Sanskritization, de-Sanskritization and Colonial Rule

naqshbandi#1:

I was surprised to read that post since you are generally well-informed.

``Excuse my ignorance but aren`t the Laws of Manu responsible? The British in fact were the ones who outlawed many of the more obscene aspects of the caste system.``

Believe me, most of us were completely innocence of any knowledge of Manu or his Samriti. The rumour has it that the British dug it from obscurity to find the basis for a Hindu personal law. Some of the more colourful quotes from that book were actually learnt by me only at chowk.

``Buddhism developed as a reaction to the caste sytem``

That`s a common misinformation. Buddhism developed because Budhha sought individual enlightenment, he was never concerned about the social stratification. Could you please give any quotations from Buddha where he speaks against the caste system per se?

nauman:
Urdu`s official status is quite assured and it is one of the sixteen national languages of India. Its downward spiral is due to the lack of its utility in economic pursuits. Most of the roads in Delhi, even the newer ones, have Urdu signs.

And works of Ghalib and other poets are freely available in Devnagri script on the footpaths of Delhi.

The article presents some well-known facts, which may nonetheless be not known to a large number of chowk readers. I am not sure if the process of desanskritisation has ended. I agree with Jang`s observations.

I think that a more interesting phenomenon has been the ``broadbanding`` of castes and subcastes in recent times. My mother could not have married outside a band of about twelve khatri subcastes. I could have been married to any khatri and, if bold, even Aroras. My younger brother could have married any khatri or arora. My nephews and nieces are marrying outside their castes and region and even religion. However, marriage with a dalit caste is still very very rare.

Re: # 6
Sonny read my reply. Your question is answered therein.

Karen Armstrong is in my opinion a vacillating twit.

the author refered to shivajis marathas who ``raised`` their caste from kunbis (kurmis or peasants) to kshatriya. indeed, his father was not considered kshatriya by his peers. one of shahjis wife came from Jadhav clan, claimant to the Yadav lineage of Deogiri..this was a forced marriage arranged by adhmednagar shah to contain infighting among his mansabdars. later, during shivajis time, not only the kurmis became khatriyas but two more mutton-eating castes, the kayasthas and the landed gauda-saraswats started doing the thread-ceremony to their children. (i dont think the gaudas of karnatak do this, only those from konkan do).

but sanskritization is definately still on in ``cultural`` behavior...just look at names of madrasis like Ramesh, Vijay etc. such names were unheard of fifty years back..i heard rumors that even bhindi bazar and kashmir kids want to be named ``Rohit`` and ``Neha``

I am afraid the only real point this article makes is that the caste-system was flexible in olden times but has become rigid in the modern times. However, this is a dangerous generalisation that the author has attempted. The title of the article is misleading and has no real relevance to the author`s main thesis.

I may remark that ``Sanskritisation` and `de-Sanskritisation` were real historical developments in the evolution of South Indian languages. (The author may not know it). In the first millennium, Sanskrit words sneaked into the pristine Tamil language over centuries and that kind of process later on happened in respect of Malayalam, Kannada etc. At one point of time, more than a thousand years ago, a sort of compromised Tamil language was used called MANIPRAVALAM (meaning mani, pearl, that is sanskrit, conjoined with pravalam, namely coral, standing for pure Tamil). The dravidian movements in Tamil Nadu in the last century aimed at de-sanskritization of Tamil which had many sanskrit-derived words. The author`s title to the article, in the light of such facts, is hopelessly misleading. In fact castes have nothing to do with sanskrit as such, barring the religious texts as a whole where the brahmin alone would have been relevant.

V.S.Gopalakrishnan

What a half-assed article. ``This article is not going to go into the pros or cons of the Mandal report but rather the impact of the same.`` `` The aim of the article is not to question whether or not caste-based reservations should have been implemented in India.``

Stating the obvious it seems is a fine art these days...

I meant - ``If she just wants to lecture, I say, screw her``

Re:ahmedmadani#13
Madaniji, I think it is plain rude to publish long winded articles with strong opinions in them, while ignoring all interacts from people. I mean, what is the point of it? Does she want to give a lecture or have a discussion? If she just wants to lecture, I saw screw her.

British were over there, that`s one reason Indians are over here.


Changing places
Where immigrants to the UK come from
1 India 92,000
2 Australia 78,000
3 Poland 69,000
4 South Africa 63,000
5 US 50,000
6 China 49,000
7 Pakistan 46,000
8 Germany 43,000
9 France 28,000
10 New Zealand 27,000
11 Spain 27,000
12 Philippines 20,000
13 Nigeria 19,000
14 Japan 17,000
15 Bangladesh 17,000
Where British citizens choose to emigrate
1 Australia 71,000
2 Spain 58,000
3 France 42,000
4 New Zealand 30,000
5 US 25,000
6 Canada 17,000
7 Netherlands 8,000
8 UAE 7,000
9 Germany 6,000
10 South Africa 6,000
Source: ONS 2004-05

13 ahmedmadani,

U are right. The spelling shud be Sanskrut or more accurately Sanskrutam. These words were `donated` by Britishers to us.

