Caste consciousness permeates our cultural practices. It’s rooted in our individual and social make-up to the extent that now it is an integral part of our individual and collective life. Anything that operates at subconscious level is stronger and more stubborn than one’s consciously held views or articles of faith.

What emerges from the subconscious of our people is what famously defines Indian psyche; caste distinctions. The phenomenon is undeniably found across all the diverse communities of Punjab, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian which otherwise have irreconcilable religious differences. This happens despite the fact that historically our land of seven rivers has never observed caste rules the way the upper caste Hindus in the Ganga Valley do. Upward mobility was a social and economic goal facilitated by less or non-restrictions on the change of profession. Compulsion to adopt hereditary profession has been one of the demands dictated by the Aryan social structure based on caste hierarchy.

Malti J Shendge writes in her book The Civilized Demons that a Brahmin from the east who visited our homeland in ancient times wrote: “Having become brahmins ones, a balhika becomes Kshatriya, then (he became) vaisha, shudra, and even a barber. Having become barber, he again became a brahmin and having become a twice born, he became a dasa. In the same family one becomes Brahmin and the rest followed other professions. Gandharas, Madarakas and Balhikas are utterly thoughtless.”

Remember the people of Punjab were thought to be ‘utterly thoughtless’ because their communities did not strictly observe the caste rules which defined the caste of a person by his birth and he was bound to follow the profession of his family. In Punjab, a Brahman could be even a menial or retainer of an aristocratic family as is shown by Damodar Gulati in his composition of Heer and Hafiz Barkhurdar in his tale ‘Qissa Sahiban’.

This was perhaps one of the reasons that Punjab converted to Buddhism which defied caste system and challenged the cultural and literary hegemony of Brahmanism. But it did not mean that caste system was completely erased from our collective memory. It didn’t happen even after the emergence of Islam - that spread from the eighth century onward in our region. It gained momentum in the wake of bloody invasions of Mahmood of Ghazna, a Turk, in the tenth and the early 11th century.

Sikhs, the followers of a new faith, began to make their presence felt in the 16th century. Muslims and Sikhs debunk the notion of caste and theoretically at least believe in human equality. But like others they don’t practice what they believe or preach.

In the West Punjab, Christians (bulk of them came from the so-called low castes), Valmikis and other low caste Hindus are routinely discriminated against. These hapless groups are always in double jeopardy; they are economically, socially and culturally punished for their caste as well as for their class. It needs to be researched whether it was their so-called low caste that pushed them into a lower class or it was their class position that condemned them to a lower caste status in the social hierarchy. But one thing is certain; the real reasons for their mistreatment are different from the apparent ones. People generally claim that such groups are discriminated against for their religious beliefs. The claim cannot stand scrutiny. The main reason, hidden and not so hidden, is age-old caste prejudice carried over into the present. The caste consciousness has its origins in the differences of skin colours of diverse racial and ethnic groups that fought for supremacy in the land of seven rivers way back in time. The conflict still smoulders on in some form or other.

Muslim Punjabis generally don’t interact with Christians and Hindus on equal footing citing religious differences. What actually prompts such an attitude is the caste factor. A lot of Hindus and Christians in our part of Punjab are perceived to have inherited low caste status and that’s what deters Punjabi Muslims who otherwise tout the Islamic notion of human equality to accept them as their equal. Equality is a far cry. They even refuse to share food with them despite the belief that Christians are the ‘People of the Book’. In most cases they are not allowed even to touch the Muslims’ kitchenware. What is feared is the polluting touch of a person from low caste. This is the very treatment these Muslims got at the hands of upper caste Hindus in the pre-Partition era. But it’s interesting to note that we can observe a bonhomie between them and upper class Hindus and Christians who are socially and culturally accepted because of their class position. It is presumed that such successful non-Muslims cannot be from lower castes because the chances of climbing up the social ladder for low castes are extremely dim as the socio-economic forces in the system arrayed against them perennially stem their upward social mobility.

The situation in the East Punjab isn’t much different. The Mazhabi Sikhs are a sizable minority over there who are a deprived lot. These are the people from the Dalit background who converted to Sikhism. They are included in the list of scheduled castes in India. Valmikis are lumped together with the Mazhabis. Discrimination is so rampant that Jat caste, dominant in East Punjab, has almost made Sikh religion synonymous with ‘Jatism (making a fetish of Jat) which is reflected in all walks of their life. So much so that even literature and music are not free from such a malady.

Interestingly, Baba Guru Nanak, the pioneer of Sikh religion, was neither a Jat nor he endorsed caste worship in any way. He, on the contrary, vociferously opposed the caste system and decried its dehumanising effects.

To sum up, culture with its deep penetration is more powerful than faith. Multiple changes of faith in our homeland have not been able to put an end to the curse of caste we are inflicted with. No change of faith has helped the traditional lower castes either. Caste and class together wreak havoc with human potential; they dehumanise both the oppressor and the oppressed making them horribly less than what they would be in equitable social structures. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2024