Abstract
The Tamil Brahmans (literally meaning ‘Tamil-speaking Brahmans’) constitute one of the small groups in India. Almost a quarter of all Tamil Brahmans are settled outside Tamil Nadu, in other parts of India and overseas (p. 6). They are segmented into larger sections and further divided into smaller ones, with endogamy followed at the levels of these sections and subsections, for which the term jāti is almost ubiquitously used (p. 6). However, when looked at from outside, they constitute a monolithic group, as if they were ‘one caste’. As is well known, the identity of a caste is understood in juxtaposition with other such categories, the same could be said of the Tamil Brahmans; their contrast is with the other similarly heterogeneous categories, Non-Brahmans and Adi Dravida, each comprising a myriad of jātis. Indubitably, the system is highly complex, with the groups being segmented into smaller groups in ‘relations of opposition and equivalence’ to recall words from the segmentary theory (Evans-Pritchard 1940). There are castes within castes, having ceaseless and unresolvable disputes about their respective statuses. Against this backdrop, whether the Tamil Brahmans can be termed ‘a caste’ or a ‘cluster of castes’, which acquires an ‘animated identity’ in opposition to other similar groups, is an interesting question challenging established theories on the abstract or concrete reality of caste.
In India, so much emphasis is laid on the study of the subaltern, the marginalised, the tribal and peasants that the study of the affluent, elite, power holders and decision-makers is hardly taken up. The answer usually given is that the dominant groups are impervious to study. This book, however, is an exception. Written by C.J. Fuller, the reputed scholar of South Indian anthropology, and Haripriya Narasimhan, it is about the transformation of Tamil Brahmans over a length of time when they have become one of the leading middle classes (especially upper-middle classes) of India and have comfortably moved into a galaxy of new and professional jobs, in India and abroad, which has made them upwardly and geographically mobile. They have conveniently bent and transcended the rules of purity and pollution, without incurring any serious opprobrium, to adapt to new occupations such as in medicine and engineering (pp. 71–72), and the norms of travelling abroad to ‘non-vegetarian worlds’. Their community has easily learnt the maxim: ‘When in Rome, behave as Romans do’ and thus have adjusted to all situations smoothly. In this way, they have become the harbingers of modernity, thus blurring the distinction between caste and middle class.
Against this ethnographic and historical background, a central argument here is that ‘Tamil Brahmans have become a middle-class caste’ (p. 17) and are one of the prominent ‘representatives of modernity’ (p. 228). This is not only what the anthropologists have found out from their studies, but unsurprisingly, the highly reflective Tamil Brahmans consider themselves the creators of the middle-class and upper-middle class values and lifestyles; thus, one may propose an ‘isomorphism of Tamil Brahmanhood and upper-middle classness’ (p. 17). Following Max Weber, the Tamil Brahmans may be said to be both ‘social class’ and ‘status group’.
Needless to say, in much of Indian sociology, castes and classes are regarded as opposite principles: one based on the ‘system of consumption’ and the other on the ‘system of production’. Caste is a ‘status group’, defined in terms of a set of symbols, transmitted over generations, consumed and displayed collectively, which decide its position in a hierarchical order. By contrast, class, an open system of stratification, has an economic referent. Status and economy, following the works of many Indologists, have been viewed in a matrix of tension, almost irreconcilable. In this stream of thought, the Brahman is viewed as ‘flagrantly poor’, to recapitulate Madeleine Biardeau, but spiritually exalted.
An outcome of this thinking was (and is) that the studies of caste and class were (and are) conducted separately, without exploring the possibility that classes exist in caste and castes in classes. Caste and classes are heuristic categories; in reality, great fluidity and interpenetration exist between status and economy, the systems of production and consumption. This is what the book convincingly argues while submitting that ‘social class’ is also a ‘status group’. Middle class is more a ‘way of living’, a cultural category than just an economic stratum. Also, not to forget, in common parlance, the term ‘middle class’ (or ‘middle-class mentality’) is used pejoratively for a style of living and aggregation of values that the upper classes loathe. One of my respondents once told me: ‘Kitty party is totally middle-class!’
The book is divided into seven chapters with an appendix on the demography of Tamil Brahmans. The first chapter delineates the conditions that led the Tamil Brahmans to migrate from villages to urban areas and to eventually sell their agricultural land. The Brahman landlords abstained from actual cultivation. The manifest reason they gave was religious, for ploughing meant destruction of the organic life in soil, an activity incurring loads of sin. An important reason throughout India has been that upper castes have considered manual work as demeaning and status lowering (pp. 49–50). Thus, they leased out their land to Non-Brahmans, enjoying the privileges of absentee landlords, sending out their children, particularly male, to towns and cities for education and then encouraging them to take up employment therein and settle down for good. The case of Satyamurti Aiyer, with which the book opens, is a typical example of the migration of Tamil Brahmans. The book explores the changes in the position of women among them and the continuation of gender inequality, notwithstanding their modernity (p. 151). The role of Brahmans as ‘custodians of Sanskritic Hinduism’ has been examined with respect to their contribution to religion, music and dance (p. 209), although now many would not like to take up temple and domestic priesthood as an occupation.
Lastly, most of the jointly written books do not let their readers know the specific contributions of each of the authors. This book is an exception. It succinctly describes the collaboration between an ‘insider’ (Narasimhan) and an ‘outsider’ (Fuller). Fieldwork was largely done by Narasimhan who spent time in a Vattima village for about six months. She also conducted semi-structured interviews with people in their offices and homes almost for one year, and also visited several American cities, speaking to the Tamil Brahman professionals. In these visits, sometimes Fuller also accompanied her, but he largely did the library and archival work and also wrote up the text of the book. The merits of the collaborative research between one brought up locally and the other a foreigner, although one who has studied South India for decades, are clear in this work, which is eminently readable and scholarly.