Singapore shud be Singapuram. Malaysia, Indonesia were the names given by Britishers. Thailand is not the real name of the country. Japan`s asli name is Nippon. Many countries in Africa were `named` by colonisers.

As 4 the rest of ur post...LOL.

Re: #7, 8
I checked spelling it is Sanskrut but here used as Sanskrit. Wonder which is correct pronounciation ?
Now Ranjitji you may be from IIT college but according to UNO only institution of higher learning and international stature is mentioned as J . Nehru Univ. It appears all Indians politicians children go there to learn. Does Sanjay , Rajiv or Rahul Gandhi or children of big people go there so future leaders and thinker and social scientist and political scientists of india are being groomed. Present nepali rebel leader was trained at JNU. Now you exindians are not bad. But if you right letter to your pM you do not expect answer. Same way Ms.Pande does not want to answer and waste her time. You mortal should feel preveliged to reads words. Future indian children may have chance to read her selected works. Newton never answer quaries from farmers.
To expect response from write means to believe in miracles. ( Old times miracles happened not now days)

I read some of the books of M.N.Srinivas and what really struck me was the Caste is a ``permanent`` entity that even survives the change of religion- atleast to some generations. Also , there have ben movement across varna with caste/communities or parts of them moving across varna. I read ``Chachanama`` some time back and found that the Kshatriya king Dahar was actually a brahmin who got involved with the queen and became a king and his ascetic relatives abandoned him. So there does appear to be some truth in Srinivas` writings that the varna is a theoratical construct and the caste is a much permanent feature of the hindoo society. `Sankritization` is like Pakistan`s `Arabianization` which serves as a reference for societies trying to search for its` identity in the modern world.

#2

do they mix hubris and distribute it in the municipal water supply in Pakistan?

After reading Aparna Pande`s crap on Chowk, I understand why my father-in-law called all American PhD degrees of his generation complete crap! His opinion seems to have continued validity!

Yes, the Nadars of Tamil Nadu have attempted to improve the standing of their caste but the British most certainly didn`t help them along. When the Nadars petitioned to be allowed entry into the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, the Madras High Court (of the 1880s, consisting of Englishmen as Justices) tartly observed that the Nadars historically haven`t had the right of entry into that temple; that they have temples to their own gods and goddesses to which they are denying entry to the Scheduled Castes; and so, they could bloody well lump it and should stay out of the Meenakshi Temple.

It took Sri Vaidyanatha Iyer of Madurai, a leader in the Congress Party, to spearhead the entry of all people into temples and it was the efforts of the Brahmin leadership of the Congress that got these idiots the right to enter Meenakshi Temple or any other temple in India, a grave mistake in my opinion.

A good example of de-Sanskritisation by a Nadar would be the living together without the benefit of the clergy by one Rajathi Ammal who has been co-habiting with Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion and bore him a daughter, Kanimozhi, out of wedlock. Considering that such behavior was tolerated only from the Devadasi community, it is indeed a great step backward by a Nadar woman, who would normally have ranked herself well above a Devadasi, to have come down to that level.

Ref nauman72 #2

[I am glad that I read this article because from its name “Sanskritization” I thought it has something to do with the Sanskritization of Urdu language.]

You were mistaken before you read the article and your comments show that you remain mistaken.

``Sanskrit`` means refined, ``Urdu`` means language of the army camps. There is no way Urdu can be Sanskritized. So have no fear on that account.

[While having a conversation with an Indian friend she asked me that she loves Faiz and can I recommend some good translation of his works? I responded that why don’t you read “Nuskha-hai-Wafa” in original Urdu or Hindi? She told me that she cannot read Urdu/Hindi in Arabic script because she can only understand English and Sanskrit alphabet.]

You may think that Urdu/Hindustani/Hindi must be written in Urdu script for it to be comprehensible. It can be written in the script of the Hindi language (called Devanagari). Just as Taiwanese students read Shakespeare written in Chinese characters but in the English language. Several Hindi advertisements and slogans in India are now written in the Roman script so that people who can`t read Devanagari can still read them. Language is different from the script employed to write the language with.

[Then it occurred to me that probably after independence (or before?) the Indian government has changed the alphabet from Arabic to Sanskrit.]

Nope. Once the pesky Muslims left East Punjab, the Punjabis figured there weren`t enough Urdu-reading customers for them to continue using the Urdu script for the Punjabi language. So they dumped it in favor of Gurmukhi and Devanagari scripts. The Government still caters to the Urdu-speaking population. Just go to Allahabad or Varanasi and you will notice that the railway station names are written in Urdu also.

[Majority of the people of India belong to Hindu civilization and they probably want to revive their ancient civilization. Therefore my objection to this change of alphabet will be undemocratic, but from my perspective it’s a pity that most Indians now can’t read the original works of Ghalib and Faiz. Translations can convey the meaning and substance in prose but poetry is mostly about words and if you change the letter, the beauty of words is lost.]

If those works are published in the Devanagari script, no translation is needed for North Indians to understand them. As to the rest of Indians, nope, we don`t speak Urdu or Hindi and we are happy speaking Java and C++.

This bihari chick keeps writing useless articles for chowk and doesnt even bother to interact on them. Why should anyone bother about her bihari BS?