Examination of the British Empire’s Impact on the Indian Caste System

Cooper Smith
HIST 300
05/03/2020
 1854 saw the emergence of a novel crime in the British Raj: Cattle Poisoning. The

“scourge” of poisonings was first noticed by George Campbell, a British magistrate, who also

claimed to have single handedly uncovered an extensive crime network that existed, solely, to

poison cattle. Campbell concluded that the poisonings were being conducted by the Chamar, the

second largest caste in India, population 10,351,469.1 Campbell’s assertion implicates all ten-

million Chamar in the crime of cattle poisoning — a crime that was only ever reported in

individual cases with the “general feeling” that one case was evidence enough of “many

undetected cases.” Campbell’s “investigation” led to the solidification of the Chamar people’s

identity as cattle poisoners, a reputation that would further harm them with the passing of the

Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, which made the Chamar’s criminal reputation law.2 This kind of

behavior would become standard procedure for the British as they continued to utilize the Indian

caste system to categorize the population along misunderstood, and often contrived, ethnic lines.

In the case of the Chamar, British colonial officers seeking personal fame, namely George

Campbell, implicated over ten million people in a crime that all officials records say did not

happen.

This labeling and categorization occurred as a result of the evolving imperial culture that

emerged in the latter half of the 19th century. This culture involved the application of European

values and concepts of race and gender on the denizens of the empire. This was done, as Heather

Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz explain, both to justify the inherent inequality of colonized

peoples and to “create an imperialist worldview that sought to define the place of every citizen

and subject.”3 This cultural shift manifested itself differently depending on the local context. In
1
British Raj. Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881. Vol. 1, 1883. Pg. 278.
2
Saurabh Mishra. Of Poisoners, Tanners and the British Raj: Redefining Chamar Identity in Colonial North India,
1850–90. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 48, no. 3 (2011): 319.
3
Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz, Empires and Colonies in the Modern World: A Global Perspective
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 381.
India, this process began, in earnest, in 1852 with the shift from Company rule, by the East India

Company, to Crown rule, direct rule by the British sovereign. In the following years colonial

officials began utilizing the caste system to redefine the Indian’s position in the empire. This was

done by prioritizing an individual’s “Jati,” the social group that one belongs to, over their

“Varna”, the individual’s class.4 This allowed the British to more effectively categorize the

massive Indian population and discriminate between the groups that were useful from those that

were not, as exemplified by the Sikh and the Chamar, respectively.

British India, especially under Crown rule (1858-1947), modified the existing caste

system to categorize and divide the Indian people. This further solidified their grip on the region

since the caste changes provided further cultural justification for Indian subjugation. This

categorization is most clearly shown in the census data collected by the British. The census of

1881, the first “synchronous enumeration” that was taken of all India, breaks down the

population into 275 “castes” and provides a brief stereotype of each one.5 These stereotypes

targeted specific groups and labeled them all as criminals. This is best exemplified by the

Chamar people as described earlier, but it affected many more when the Criminal Tribes Act

became law in 1871, which defined millions as “hereditary criminals”.6 These stereotypes then

provided a justification for British rule by painting the Indians as backwards and in need of

civilizing.7 From the start of Crown rule in 1858 until the end of British rule in 1947, the British

Empire utilized the Indian caste system to categorize the population along ethnic lines, target

specific castes by characterizing the entire caste by one trait, and to justify its rule by drawing on

the cultural traditions and beliefs of the Indian people.

4
Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Caste and its Histories in Colonial India: A Reappraisal,” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 2
(2017): 432-461, doi:10.1017/S0026749X16000408.
5
India Census Commissioner, Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881, Vol. 1, 1883.
277-279.
6
Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, 34 Vic.
7
“The Criminal Tribes of India,” The Times, April 20, 1926.
 The Indian caste system is thousands of years old, making it one of the oldest systems for

organizing human civilizations in history. Understanding the changes made to the system in the

last ninety years of colonial rule can help show how the current caste system, along with its

stereotypes and prejudices, came to be institutionalized. This examination of the British and

Indian caste system will contribute to the ongoing discussion of the Indian Caste system’s

evolution throughout history. This discussion is explored by Rosalind O’Hanlon, Professor of

Indian History and Culture at the University of Oxford, who breaks down the history of the caste

system, going back thousands of years, and discusses how the caste system has changed, and to

what extent outside forces have changed it.8 With this foundation, the way is clear to examine the

impact of British colonialism on the caste system, as shown by Guilhem Cassan, Professor of

Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Namur, Saurabh Mishra, Professor of

History at the University of Sheffield, and Maria-Daniela Pomohaci, Historian with the Centre

for Modern Indian Studies at Georg-August-Universität Gottingen. Their varied research comes

together to show the British Empire’s growing dependence on, and manipulation of, the caste

system, and how these changes had lasting impacts that are still being felt today.

