Castes of Crime

With the appointment of Nicholas Dirks as the new chancellor of UC Berkeley, I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, something that comes up whenever we show our film, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!. During post-film discussions, people often ask about why it is that when the actors (the members of Budhan Theatre, who, along with their families, are the subjects of our film) introduce themselves they use “Chhara” as a surname: “Dakxin Chhara,” “Sandeep Chhara,” “Kalpana Chhara,” etc. We explain that this is not their real last name, but more of an affirmation of their formerly stigmatized identity. Having been labeled by the British as a “Criminal Tribe” in 1933, the members of Budhan Theatre now proudly declare that they are “born actors” not “born criminals.” But this naturally leads to the next question: are the Chharas are a “caste”? This is where Nick Dirks comes in, because to answer it requires understanding a little bit about the history of caste in India.

One of Dirks’ most important books is Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India in which he argues that India’s contemporary caste system was largely a colonial invention. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t something called caste before colonialism, just that caste in its present form was shaped by the colonial process. Nor was this shaping of caste purely a top-down matter, but something that happened through a process that heavily involved the Indian people themselves. Both the Brahmins who worked closely with the British to encode the caste system in the new bureaucracy, as well as the ordinary people, many of whom organized politically to ensure that their caste status was listed favorably in the census. While the “invented” nature of caste is still a matter of considerable academic debate, much of the debate is over how extensive and how formalized caste was in pre-colonial India. Most scholars accept Dirks’ argument that caste was profoundly altered as a result of the colonial encounter. (Well, OK, maybe some of his detractors wouldn’t use the word “profound”…)

Where this connects with the history of “Criminal Tribes” (now known as “Denotified and Nomadic Tribes” or DNTs) is with the following account from his book:

In southern India there was a small Tamil kingdom known as Pudukkottai. The kings of Pudukkottai during the Thondaiman dynasty were from a group known as “Kallars.” The Kallars came to power by aiding the East India Company in the Polygar Wars which ended in 1801. According to Dirks, the Kallars were described as criminals in early Tamil literature. They also came to be listed as a “Criminal Tribe” under the Criminal Tribes Act. But in Pudukkottai they came to be listed as a “royal caste” as a result of their role in helping the British. For Dirks, the fact that the Kallar where low-status elsewhere in the South, but considered kings in Pudukkottai illustrates “the extent to which the political fortunes of particular groups were crucial in shaping both the nature of their own social formation and the ways in which they were situated within a larger set of social relations.”

In the 1920s the British started putting “Criminal Tribes” into labor camps under the pretense of “reforming” them. The program was started by the Salvation Army, but the camp that the Chhara were put in was run by the Bombay Presidency. The Chhara, like others placed in the camps, had been nomads before being placed in the camps, and their time in the camps seems to have successfully erased most of their memories of their earlier, nomadic, lifestyle. As a result, it is very hard to get a straight answer about who the Chhara were before they were in the camps. We handle this in the film with a montage of multiple, conflicting, oral narratives. On the one hand, we interview an old man who says that the Chhara were members of the Kshatriyas (warrior) caste. Many DNTs make similar claims. But we also interview journalist and DNT activist Roxy Gagdekar who argues that Chharas were never part of the caste system. He says they were animists who worshipped earth, sun, water, and wind spirits in the form of stone deities they carried with them. Roxy’s family still has such stones in their family alter. Modern day Chhara have an eclectic set of practices which include the worship of Sufi saints and Hindu gods, although lately some members of the community have renounced all but the Hindu gods as a result of influence from Hindu fundamentalist groups.

So, if the Chhara are not a “caste,” how did they come to be seen as “born criminals”? To understand this I recommend reading this Slate article which was posted on Halloween, about the link between Dracula and the science of eugenics:

When Bram Stoker wrote the novel Dracula in 1897, people were in a panic about crime. They had difficulty understanding why—in an era blessed with prosperous empires, flourishing arts and sciences, and a burgeoning consumer culture—crime rates were rising throughout Europe and the United States. For answers they turned to science, itself one of the glories of the Victorian age.

One popular theory, devised by the Italian psychologist Cesare Lombroso, was that criminals were born that way. Lombroso spent his career searching for the roots of criminal behavior, interviewing and examining thousands of living criminals and dissecting the brains of thousands who had been executed. One gloomy day in December 1871, he found what he was looking for. He was conducting an autopsy of the notorious robber Giuseppe Villella when he noticed an unusual malformation: a small hollow at the base of the skull under which was an enlarged portion of the spinal cord. He had never seen this before in human beings, only lower animals and certain “inferior races.”

