76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
who are not simply ^anticommunist") who are genuinely troubled about the issue. The same difficulties, if not worse^ goon with White-Black relations in the U S. The difference is that it has become both respectable and necessary for American Marxist intellectuals and Communist groups to deal openly with the issue of race and to admit its centrality, whereas this does not seem to have happened in the case of India.8 (For example, whereas the CPI (M) would consider it appropriate and honest to collect and publish information on the class backgrounds of congress delegates but not on their caste position, in the US Marxist-Leninist organizations would publicize their racial composition as well—' particularly if they have a good record in that regard—and rival organizations would consider it an appropriate point of criticism if they don't). But only such an open dealing—the development of theoretical analysis and consistent practice by a revolutionary movement—can lead to the solution of problems. GAIL OMVEDT
1 Though exaggerated. Whereas Ranadive criticizes me for too much reliance on categories such as "elite competition", others have argued that my error was to give too much of a class interpretation to a movement that they consider ^essentially" based on casteism and elite competition; sec for instance Nalini Pandit,, "Class Conflict or Elite Conflict?" Economic and Political Weekly, June 5, 1976.
2 I will give two examples in the hope that these also will be taken in the spirit of friendly criticism. N Ram's thought-provoking review ofMargueritte Barnett's book on the DMK (Social Scientist,December 1977) represents not only a negative critique of eclectic and nonclass categories of bourgeois scfatdtebip, but also an effort to carry forward the analysis of this crucial social movement. Still, in interpreting the Dravidian movement essentially in terms of Tamil nationalism, Ram himself neglects the "caste" aspect—yet, its identification as a "non-Brahmin" and "Dravidian" or ^non-^ryan" movement involved themes that linked it with similar movements elsewhere.
Similarly, in 'The Caste System Upside Down: or the Not-So-Mysterious East" {Current Anthropology, December 1974), Joan Mencher levels a well-deserved attack against current idealistic and functional interpretations of the caste system. Her arguments that caste is essentially exploitative, that it has an economic base, that its hierarchical features bear similarities to those of pre-capitalist class societies everywhere, that it is used by the dominant classes to divide the oppressed and labouring classes of the villages, and that its ideology is not mainly accepted by the lower castes but forced on them, all are essentially valid. But they do not go far enough; that is, they do not develop an analysis of the specific features of Indian society as related to caste, and they don't explain the material because of the fact that landlords, rich peasants, and so on are able to use caste to ^divide and rule."
3 There are a number of reasons for this, of course. One is theoretical—it is much easier to understand race in Marxist terms as an instance of the more general category of "national oppression0 (which is how the U S situation is normaB-y analyzed), whereas caste represents the specificity of feudalism in Indian The second major reason is that, organisationally, the Communist International put pressure from the beginning on CPs in countries like the U S and South Africa to really deal with the issue of race to ensure that Blacks were a large part of their membership (even if this meant alienating many Whites) and so forth. In the case of India, it seems Russian and British Communists were in even worse- position fh^a Indian communists to understand the nature and importance of caste.