In order to properly analyze the impact of colonial rule on the caste system, it is important to

understand what the caste system even is. Caste, derived from the Portuguese casta, refers to the

Iberian concept of “purity of blood”. While this concept initially referred to purity in a religious

context, it was adopted in both Spanish and Portuguese colonial policy to categorize racial

mixing.9 The Portuguese’s system of ethnic and social stratification based on ancestry was

developed prior to the Portuguese’s arrival in India, and yet it is through this lens that Europe

was first introduced to Indian society. The Portuguese casta, which is where the western term

8
O’Hanlon, “Caste and its Histories,” 432-461.
9
Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Leiden: BRILL, 2013), 21-22,
ProQuest E-book Central.
“caste” stems from, while sharing some concepts with the Indian system, is a legacy of previous

Portuguese colonizers and represents ideas that were predominantly used by Europeans.

The system used in India stemmed from ancient Hindu texts, but has been used by

Muslim Sultanates as well as Hindi kingdoms. Traditionally, caste, in this case referring to

varna, was a daily observance and a fact of Hindu life.10 When the sub-continent was conquered

by the Mughals, however, this began to change. The Mughal invaders used the word quam to

describe the different social groups, but this term did not have any specific connection to a

group’s varna or jati. Meanwhile, the Hindu communities in the west used khūm for a greater

caste cluster, and khāmp for individual groups.11 These terms gained popularity with Europeans,

namely the British, who used them when explaining the minutia of their various castes in official

records. From this we can see that rigid groups, referred to as quams or khūms by the Indians,

that acted as social, political, and administrative units, were well established prior to European

colonization, who used the term “caste” to describe these same groups.

Despite their adoption of the Marathi words, the British colonial officers had very

different ideas about how the Indian people should be categorized. By the time of the first census

in British India, they had begun mixing the Indian system with their own understandings of

caste. This resulted in a collection of “tribes and castes” that Denzil Ibbetson, a British

magistrate in Punjab, broke into the “true caste,” castes “based upon common blood,” the

“occupational caste” and, most confusingly, “all possible intermediate stages.”12 Here we see that

the British kept the “Brahminical” caste of Brahman and Banya, these were kept as they made up

the indigenous elite that had been working with their colonizers. The rest of the categories were
10
Rosalind O'Hanlon, Joya Chatterji, and Parthasarathi Prasannan. “Caste and Its Histories in Colonial India: A
Reappraisal,” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 2 (2017): 432–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X16000408.
11
Sumit, Beyond Caste, 28.
12
Denzil Ibbetson, Punjab Castes: Being a Reprint of the Chapter on ‘The Races, Castes and Tribes of the People’
in the Report on the Census of the Punjab Published in 1883 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2001), 31.
British inventions. When creating these new groups, the British simply “accentuated the

differences” already present in the many groups that made up the Indian lower classes.13 The

British categorized the Indian people this way to attempt to create a hierarchy, based on race, that

would preserve their, and their co-conspirators’, status.

The full scale of this categorization is best seen by examining the census data from this

time. The Report on the Census of British India of 1881 was the first comprehensive census

taken of the Indian sub-continent administered by the British Empire since converting from

company rule by the East India Company, to crown rule, direct rule from the British government,

in 1857. There were many prior attempts to enumerate the population of India, but these attempts

failed because they focused on smaller regions rather than the whole of India, they lacked the

physical/administrative infrastructure to accurately measure the population, or a combination of

both. The ability for the British empire to complete a census of India meant that they would be

able to tax more efficiently and get a better sense of the people that they were ruling. The census

of 1881 was concluded on February 17th and was released in three volumes. Volume 1 includes

data relating to population density, area demographics, “civil conditions”, proportions of the

sexes, ages, religions, population movements, and, most importantly, caste.14

The caste section details three main castes: the Brahmans, the Rajputs, and the other 207

castes. This immediately shows how the British understood the social hierarchy; there were the

Brahmans, priests, and the Rajputs, warriors, at the top, and everyone else beneath them. These

207 castes all have populations over 100,000, but this leaves out an additional 65 smaller castes,

with a population under 100,000.15 All together, these two groups total over one hundred and
13
O’Hanlon, “Caste and its Histories,” 438.
14
India Census Commissioner, Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881, Vol. 1,
1883. III-X.
15
India Census Commissioner, Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881, Vol. 1,
1883. 277-279.
forty million, well over eighty-eight percent of the total population. Why then, are they ranked

below the Brahmins and the Rajputs? As stated above, the Brahmins and the Rajputs were the

ruling elite prior to British rule, and so they had a higher standing within colonial society. The

“other castes” are comprised of the working classes, people with no power or status to begin

with. This coincides with the British treatment of the Chamar, the largest of the working castes,

first labeled as “the leather working caste” by the British, then further discriminated against by

local law enforcement who used them as scapegoats with no means to defend themselves.16 The

census data relating to caste differences is full of subtle and interesting insights into the

imperialist view of Indian society. One of these insights comes from the grouping of castes seen

as “virtually identical” under one name rather than many.17 While this choice seems logical, it

completely overlooks regional differences in favor of ease of access for the British. This

compartmentalization of castes lowers the number of recognized castes from 210 to 40, with

each containing at least one million people.

