4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
Brahmins were of Aryan origin, the slaves pre-Dravidian, the rest presumably Dravidian. The ethnico-religious non-Hindus (the Jews., the Christians and the Muslims) were situated on the margin of the system. They were attached to it through their economic functions, since they were generally merchants or traders, although some of them — among the Syrian Christians in particular — had also become farmers. Though their actual origin had more or less disappeared from the collective memory of the groups (with the exception of the Brahmins), varying skin-colour and the differences in physical features were still important elements in determining social status.
Finally the system was characterized by the use of symbols to indicate the social distances between groups, arising out of the religious definition of the summit group—the Brahmins—and the consequent use of the opposition : pure/impure1. The most obvious of these was the pollution code in which social distances were symbolized by the structure of pollution-relations which in their turn were justified partly by the nature of economic activity pursued by each group (whether manual or non-manual labour and in the first case whether more or less closely in contact with organic matter); and partly by certain religious doctrines like that of karma,
This was necessary given the arbitrary character of the relations of production and the cascade-type social system, in which each group performed a dominant function in relation to the next below it, down to the slaves who could not have anyone below them.
However, because of the real origin of the different castes in the earlier clans, the macro-structure of the social ensemble represented by this system had relatively little influence on the symbolic system proper to each of the groups and least of all on its religious aspect. It is important to remember all these elements if we are to understand what happened when the structure was destroyed.
Impact of Colonisation
It was British colonization that was principally responsible for the breakdown of this structure. It undermined the basis of this edifice by attacking first of all its economic and secondly its ideological aspect. By levying taxes on landed property in order to provide for the colonial administration, the British authorities transformed the material foundation of existing social relations. This had a chain of consequences, leading to the progressive change-over from existing feudal relations between castes to new contractual relations. On the other hand, the abolition of slavery gradually led to new juridical relationships, without fundamentally modifying the existing social structure.2 In India this abolition had two motives: an economic one—the need to liberate a workforce for the mines or the plantations8—and a humanitarian one— the prevailing liberal ideology and also the pressure exerted by the