘ kings was on account of the latter‘s
fraternization with the sudras. The servile position of the sudras as slaves and
hired labourers may have been undermined by the policy of the foreign rulers
such as the Sakas and Kusanas, who were not committed to the ideology of
varna-divided society‖28
.
These were then the main aspects of the crisis. Often these aspects
converged jeopardizing the very existence of the system. Rebellions and
‗indiscipline‘ among Shudras, the lack of money flows into state coffers and
the dismal impact of this on trade led to the illegitimacy of the old state and its
ruling classes. Already by Gupta times the possibility of acquiring slaves by
war was undermined due to the shrinkage of the market and the paucity of
49
coinage affected dealings in slaves. Therefore in order to maintain the stability
of class rule, the state had to be restructured, and this itself was based on the
emergence of a new class that was provided land grants by the king. To this
intermediary class of landlords that began to emerge from the sixth century AD
in the north and the fourth century AD in Karnataka, functions of the state were
transferred thus leading to the crumbling of the old centralized edifice29
.
From the Gupta period, and more particularly towards the end of the
Guptas, land grants were made by royal authority to individuals, mostly
Brahmanas, as a token of their service and as a new method for legitimizing the
rule of the state along its frontiers. Sharma says that ―the grants helped to
create powerful intermediaries wielding considerable economic and political
power. As the number of land owning brahmanas went on increasing, some of
them gradually spread their priestly functions and turned their chief attention to
the management of land; in their case secular functions became more important
than religious functions. But above all as a result of land grants made to the
brahmanas, the ‗comprehensive competence based on centralised control‘,
which was the hallmark of the Maurya state, gave way to decentralisation in the
post-Maurya and Gupta periods. The functions of the collection of taxes, levy
of forced labour, regulation of mines, agriculture, etc together with those of the
maintenance of law and order, and defence which were hitherto performed by
the state officials, were now step by step abandoned, first to the priestly class,
and later to the warrior class‖30
. ―The fragmentary I of a Rastrakuta king,
issued in 930 refers to 60 families of Karnataka brahmanas and 240 families of
Karadbrahmanas among the 1000 brahmanas who were residing in the town of
Manyakheta and for whose maintenance a village on the western boundary of
Manyakheta was donated‖31
. Later Ganga Kings, Kadambas and such other
rulers were granted lands to Brahmins, Agraharas and Charitable institutions.
50
Due to such land grants the Shudras were lost their hold on the lands.
Similarly, Brahmins, Jains, administrators, military chiefs and priestly class
have gained from such lands. It is evident from all this that the land grants that
were issued in the Centuries of early feudalism in Karnataka served only to a
certain extent a local clientele while the biggest chunk of it went to service the
interests of a Brahmana class that migrated from the north. The issuing of land
grants in Karnataka to the Brahmanas was not a sudden phenomenon but a
gradual process, a graduality which neatly fits with the gradual decline of the
north Indian urban settlements and the migratory movement of Brahmanas
from the vast Ganga valley covering the region of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh,
Nepal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal. Further, with the invention of
coinage for exchange of goods, the significance of trade as occupation of
people was also increased.
Feudalism gave rise to lives by the village. It is the village which is the
principal realm of production; and agriculture its foundation. Under feudalism
position and wealth were derived from land, and every other form of wealth
which was not land obtained its importance only because of its relationship to
land. During the feudalism in Karnataka, a few classes were derived in the
society. The landlord class derived its position from the land grants made to it
by the king and feudatories. The tenures under which this land was held were
varied adding thereby different shades to this class. Firstly, was the rent free
land given to the gowda of the village who rendered services to the state? This
was called gaudikeor gaudakodige. The senabova (Shanbhoga) who assisted
the gowda and belonged to the ruling feudal stratum was also, just like him
given rent free allotments for keeping an account of the produce and taxes paid
by the village. These grants were substantial. The gaudakodige or umbali
granted to these village level feudal functionaries led to the near division of the
entire village between them in case other grants did not intrude. Balagalachuor
amaramgrants were made to the kind of those two (since the time of the
51
Rashtrakutas) died fighting for their lord and had hero stones or viragalserected
the villages in their memory. If the balagalachu was substantial, as for instance,
like the one in the Halmidi epigraph, it created a landlord class; if it was not
large enough it failed to achieve this. Brahmadeyaand Sarvamanyagrants
which included large pieces of land if not entire villages were given to
Brahmana priests on a rent free basis or without having to pay any of the
assigned taxes to the government. In other words the produce that they
obtained from such lands remained entirely at their disposal31
.