… All this led Lombroso to suggest the existence of a kind of a subspecies of human, which he called “Criminal Man." Possessed of congenitally criminal brains, these creatures roamed the modern world like savages misplaced in time, lacking any sense of civilized morality. “Theoretical ethics passes over these diseased brains as oil does over marble, without penetrating it,” wrote Lombroso.

Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. I would argue that, like fingerprinting, the colonial experience shaped what was happening in Europe as well. After all, the Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871, the same year as Lombroso’s “discovery.” One could also trace these beliefs to earlier concerns about the new urban poor, as outlined in Foucault and elsewhere. But the main point is that the concept of a “Criminal Tribe” was very much a colonial invention, based on the modern science of eugenics, and not something easily blamed on the Indian caste system. This is true even if the Chhara are in many ways treated like an undesirable caste in India today.

Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir! will be playing at the International Film Festival of India in Goa at the end of this month. For reviews of the film (including an in-depth review from General Anthropology), see here. If you are interested in buying a copy of the film, or would like a review copy, see here.

For more information about DNTs, see the Savage Minds DNT category archives.

11 thoughts on “Castes of Crime

  1. After all, the Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871, the same year as Lombroso’s “discovery.” One could also trace these beliefs to earlier concerns about the new urban poor, as outlined in Foucault and elsewhere. But the main point is that the concept of a “Criminal Tribe” was very much a colonial invention, based on the modern science of eugenics, and not something easily blamed on the Indian caste system.

    Kerim, you may be on to something here, but the argument as stated is implausible. Why? Because if the Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871, and Lombroso’s discovery was also in 1871, the likelihood that the latter influenced the former is low. Without a clear chain of evidence connecting one event to the other, it seems unlikely that a scholarly discovery by an Italian would have been disseminated quickly enough to affect British policy within the same year.

  2. Lombroso’s discovery was but one step in the larger development of eugenics. I think I make it clear that the influence was likely as much from the colony back to the metropole as the other way around. In fact, I say just that in the sentence you cut off from the beginning of that quote.

  3. Could be. Wasn’t saying that the whole argument was wrong. But, for whatever reason, I read it as stressing the coincidence between the Criminal Tribes Acts and Lombroso’s discovery, and the coincidence, by itself, doesn’t support plausible inference in either direction. The time constraint is the same in both cases. That doesn’t rule out an argument along the lines of Foucault, et al, that the intellectual climate of the time was shifting in a direction receptive to both Lombroso and the Criminal Tribes Act; but, again, more evidence is needed. There’s a lot going on around 1871. The end of the Franco-Prussian War and the unification of Germany, for example. It’s just three years after the Meiji Restoration. And memories of the Paris Commune (1848), the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and the American Civil War (1861-65) are still fresh and raw. A quick leap to direct connection between Lombroso and the Criminal Tribes Act may be a wee bit sloppy.

  4. I read it as stressing the coincidence between the Criminal Tribes Acts and Lombroso’s discovery, and the coincidence, by itself, doesn’t support plausible inference in either direction

    As I say (in the line you left out of the quote): “Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. I would argue that, like fingerprinting, the colonial experience shaped what was happening in Europe as well.”

    A quick leap to direct connection between Lombroso and the Criminal Tribes Act may be a wee bit sloppy.

    Good thing I didn’t do that then 🙂

  5. Caste, of the varna variety, appears in the earliest Indian texts and oral compositions, but jati is a bit different. I don’t see much in ancient India that supports a division into Banias, Thakurs, Jats, etc. That’s the kind of division into ‘caste’ that colonial powers practiced all over the place. Exactly the same thing as the division of Rwanda into Hutus and Tutsis. Untouchability and the division into brahman, ksatriya, vaisya, and sudra goes way back, though, and I’m pretty sure candalas and other untouchables are mentioned in the Arthasastra, which puts the practice reliably before the early first millennium CE and probably before the Mauryan period. Both seem to be pernicious moral problems, with untouchability being a problem even in the south. This has unfortunately taken on a personal edge for me.

    I’ve no idea about the Chharas, but the idea that nomadic or forest-dwelling people would have been part of the brahmanical civilisation of India in any meaningful sense before being forcibly settled by the British appears distinctly unlikely, doesn’t it? I’ll definitely be checking out the film, in any case!

  6. @Al, Thanks. According to Dirks, the vast majority of India’s rural population, whether settled or nomadic, wasn’t really part of “Brahmanical civilization” before colonialism. As I say, this is a heavily debated position, but what Dirks shows is that whatever you call their status before colonialism, the manner of their integration into “Brahmanical civilization” as conceived today was a highly political process shaped (at least in part) by the colonial experience. In that sense, “Criminal Tribe” and “caste” are equally products of colonialism. That there are ancient texts pointing to things like untouchability or criminality should therefore not be seen as giving either greater “authenticity” when discussing their modern forms. An analogous argument might be biblical injunctions against homosexuality. Why do modern day Americans take those seriously, but reject polygamy? Contemporary heteronormativity is better explained by looking at the political economy of post-war America than by studying the Bible. So too with caste – and criminality.

