CHAPTER 23
On the Relationship between
Caste and Hinduism
Declan Quigley
Every serious work on Hinduism emphasizes the extraordinary diversity of that
“religion” to the point where many ask whether it makes a great deal of sense
to call Hinduism areligion at all in the sense of a relatively cohesive or core set
of beliefs and ritual practices. On the other hand, every serious work on caste
emphasizes the extraordinary uniformity of the beliefs and ritual practices asso-
ciated with this institution (or set of institutions). It is a curious fact, then, that
there is a near-unanimous consensus that caste and Hinduism are inextricably
linked. A statement cited in the opening pages of Lipner’s textbook on Hinduism
might well have come from Weber or any of his intellectual descendants whose
interpretations of caste have dominated intellectual discussion of the subject in
the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology: “Caste is the Hindu form of
social organization. No man can be a Hindu who is not in caste” (Farquhar
1913: 216, cited in Lipner 1994: 3). However, Lipner reminds us that there is a
dissenting, minority view which states that one must be very careful in making
this equation: “The caste system, though closely integrated into the [Hindu]
religion, is not essential to it...Even the profession of belief in the authority
of the Veda is not essential” (Brockington 1981: 4, see Lipner 1994: 3).
In this chapter I will support Brockington’s decoupling of caste and
Hinduism, though from a rather different perspective. Those who insist on the
connection, it will be argued, invariably select only certain ideological features
of caste as worthy of consideration while dismissing others as if they simply
did not exist. This typically goes hand in hand with an obliviousness to certain
historical and sociological features which characterize caste and which explain
its distinctiveness from other forms of social organization, such as tribe or estate
or class.^1
What exactly do we mean by caste? What almost everyone can agree on is
that wherever there is caste, certain features are found linked together in a sys-
tematic fashion. Perhaps most noticeable, particularly to Western, (relatively)