Later the appearance of the agraharas was a new phenomenon, the
mathas. The mathas were by far the biggest of religious complexes which
feudalism had created in Karnataka. Coming in the concluding centuries of
early feudalism they remain to this day its most imposing and solid remnants
commemorating to living memory of the power and authority of the Brahmanas
of the past. The mathas were a Brahmana township. They encapsulated not one,
but a host of temples, had ghatikas or institutions to train the initiated in the
ideology of brahminism, in the apparently intricate yet normally meaningless
philosophic abstractions. It was an elaborate complex having to sustain
Brahmanas in hundreds and not just dozens. The needs of the management of
the mathas led to the creation of their own institutions of administration in the
assembly of mahajanas which was independent and for whom no mortal but
only the gods they had themselves lofted were kings.
To sum up, the largest chunk and the best of it belonged to the
Brahmanas. The totality of land under the individual priests, the senabhovas,
the individual temples, agraharas and mathas far surpassed all other land which
was held by the Shudra feudal class serving the secular institutions of society.
Of all the types of landlordism it was, therefore, Brahmana landlordism that
dominated.
52
Tenancy was an institution created by the feudal mode of production. It
was the chief means of agricultural surplus extraction, under its burdensome
compass came the widest section of the peasantry and as a result the tenants
came to be the most numerous class in feudal society. Tenants were tax paying
agriculturists32
.
The class of tenants were tied, attached or bound to the land of the
landlords they tilled. If the kings and feudal lords came to possess kingdoms
and titles over large tracts of agricultural land on account of heredity, this
social right ascribed to a biological process and thereby making it appear as a
natural phenomenon bestowed on the tenant the privilege of being bound to the
same stretch of land from one generation to another under the grinding heel of
the same lineage of masters. This bondage or attachment to a feudal family
called mane vokkalu was the source from which the most numerous caste of
tenants, the Vokkaligas33
.
RS Sharma says: ―There are some indications that from the Gupta
period the number of slaves engaged in production declined, and the sudras
became increasingly free from the obligation to serve as slaves‖34
. Nandi says
―The growing scope of forced labour reduced the purchase and maintenance of
slaves for working in the fields and on crafts uneconomic. Till the beginning of
the Christian era, and till perhaps a little later, slaves supplied an important part
of the agricultural and industrial labour force. But the growing scope of forced
labour together with the corresponding degradation of essential sudra producers
to the position of untouchables who could be readily subjected to such forced
unpaid service precluded the necessity of purchasing and maintaining slaves‖35
.
Feudalism released the main body of Shudras and caused them to serve as
bonded tenants, it did everything in its power to retain the advantages of
helotage by transforming a fair body of the Shudra helots into bonded
labourers. The bonded labourers and bonded tenants together constituted the
53
principal classes that partook in agricultural production. Together, they made
up from anywhere between 80% to 85% of the population36
. The status of the
service and artisan castes was similar to that of the bonded tenants. Later the
caste system was gained prominence in the society.
The first reference to caste or jati comes from the time of the Buddha in
the sixth century BC and thus coincides with the period of rise of classes.