  7. Kavita Philip’s book Civilizing Natures gives an account of how forest dwellers in Inda were categorized as criminal tribes in conjunction with British efforts to cultivate South Indian forests and keep the foragers out. It’s a fascinating read.

  8. Lilly,

    Interesting. It was also a strategy pursued by states in ancient India as well, if the Arthasastra gives any indication. Forcible settlement of forest dwellers and nomads on agricultural land is mentioned in the text as the best option for dealing with them (from the point of view of the state). The consensus is that the text was composed in either early Mauryan times or before, and lots of other equally early texts mention large numbers of tribal peoples inhabiting not only the forested areas in central and southern India but also around the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. So the practice of settling or fighting tribal people seems to have been well-established by the time the British came along. That doesn’t legitimise it, at all, but it does put it in context.

    Kerim,

    That there are ancient texts pointing to things like untouchability or criminality should therefore not be seen as giving either greater “authenticity” when discussing their modern forms.

    Criminality and untouchability are two completely different things. Untouchability is to do with varna – the original form of caste, found not only in India but elsewhere and concerned primarily with purity and ritual rather than ethnicity or origin. The evidence for this comes from a wide range of texts, including all of the Dharmasutras, the Vedas, Upanisads, and more – orally composed, sure, but much older than colonialism. Supposed ‘criminality’ is to do with jati – castes-as-tribes, with judgements like ‘criminality’ amounting to little more than stereotyping rather than an imposed and enforced ritual status. These are very different things. Jati probably was solidified by the British and turned into something different to what it was, using the divisions they created for their own ends.

    Neither form is more legitimate than the other, but one was clearly not introduced by the British. Varna seems to have been in India since the late Bronze Age according to all available evidence, and the fact that the terms – and something like the form – of varna can be found outside of India (Bali, for instance) indicates that varna was present among the people who introduced Indic concepts to southeast Asia (long before the British arrived).

    The issue is complicated by the fact that Indians produced almost no histories until recently – the first history to be written in the entire sub-continent was Kalhana‘s twelfth century CE history of the kings of Kashmir – and not many other texts survive. Those that do were composed orally, and even then only by a small subset of the population – mostly Brahmans – with a different outlook to the rest of the population. So Dirks’ claim is probably impossible to verify. It’s hard to find archaeological or numismatic evidence of caste. But it seems to me that an absolute majority of India’s population has always been under the bootheel of varna, if only because the evidence suggests that it predominated in the most agriculturally-productive and militarily-strongest regions.

    You’re certainly right to point to current conditions for the answer to why Indians behave in caste-bound ways. But just as it would be wrong to ignore the Bible in understanding US homophobia, it would be just as wrong to ignore pre-colonial caste-based social structure in understanding modern caste.

  9. Yes, pre-colonial religion or social structure plays an important role in legitimating the system that emerged under the British, but there were “profound” changes. For one thing:

    it seems to me that an absolute majority of India’s population has always been under the bootheel of varna

    This is exactly what Dirks argues against. I won’t rehash his argument and evidence here. I suggest you read it for yourself. However, he sees this system as previously only governing the lives of a small (mostly upper caste) portion of the population and argues it was generalized to the rest of the population under British rule. The current system, he argues, was not a British invention, but something created together with their upper caste allies, who based it on the system that had governed their lives before Colonialism. This was not true in the same way for the rest of the population. Dirks is quite explicit about this point. I don’t know if he’s changed his position at all since he wrote the book.

  10. I’ll have to read it, then – but it nevertheless seems to be an impossibility, given that caste restrictions are mentioned in all of the earliest extant texts. Certainly Candalas were not ‘high caste’ individuals, and their lives were governed by caste, according to the textual evidence – and there’s really nothing that can contradict the texts on this, nothing that can speak as eloquently on this point. The only other evidence we’ve got comes from archaeology, numismatics, and epigraphy, and that tells us almost nothing about caste in early India. The only thing that can be said is that the texts are biased in favour of a certain view of society, but given no other evidence on the matter, it’s hard to say what is true and what isn’t. The point is unverifiable, because India produced no historiographic tradition comparable to those of China, Europe, or the Arab world.

    I asked a friend (an Indian friend) about Dirks’ book, and she said it applied primarily to south India, not the north, and that it started with the medieval period, not the Iron Age or second urbanisation. So it is entirely possible that we’re really arguing about very different things, and it does seem plausible to me that caste – very much a north Indian phenomenon, at least in its origins – only truly permeated south India under European rule. But that’s very different to the claim that the majority of Indians lived outside of caste.

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