Topic started by ranga (@ 152.158.115.37) on Wed Sep 10 09:45:55 .
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Differences
ANDRE BETEILLE
Andre Beteille, former Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of
Economics, Delhi
IT has become common among statesmen and historians to speak of 'unity
in diversity' with regard to India. To some, this many afford an easy
escape from considering seriously either the nature of unity or of
diversity. In analysing the differences between the cultural regions
in India one does not, of course, commit oneself to a denial of their
fundamental unity. That there are significant elements of continuity
in race and culture between the different regions of India is not
merely a question of ideology, but a historical and scientific fact.
The terms 'Aryan' and 'Dravidian' have generally been used to
emphasise the distinctiveness in both race and culture of the people
of North and South India respectively. This is unfortunate, for both
these terms refer to linguistic categories which may not coincide with
racial or biological categories. Strictly speaking there is no
Dravidian race, although there is a Dravidian family of languages, and
one may even loosely speak of a Dravidian culture. The confusion of
racial and cultural categories has been an unfortunate feature of much
of nineteenth century ethnology. It persists among educated laymen who
continue to speak with confidence about the Dravidian race, if not the
Aryan race.
The concept of race has been critically examined in recent years. Some
anthropologists, like Ashley Montagu, have indeed argued that the
older conception of race as a localized and pure physical type may
have to be jettisoned. Human populations in even fairly small areas
are so diverse, and their patterns of heredity so complex, that it
becomes almost impossible to make any kind of ethno-geographical
classification. Not only is there no such thing as an Aryan race, but
the population of North India is so diverse that it is difficult even
to identify the many physical types that have gone into its
composition. Many physical types have for many generations intermixed
with one another, some coming from outside and others perhaps local to
the soil.
There are, then, no pure physical types either in the North or in the
South, the population of North India being perhaps more mixed than
that of the South. This diversity within each area reduces the
contrast between the two regions, North and South. Thus, although a
Kashmiri, as a physical type, may stand in sharp contrast to an
Andhra, the Bengali, who is North Indian, may be closer racially to
the latter rather than the former. Thus, there are many elements of
continuity between the people of North and South India considered as
racial types. In this regard some North Indian groups may stand closer
to the South Indians than to other groups in North India.
Earlier ethnologists thought of the Aryans and Dravidians as
constituting two distinct and pure physical types. Groups which did
not fit either of these types were explained as being mixtures of the
two. Thus, Risley spoke of the population of Bihar as being
Aryo-Dravidian and the Maharashtrians as being Scytho-Dravidians. The
people of Bengal were, according to Risley, Mongolo-Dravidian. Recent
researches tend to show that these anomalies may not be so easily
accounted for. Diversities within each of the regions and continuities
between them cannot be explained simply in terms of intermarriage
across the border.
Excavations in Harappa and Mohenjodaro have shown that diversities in
the population existed even before the 'Aryan' and 'Dravidian'
cultures had crystallized as such. The skulls from the Indus Valley
sites contain both 'Aryan' and 'Dravidian' types. It should cause
little surprise, therefore, to find in the contemporary population
'Aryan' types in the South and 'Dravidian' types in the North.
The criteria generally used in racial classifications in India are
somatic traits such as skin-colour, hair form, stature, shape of the
head as measured by the cephalic index and form of the nose as given
by the nasal index. Any population that is homogenous and distinctive
in the possession of a number of such traits may be regarded as a
race. As indicated earlier, a race in this sense is an ideal rather
than an existing fact. There is considerable overlap between adjacent
populations, and hardly any group is homogenous with regard to even a
small number of criteria.