Endogamy is a feature which lies at the foundation of caste. Without endogamy
caste loses its identity and thereby its existence. All societies under primitive
communism, whether they be hunting-food gathering or pastoral-primitive
agricultural, are organized along endogamous communities called tribes, and
each tribe in turn has exogamous clans or ganas or gotras or as in Kannada,
balis. The emergence of class society implies an internal rupture within tribes
of slaves and slave holders, exploiters and exploited. The varna division had for
instance taken place originally within the Indo-Aryans. Subsequently the other
Dravidian tribes were brought under its sway. Thus the emergence of class
society led to a vast churning which saw the breakup of tribes and clans of the
period of tribal oligarchy and the transformation of a society
compartmentalised along tribal divisions into a class society where these
divisions had been ruptured internally or where entire tribes became a part of
the Shudrahelotage or Vis. Thus the emergence of classes in India which
destroyed the primitive communist mode of production of tribal society did so
by retaining endogamy which was a tribal social feature. In other words classes
were deposited with endogamy, they became endogamous classes, or in other
words to use the appropriate equivalent word—castes.
Saki summed up that, without the least doubt that caste which is
endogamous class draws its distinguishing feature of endogamy from the tribal
structure of the previous mode of production. Closely related to endogamy and
originating from it, we know that all tribes used excommunication from the
54
tribe as one of the highest penalties upon an erring member and conversely also
had initiation rites for taking member of other tribes into their own. In fact both
these customs were carried intact along with clan exogamy—all of which
rested on tribal endogamy—into the new social order37
.
By land grants, the new settlements of landlords tended to first strike at
the original economic resources of the tribe. Either they lost their agricultural
land or they had to forsake their pasture lands and hunting grounds or foraging
territories. The land-man ratio for pre-plough agricultural societies is highly
disproportionate and even the slightest disturbance of it only begins to eat into
their mode of life. This compelled the tribal‘s to rely on the feudal economy for
part of their sustenance, which brought them closer and closer to the
settlements of the landlord. At the same time those tribes practicing
poducultivation as a result of being elbowed by the feudal encroachers also
came to change their own practice of agriculture. They came to rely on the
Brahmanas in particular for undertaking plough based agriculture and thus they
came to be transferred into a peasantry. Therefore by this process the
independence characteristic of the tribal mode of existence was forsake and
either by violence, loss of their sources of economic survival or simply
dependence on the superior mode of economic production or often by a
combination of all these factors, there was the systematic yet gradual
assimilation that took place of the tribal peoples.
Sharma says ―The conquest of the backward peoples living in the
jungles, forests, etc, by brahmanised princes from agriculturally advanced areas
enormously added to the number and variety of Shudra castes. The suppression
of Sabaras, Bhillas, Pulindas, etc, is referred to in a medieval inscription from
central India. For five hundred years from the 9th century almost all the Deccan
powers fought against the Abhiras, who could not be easily assimilated into the
brahmanical order. An inscription of AD 861 shows that the Prathihara prince
55
Kakkuka destroyed and conquered a village of Abhiras near Jodhpur and
settled it with brahmanas and vaisyas, who were promised safety and
livelihood. A Kalacuri inscription of the 12th century speaks of the deliverance
of the Rattanpur prince Jajjalladeva III from the clutches of a tribal people
called Thirus or Tharus which was celebrated by his donation of a village to
two brahmanas. It is not clear whether this village lay in the Thiru area, but
priests were granted land in many subjugated territories, where they inducted
the indigenous aboriginal tribal peoples into their cultural fold. This process
may have been also peaceful, but peaceful or otherwise it succeeded because of
the superior material culture of the brahmanas who not only taught new scripts,
language and rituals to the preliterate people but also acquainted them with
plough cultivation, new crops, seasons, calendar, preservation of cattle-wealth
etc‖38
. Nandi is also opined the same ―The decline of the market economy
marked a further stage in the development of productive process.... The
subsumption of Varna division by a complex hierarchy of superior and inferior
Jatis also began about this time; with the number of inferior Jatis ever on the
increase‖39
.
The expansion of feudalism created three main classes. One was the
landlord class and the other two were the class of bonded tenants and that of
the bonded labourer, subservient to the first. While feudalism always ensured
what it wanted from these two classes and invariably moulded the various
tribes into these major classes, it allowed within this framework of economic
servitude for a pursuit of economic activity which belonged to their respective
tribal pasts. Thus the hunting tribes were assimilated as tenants and retainers,
fishing tribes served feudalism as fishermen, pastoral sheep rearers became
tenants and shepherds, primitive agriculturists became toddy tapping tenants
and so on.
