1871 Caste Census — Some Insights

The above table gives the population of the various Hindu Varnas according to the region. Let us know take the Hindu population alone and see the distribution of various varnas in India as a whole and on a region specific.

Clearly other castes apart from the two forward castes accounted for almost 72% of the population. The Brahmins accounted for 7% of the Hindu Population while Kshtriyas and Rajpoots accounted for 4% of the Hindu Population. However the Administrative posts were all occupied by the Brahmins and other castes. In order to understand this, we need to go into the Historical legacy of how this happened.

Mughals ruled India for a very long time from 1526 onwards and they maintained their empire in three ways

First, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mughal Empire was one large armed military camp. Officers and soldiers were the most numerous and important class of people in the Empire.

Second, the Mughals established a sophisticated administrative and bureaucratic system. It was the single most developed, layered, and complex agrarian taxation system in the world.

Third, the Mughals’ official and unofficial policies of religious tolerance gave their empire symbolic legitimacy that lasted until the mid-19th century. In a land as diverse as India, this was perhaps the single greatest contributor to Mughal legitimacy and endurance.

Mughals although miniority Muslims employed a portion of native Hindu population in the administrative machinery. The empire had imperial officers known as mansabdars. They were the equivalent of European military aristocracies, who held land grants from which they raised soldiers, maintained family honor, and served the emperor. There were also appointed regional governors known as subahdars.

By 1700, the middle and lower rungs of Mughal administration were largely made up of Hindus. Hindu penmen and clerical castes called Kayasthas learned Persian and established traditions of literacy and service that lasted deep into the British period. These scribes were outwardly Hindu, but they spoke Persian, recited Koranic injunctions at official meetings, and conformed to Islamic etiquette. Some even became major officials in places such as Bengal, Awadh, and the Mughal court in Delhi.To the average Indian, Mughal authority was noticeable only at the upper levels of political and regional life, or when a regiment of troops passed through. The average village, with its traditional Hinduism, Brahmin officiators, and customs and rituals, would have seen little change.

British rule brought government into the lives of Brahmins like never before. Like the 10th-century Persian observers, the British saw an almost impervious social and religious class of priests. The British were suspicious of Brahmins, at least in the first few generations. Most of the early kingdoms the British conquered were Muslim-ruled, which meant that they had little need for Brahmins at their courts. The early British were therefore very familiar with the Muslim precepts of governance in India, but Brahmins remained somewhat mysterious.The British also thought that the privileges Brahmins gained from Hindu and Muslim rulers — such as tax free lands, expected alms, and immunity from capital punishment — were outdated and tyrannical. For the early British, Brahmanism was just another reason why India was subject to the rule of oriental despots.

The British quickly realized, however, that Brahmins possessed two things that were crucial in Indian society: legitimacy and influence. This was even more the case after the Great Uprising. Brahmins were the natural leaders of Indian society,and the British during that period were wary of upsetting the religious and cultural sensitivities of Indians. They meddled less with Brahmanical rituals, customs, and rites.

From the mid- to late 1700s, the company aimed to rule and administer justice according to the laws of India — namely, Hindu law for Hindus and Islamic law for Muslims. The British therefore had to find out what Hindu law was and who knew about it. This brought them into contact with Brahmins, who had knowledge of Sanskrit, the shastras, and legal traditions.

Brahmans were the ones who informed the British what exactly Hindu law was. This was the first time any ruler had approached Brahmins with the stated intent of systematizing a broader legal tradition of India into one code.

Naturally, the Brahmins were inclined to tell the British a story that reflected their own views. The cumulative effect of this was that Hindu law, when it was finally codified in the 1860s, had a more scriptural, orthodox flavor. Caste and its hierarchies were given greater importance than what was actually practiced. Brahmins also received special legal privileges regarding witnessing, procedure, and testimony.

The problem with this approach was that it flew in face of practice. Historians and legal scholars have demonstrated that most Hindus followed vibrant, uncodified practices that were shaped more by region and custom than by written law. The shastras and Brahmins’ interpretations of them were known, but they had never before been the sole reference point for settling legal and social disputes.

It was not the intent of the British to make caste more rigid through law. The British were anxious to settle things quickly and ensure expediency in the legal system. They assumed that there was a single Hindu law for all Hindus which was timeless and found in texts. British jurists and scholars insisted on certainty, finality, and clarity in terms alien to Brahmins. Indian law was too erratic for them

The British need for information extended to castes and occupations. There were agricultural groups that the British saw as castes. Brahmins traditionally had rent-free land, and some took informal shares of village agricultural harvests to support temples and religious scholarship. Caste, in a way, punctuated the daily rhythms of agriculture and taxation.

In southern India, the British were the first to systematize the relationship between taxes and caste. They created categories of agricultural castes, commercial castes, and tribes. Brahmins were a small percentage of the population, but because they held so much influence, all other groups were judged against the Brahmanical standard.