One of the practical applications that the British found for this information was

discovering which groups were useful for them. A prominent example for the British would be

the mythology surrounding “martial races”, groups that had been loyal soldiers and were praised

as the ideal, masculine, soldier. The census of 1881 identifies the Rajputs and Vellalars as

“martial races.”18 These groups were marginal to the British prior to 1857, but after the Sepoy

soldiers in Bengal had revolted, the British were in desperate need of loyal soldiers. This had a

tremendous impact on the Indian army, with soldiers from other castes being replaced with

Rajputs and Vellalars. By 1875, half of the army was from a “martial race”. That number grew to
16
Saurabh Mishra. “Of Poisoners, Tanners and the British Raj: Redefining Chamar Identity in Colonial North India,
1850–90.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 48, no. 3 (2011): 319.
17
India Census Commissioner, Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881, Vol. 1,
1883. 280.
18
India Census Commissioner, Report on the Census of British India, Taken on the 17th February 1881, Vol. 1,
1883. 282-284.
three-quarters by 1914.19 This sudden change in preference had material consequences for the

whole colony, as “martial races” were generally treated better than non-martial races.20 A prime

example of this is the Punjab Alienation of Land Act of 1901. This act created an “agricultural

tribe” in Punjab, the region where the Rajputs were from, and made it so that only members of

that tribe could receive land “be it by sale or by mortgage.”21 The British passed this to prevent

the rural working class tribes from becoming indebted to money lenders in urban areas, who

were not included in the new agriculturalist caste, and to avoid rural unrest in their largest

recruiting province. The connection between race/caste and martial ability is just one of the

assumptions made by the British as a result of their categorization of the Indian population along

ethnic lines.

While it is arguable that being categorized as a martial race would be a benefit rather than

a hinderance, the same cannot be said for all castes. As stated at the beginning of this paper, the

Chamar people, the single largest, and one of the lowest, castes in India, became associated with

poisoning cattle. Despite the questionable nature of this crime, with officials and scholars both

doubting its existence, the Chamar and others like them became known as “criminal tribes.”

Made law in 1871, the Criminal Tribes Act gave local magistrates authority to declare any “tribe,

gang, or class” guilty of a crime if they have reason to believe that “any tribe, gang, or class or

persons {is} addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences.”22 The idea behind

this law was to separate the “worst characters” from the rest of society, with entire tribes and

19
Maria-Daniela Pomohaci, “The Influence of the Political, Social and Religious Measures Upon Caste During
British India.” International Journal on Humanistic Ideology 6, no. 1 (2013): 109,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1469895933/.
20
Heather Streets-Salter and Trevor R. Getz, Empires and Colonies in the Modern World: A Global Perspective
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 381.
21
Guilhem Cassan. "British law and caste identity manipulation in colonial India: the Punjab Alienation of Land
Act." Paris School of Economics Working paper (2010), 3-4.

22
Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, 34 Vic.
castes being relocated if necessary.23 Meena Radhakrishna, sociologist and former professor at

the Delhi School of Economics, uses the Koravas, a tribe of salt traders in the Madras

Presidency, to show the whole process of being targeted, registered, and relocated under the

Criminal Tribes Act (CTA). Radhakrishna argues that the Korava tribe was only targeted after

they “were no longer useful…as salt distributers and revenue raisers.” After a group was tagged

as a criminal tribe, or had seemingly outlived their usefulness, the group was put under strict

supervision by the local authorities. Even a single infraction of this large-scale house arrest,

which Radhakrishna argues was often based on false charges, the tribe could be forcibly

relocated at the government’s discretion.24 By 1926, roughly one million people were members

of criminal tribes and living in relocation settlements. Many of these settlements had members of

the Salvation Army living with the tribe.