Skin-colour is, in general, lighter among North Indians than among
South Indians. But here again there are many exceptions and North
Indians are by no means homogenous in this respect. From the Punjab
through Uttar Pradesh and Bihar into Bengal the colour of the skin
becomes progressively darker. On the other hand, the Saraswat Brahmins
of Mangalore, to take one example, are usually of a fairly light
skin-colour. The average stature also is higher in the North than in
the South, but here again similar exceptions are noted. The Coorgs,
for instance have a higher average stature than the people of Bengal
or Gujarat. South Indians are more commonly dolichocephalic or
long-headed, but there are some notable exceptions. In the North,
long-, medium- and broad-headed populations are found intermixed in
quite a complicated manner. South Indians are usually medium-nosed
(mesorrhine), and this is perhaps true for most North Indians too.
However, the proportion of narrow-nosed (leptorrhine) people is
considerably greater in the North as compared to the South.
Dr. Guha, in his racial classification of India, has divided the
population into six basic types. Of these, the Negrito and the
Pre-Dravidian are to be found mainly in the tribal population. A third
type, the Palae-Mongoloid is confined to tribal and semi-tribal groups
living in the Himalayan foothills. The Nordic type, in its pure form,
is also confined to a small section of the population in the extreme
North. The two remaining types, namely the Mediterraneans and the
Western Brachycephals, account for the remaining bulk of the Indian
population. Each of these again has three sub-types.
The Mediterranean type is of slight build and is characteristically
dolichocephalic or long-headed. The skin-colour varies from dark to
light brown. It is found typically among the people of South India,
although many North Indians also belong to this type. The Western
Brachycephals are, on the other hand, broad-headed, and occur
typically in the population of Maharashtra and Bengal, as also in
other North Indian states. The Coorgs of South India, however, belong
to this group, being both tall and broad-headed. We conclude,
therefore, that no hard and fast lines can be drawn in racial, i.e.,
biological, terms between the peoples of North and South India.
The terms Aryan and Dravidian, as explained above, refer to linguistic
divisions, and there are major differences of language between the
people of North and South India. The North Indian languages, such as
Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati, belong to the Indo-Aryan family
and are related to the modern European languages. The South Indian
languages, such as Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada, belong to the
Dravidian family. The North Indian languages are inflectional in
nature whereas the South Indian languages are agglutinative. The
formation of words is based upon different principles in the two
groups of languages.
However, in language also there are many common elements between the
people of North and South India. English has been the language of
higher learning in both divisions of the country for almost a hundred
years. More important than this, the influence of Sanskrit has acted,
although unequally, over both North and South Indian languages. All
South Indian languages, including Tamil, have a substantial stock of
words derived from Sanskrit. Telugu and Kannada are heavily
Sanskritised in their vocabulary, and the copiousness of Sanskritic
words is an index of a high-flown and literary style in these, as in
so many North Indian languages.
Attempts have been made from time to time to prepare maps of cultural
zones in India. These maps show the distribution of culture traits -
mainly traits of material culture - throughout the country. In such
distribution maps the primary division tends to be between North and
South, although the culture zones do not coincide exactly with
geographical divisions. Items of dress and diet vary between North and
South, although such marginal areas as Bengal and Maharashtra tend, as
often as not, to share features of South Indian material culture. An
interesting account of variations in material traits is to be found in
N.K. Bose's paper on Culture Zones in India.
It may be pointed out here that regional variations have also been
corroborated to a certain extent by the findings of archaeology. In
the Palaeolithic period, the hand-axe culture was concentrated in the
South, and important sites have been discovered in Madras and
Mayurbhanj. The Soan Valley sites in the Punjab show, on the other
hand, an entirely different cultural type, namely, the flake and
pebble complex. Neolithic tools again are found in East and South
India and are largely absent in the North and West. These differences,
of course, may be of little or no significance to the present-day
distribution of cultures.
Many of the cultural differences between North and South India have
been attributed to the differential impact of Muslim rule. Muslim
dynasties ruled in North India continuously for more than five hundred
years and Muslim culture influenced local ways of living in many
important respects. Muslim influence came later in the South and was
on the whole much more superficial. It is on these grounds that some
have claimed that South Indian culture has preserved in a more pure
and pristine form the traditional Hindu ways of living.