56
RS Sharma identifies two other such sources that went into the making
of caste. He writes: ―Another significant process which led to the
multiplication of Sudra castes was the transformation of crafts into castes. As
trade and commerce languished in post-Gupta times craft guilds tended to
become stagnant, immobile, more and more hereditary, and more and more
localised. Trades and guilds gradually constituted themselves into closed
exclusive groups resembling castes for all practical purposes. Apararka quotes
Brahaspati to show that heads of guilds may reprimand and condemn wrong-
doers and may also excommunicate them. It seems that naptia, modaka,
tamutika, svarnakara, malakara, sankhakarasutrakara, citrakara etc., who, like
aborigines, are all called mixed castes in medieval texts obviously emerged as
castes out of various crafts‖.40
This is how Sharma identifies the other source of caste formation. He
writes: ―A factor which multiplied the number of castes among both the higher
and lower orders of Hindu society, especially in the Deccan and south India, in
medieval times was their religious affiliation. The parallel between the
multiplication of sects and that of castes in medieval times is very close, and
the former helped the latter. Saivism, Vaisnavism, Buddhism and Jainism—
each one of these religions—proliferated into numerous sects not so much due
to basic differences in doctrines as due to minor differences in rituals and even
in food and dress, which all were sustained by regional practices‖41
.
Untouchable castes also greatly increased in numbers during the period
of early feudalism. Sharma presented the rise of untouchables as ―Most
untouchable castes were backward tribes whose induction into the Hindu
system was accomplished through brahmanisation and through the spread of
Hinduised Buddhism. This can be inferred from Brahmanical texts as well as
from Buddhist caryapadas. The latter refer to the doman, nisadas and their
women-folk and to the Kapalikas, all of whom generally lived on mounds
57
outside the villages and were untouchables for the Brahmanas. Apparently
certain tribal people could not be fully absorbed in Hindu society because of
their being very backward and hence had to be pushed to the position of
untouchables; or possibly those who offered stiff resistance to the process of
conquest and Hinduisation were dispossessed of their lands in the villages and
forced to settle outside. Perhaps this happened to the Kaivartas who were
finally overpowered by the Palas [an early feudal dynasty that ruled over
Bengal] in the 11th century. This may also be true if the Domba tribe, who
appear to be an important people in the Dombipadacarya. Since brahmanisation
took place on a very large scale in early medieval times, the number of
untouchable castes increased substantially. In early times certain varieties of
hunters and artisans were rendered untouchables…‖42
.
RS Sharma says: ―Since his [Manu‘s] list counts as many as 61
[Untouchable] castes, their consolidation in Chapter X [of the Dharmashastra]
seems to have been the work of about the fifth century....The ...[Untouchable]
castes were to be distinguished by their occupation. The candalas, svapakas and
antyavasayins were engaged for executing criminals, and were given clothes,
beds and ornaments. The nisadas lived by fishing, and the medas, andhras,
madgus and cuncus were employed in hunting wild animals. Ksattrs,
ugrasandpukasas are described as engaged in catching and killing animals
living in holes. Apparently all of these were backward aboriginal tribes who
retained their occupations even when they were absorbed in brahmanical
society‖43
.
Irfan Habib remarked: ―Since they [Untouchable castes] were excluded
from taking to agriculture, and their own original or altered occupations were
of minor or seasonal importance, they became a large reservoir of unfree,
servile landless labour available for work at the lowest cost to peasants as well
as superior landholders. It is difficult to avoid the view that the bitter hostility
58
which the rest of the population has displayed for these menialjatis had derived
from this fundamental conflict of interest. Concepts of ‗purity‘ and ‗pollution‘
were a rationalisation of this basic economic fact‖44
. RS Sharma added:
―Against the background of a very low material culture of the aborigines, the
increasing contempt for manual work, combined with primitive ideas of taboo
and impurity associated with certain materials, produced the unique social
phenomenon of untouchability‖45
. To sum up, the untouchability and increase
in untouchables was started since feudalism in Karnataka.