Since the British viewed the tribes as practicing crime “not only as a profession, but as a

religion,” the Salvation Army saw their presence in the settlements as necessary for the

reformation of the tribe.25 Starting in 1908, the Salvation Army took over operating a series of

reformatories and settlements, and enforced strict standards of discipline on the residents. These

standards were aimed at “deconstructing persons and reconstructing them as disciplined

individuals.”26 While their actions can be seen as efforts in the greater civilizing mission of the

British Empire, the Salvation Army seemed to act out of genuine interest in helping those that

they saw as backwards and delinquent. The Army was even involved in modernizing the Indian

silk industry, designing a special “Swadeshi” loom just for India, much to the chagrin of

23
Meena Radhakrishna. “Surveillance and Settlements Under the Criminal Tribes Act in Madras.” Indian Economic
& Social History Review 29, no. 2 (1992): 171, https://doi.org/10.1177/001946469202900203.
24
Radhakrishna. “Surveillance and Settlements.” 171-172.
25
“The Criminal Tribes of India.” The Times, April 20, 1926.
26
Rachel J. Tolen. "Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation Army in British
India." American Ethnologist 18, no. 1 (1991): 117, www.jstor.org/stable/645567.
Colonial officials as the swadeshi movement organized boycotts of British goods.27 Their

involvement in the silk industry aside, the preference of the army for certain “martial races”, and

the Criminal Tribes Act, including the forced conversions/transformations conducted by the

Salvation Army, highlight how the British colonial government targeted specific castes by

characterizing the entire class by one trait.

The final piece of the caste puzzle is how the British formed the caste system and used it

to justify their rule. The key word in that last sentence is “formed.” Nicholas Dirks, Professor of

History and Anthropology at University of California Berkeley, argues that caste was not always

a grand, all encompassing, social identity that reflected Indian tradition, and it was in fact “given

little significance.”28 Rather it was under British rule that “caste became the colonial form of

civil society, justifying the denial of political rights to Indian subjects (never citizens) and

explaining the necessity of colonial rule.”29 The British did not simply find an unjust system and

then exploit it; The British used the Indian’s own culture against them by creating a new caste

system where they held the highest spot. Dilip Chavan, Associate Professor of English at the

Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, tells us how the early colonizers, circa 1815,

were dependent on local “collaborators/informants.” By the time of the British Raj, some 50

years later, however, the British had managed to indoctrinate the entire sub-continent in their

new caste system.30 This concept is crucial to understanding British rule in India and how the

caste system was changed upon contact with the British, since the situation is not as it seems.

Initial research into this topic showed that the British adapted a pre-existing system to suit their

27
Jagjeet Lally. "Crafting Colonial Anxieties: Silk and the Salvation Army in British India, circa 1900–
1920." Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 3 (2016): doi:10.1017/S0026749X15000323.
28
Nicholas B Dirks. The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2006, 295-296
29
Nicholas B Dirks. The Scandal of Empire, 295-296.
30
Dilip Chavan. Language Politics under Colonialism: Caste, Class and Language Pedagogy in Western India.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2013, 74.
own needs, and this is the perception that many have about the caste system. This becomes

dangerous when it is used to argue that, while the British certainly modified the caste system,

they were only doing what the Mughals before them did, and the founders of the system did

before them, which misses the point that what the British did was unique to them. Even the

Mughals, to compare two conquering powers, gave back to their newly acquired subjects,

holding open courts, intermarrying with the locals, and assimilating into Indian society. The

British, on the other hand, “express[ed] an aversion to the society of the Indians, and a disdain

against conversing with them,” Ghulam Hussain, an Indian official working for the British,

wrote. He further critiqued that “The English have besides a custom of coming for a number of

years, and then going away […] without any one of them shewing an inclination to fix himself in

this land; hence ignorance and incapacity come to be transmitted from hand to hand.”31 The

British were not in India to spread culture, modernity, civilization, or even their own population.

The British were in India to make a profit and reworking the caste system provided them with

the political power needed to maintain their control.

The Indian caste system is thousands of years old, making it one of the oldest systems for

organizing human civilizations in history. Or is it? Upon closer examination, the caste system

that is used today is just over 300 years old. The caste system of pre-colonial India was a part of

a “complex, conjunctural, and constantly changing political world,” and had little to do with an

individual’s identity.32 That all changed when the British arrived. The British, seeing their

opportunity, built a new caste system; one that was rooted in Iberian ideas of casta, racial

ideology, and that was, initially, supported by local elites in the post-Mughal power vacuum.

This new system was used by the British to racially and ethnically divide the population into a

31
Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 292-293.
32
Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 292-293.
seemingly arbitrary number of categories. Most of these categories were characterized by a

single trait: some were martial, like the Rajputs, some were criminals, like the Chamar, but the

majority of them were irrelevant to the colonial officials. This system was used by the British to

oppress the Indian people, keeping them from power and justifying the need for colonial rule.

The system created by the British to subjugate the Indian people has outlived the rule of the

British and serves as the foundation for the modern caste system that is in place today.
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