These differences are expressed perhaps most strikingly in the
architecture of North and South India. The most impressive examples of
North Indian architecture are the monuments created by the Muslims. No
doubt these were influenced in varying degrees by Hindu styles, but
they are basically Islamic in expression. Even Hindu architecture in
the North, as Professor Kabir shows in The Indian Heritage, reveals
the influence of Muslim styles. The temples of South India, on the
other hand, belong to an entirely different tradition. They contrast
with North Indian mosques and mausolea in their absence of domes and
in their rich and elaborate ornamentation.
Muslim influence is also alleged to have affected differentially the
social organization of the people of North and South India. The
greater rigidity of caste in South India, and the importance of
purity-pollution concepts, have been attributed by some to the absence
of a strong and lasting Muslim influence. There are, however, a number
of other facts which appear to be responsible for these differences.
The different types of castes which have been dominant in the
different areas may be one of the factors to be taken into account.
Throughout South India, and particularly in Madras and Mysore, castes
are divided into three groups, viz., Brahmins, Non-Brahmins and
Untouchables. This division serves to highlight the unique position of
the Brahmin, and his social importance. In North India, the Brahmin is
not to the same extent separated from the rest of the population, and
his position appears to be not quite as unique. Social anthropologists
have noticed the importance of secular criteria of caste dominance in
North India in contrast to ritual criteria which appear to be more
important in the South. This might indicate a significant cultural
difference between the two regions which will have to be investigated
in greater detail.
Castes in all parts of India are endogamous or inmarrying. However,
differences in marriage rules lead to differences in kinship
alignments between North and South India. In North India, marriage is
generally not allowed between persons who are closely related to each
other. In South India, the opposite is the case and preferential
kin-marriage is a widespread phenomenon. Marriage with the mother's
brother's daughter or the elder sister's daughter is practiced by most
of the castes of South India. This leads to the fact that one's
relations by blood and by marriage happen to be the same. Thus, there
are many ties of kinship and affinity between the same set of persons
in South Indian society. It is in this connection that Mrs Karve has
contrasted the close-knit kinship system of South India with the
ramifying system of the North.
Within the scope of a brief article it is possible to indicate
differences between North and South India in only a broad and limited
way. No doubt there are innumerable details not touched upon here
which express the diversity of Indian culture. Variations in detail
can be pointed out between adjacent districts, not to speak of such
large geographical divisions as North and South India. But it must be
repeated that these differences in culture and social organization do
not by any means completely mask the many elements of continuity
between the different regions of India.
Village life shows broadly similar features everywhere in India. The
distinctiveness of the Indian village community has become almost
proverbial. Without emphasizing too much this distinctiveness, one can
say that it does provide a common way of living and a common outlook
on life to the rural people of India as a whole. The vertical unity of
the village cuts across the horizontal unity of caste in broadly
similar ways in every part of the country. The joint family and wider
kinship groups affect similarly the lives of people in every region.
The broad framework of caste is the same throughout India. Caste-wise
division of labour was a characteristic of Indian society as a whole
and still forms an important feature of India's rural economy. The
varna scheme provide everywhere an ideal model for the ranking of
castes. There are similarities not only in the hierarchy of caste, but
also in patterns of caste mobility. Sanskritisation and Westernisation
are means for enhancing the status of a caste in the North as much as
in the South.
The Brahmins, as agents of Sanskritic learning, have provided a common
framework of values throughout India. The same ideas of dharma, karma
and samsara operate in North as well as South India. The epics and the
Puranic legends, the many temples and centres of pilgrimage have all
contributed to build up a Great Tradition that has a truly all-India
character.
British rule created new conditions for the unity of India. It brought
together effectively, under a single administration, the entire
population of the country. With its railways and postal and
telegraphic system, new conditions of mobility were created; this led
to an interchange of people and ideas on a scale that was perhaps
unprecedented. The rise of nationalism was partly based upon these
conditions, and already in the nineteenth century people had become
conscious of the unity of India as a political necessity.
ANDRE BETEILLE
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