Nandi observes: ―The growth of the feudal economy helped by these
social developments of which high point was marked by the appearance of
bonded field labour and new forms of land control. Just about this time, the
antyajaor untouchable emerged as the fifth rung of the traditional four-vama
hierarchy. The antyajaidea helped the growth of servile labour and was
reinforced by the sanctification of forced labour by legal writers‖46
. Many of
the castes such as Madigas, Holeyas, Dhors, Dakkaligas, Samagar, Bhangis, etc
in Karnataka were untouchable castes. These castes were grouped as Sudras.
3.3. Depressed Classes in Gulbarga District:
The present study is made on socio-economic, political, education and
religious position of depressed classes in Gulbarga district. It is noted that
many of the castes and caste groups stated in Scheduled Caste group are living
in Gulbarga district. For the purpose of the present study, a few classes in
Gulbarga district have chosen as samples. Gulbarga district is located in
northern part of Karnataka and closely attached to the borders of Andhra
Pradesh and Maharashtra. Further, it was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad
state up to 1948. As such, in Gulbarga district, the culture of the castes is
mixture of all the three states.
59
The Hindu community continues to be divided into a number of castes
and sub-castes. ―Scheduled Castes‖ means such castes, races or tribes or parts
of groups within such castes, races or tribes as are deemed under Article 341 of
the Constitution of India to be the Scheduled Castes for the purposes of the
Constitution of India. Among them, Banjaras are, by profession, wandering
grain and salt merchants and, in this capacity, have rendered invaluable
services to the country. Dhors are engaged in tanning, shoe-making and
cobbling. A few of them work as cultivators and agricultural labourers. The
Holeyas are more in Gulbarga district than in Bidar and Raichur districts. This
caste is divided into some endogamous groups. The original occupation of the
Madiga caste is believed to be the skinning of dead animals, leather dressing
and the making of leather ropes, leather buckets for hauling water from wells
and other leather articles used in husbandry. Like the Malas they are field
servants, and supply the farmers with the above articles, for which they get, as
their perquisite, a fixed quantity of grain for each plough. They make shoes of
various kinds, but especially chapals (sandals) of which they produce the best
varieties. Mochi caste is to make shoes and other leather articles such as boxes,
harness, saddles and portmanteaux. In their trade they use the hides of the cow,
bullock, buffalo, deer, sheep and goat. They never dress freshly skinned hides
of any of the animals except the deer, sheep and goat; but purchase them ready
curried from Dhors or Madigas. A section of the leather-workers is also known
as Samagars or Chamagars (these terms are derived from ‗Charmakara‘. the
Sanskrit word for a worker in leather). The leather-workers are mostly
―Vibhutidhads‖. They pay special reverence to the saints Haralayya and
Madara Channayya who were associates of Basaveshvara. During the twelfth
century, Urilinga Peddi, a Harijan disciple of Urilinga Deva of Nanded, was a
popular Sharana; and a Vachanakara at Gulbarga in the latter part of his life.
There is a Matha of Urilinga Peddi at Sedam, of the Gulbarga district and
Harijans are their followers. Waddar caste regards the excavation of stone from
quarries, and working in earth to be their original occupation. They engaged in
60
tank digging, well-sinking, road making, making mill-stones, building mud
walls, filling tank embankments and all kinds of out-door labour. A -few have
taken to agriculture and trading and have secured occupancy rights. At the time
of Basaveshvara, the people of what are now called the Scheduled Castes were
given social status and were welcome into the Veerashaiva fold. Widow
marriage and divorce are customarily permitted among these castes. While
some sections of the Scheduled Castes bury their dead, others cremate. Some
families of the Scheduled Castes have in recent years become followers of
Buddhism.
Position of life among the Harijan castes was until recently very
deplorable, but various ameliorative measures taken have brought about an
improvement. Now there is a new awakening among them and they are
beginning to take their rightful place in the society. The following (whose
population as enumerated in the 1971 Census is mentioned in brackets) have
been recognised as the Scheduled Castes in Gulbarga district: Chambhar