Nilanjan Das on Buddhist Philosophy and Caste

Background on the caste system

0:00This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites is available at www.philosophybites.com. There's a long history of hereditary caste in South Asian societies, with Brahmins at the top of the hierarchy. The pre-modern Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti, born around the year 600, set out a powerful philosophical critique of the caste system. He attacked the metaphysical assumptions on which it's based. Here,

0:34Nilanjan Das outlines this critique. Nilanjan Das, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Pleasure to be here. We're talking today about Buddhist philosophy and caste. Briefly, give us some background on what is meant by caste. How long has it been around? How does it function? I think the history of the caste system itself is relatively unclear. It probably emerged around the same time as certain kinds of Brahmanical forms of religion, like in the mid-first millennium BC.

1:13The basic structure of the caste system involves two kinds of groups. So on the one hand, we have these four occupational classes, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, and the Shudras. So these correspond to different kinds of occupation. And then there are these endogamous social groups within them. Basically, on the one hand, we have these occupational classes, which are called Varnas. And on the other hand, we have these endogamous social groups, which are called Jatis. The crucial feature of it is that it's a

1:48hierarchy. In terms of both social and political power, the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas are at the top, while the others are lowered down the realm. And you're born into one of these castes. Is it passed down through blood? In other words, suppose a baby from a lowly caste is raised by a Brahmin family, would they retain their genetic caste status? Yes, the view, I think, differs amongst people who are theorizing about caste in ancient South Asia. But the general view seems to be that this caste is supposed to be hereditary.

2:23It's passed down through your ancestry rather than any other factor. Now, we're going to focus on one particular Buddhist philosopher, Tamakirti. Tell us what we know about him. Yes, so as is usual with South Asian philosophers in the pre-modern period, we don't know much about him. He was born or lived in the 6th and 7th centuries CE. He wrote copious amounts of philosophy, which ended up becoming extremely influential in the world of Sanskrit philosophy. Everyone writing for about half a

2:59millennium after him is still engaging with his arguments. So he is an extremely influential philosopher.

Dharmakirti and metaphysical objections

3:06So as I understand it, Tamakirti rejected the idea of caste. But before we get his objections, it might be useful to know something about what he was objecting to. So was there a sort of Buddhist philosophical rationale for caste? Yes, I think so. So everyone, or at least most of the philosophers we are talking about in pre-modern South Asia, think that perception gives us knowledge about the world.

3:37But then there's this further question about how we gain knowledge about the world through perception. So one natural view might be that when I look out of my window, I see, let's say, someone walking a dog. So when I look at the dog, I might see a bunch of different features of the dog, like their brown color, the swishing movement of the tail, and so on. Some people also think we also see something more general about the dog itself. For example, if there are two dachshunds who are walking around in the field, I see a property, namely of being a dog, that is common amongst them.

4:14Some of Tamakirti's opponents believe this view, that basically when we look at external objects, we often come to perceive general properties that these external objects share. And these properties, if you thought they were something over and above the external objects themselves, would be what philosophers these days call universals, and what they call samanyas or jatis. So we perceive the universal, we perceive the property of dogness in a dog.

4:44Yes, yes, exactly. Okay, so what's the relevance for caste? Okay, so Kumarila, who is one of Dharmakirti's main opponents, he thinks that being a Brahmin is very much like being a dog. So just as there is a general property of dogness that is shared by dogs, so also there's a general property of Brahminhood, or Brahmin-ness that is shared by Brahmins. And this property, according to Kumarila, this is the

5:17weirdest part. He thinks that just as we can see the dogness amongst dogs, we also can see the Brahmin-ness of a Brahmin. That does seem a bit odd on the face of it. I can see how, if we're looking at a bunch of dogs, and we're also looking at a bunch of snakes, we can spot that dogs are different from snakes, and that there might be a property that all dogs have, and that no snakes have. But he thought that there was a property that all Brahmins have, that no non-Brahmin have.

5:52Exactly. So dogness, for example, you might think what it does is that it tracks a natural distinction amongst different kinds of animals. It's natural in the sense that it is not conventional, not something that we have come up with. It's already out there. Kumarila thinks that Brahminhood is also like that. So there is like a natural distinction amongst different kinds of human beings, which divides them into these different castes. So for him, caste tracks a natural

6:25distinction. But you might grant caste tracks a natural distinction and still might deny the further claim that he makes, namely that we can see it. For example, there are lots of natural distinctions out there in the world, which we might not be able to see. But Kumarila thinks something stronger, namely that we can even perceive those natural distinctions. Presumably, he thought that if there were a bunch of Brahmins and a bunch of non-Brahmins in a kind of identity parade, all wearing the same outfit with the same haircuts and so on, he would be able

6:57to perceive who the Brahmins were and who wasn't a Brahmin. Yes, but there's an important caveat. So when you say perceive, the word perceive can be understood in a bunch of different ways. Suppose I have never encountered a dog before. So I might see the dog and its dogness when I look at it, but I might not be able to identify the dog as a dog. Philosophers often make this distinction between non-epistemic seeing and epistemic seeing. In non-epistemic

7:30seeing, you see a thing without seeing it as anything. But in the case of epistemic seeing, you see it as something. So the idea is that it's only with certain kinds of background capacities of classification, categorization, and so on, that you come to categorize something as a dog. And the same, Kumarila would say, is true of Brahmins. Yes, you might see a Brahmin along with their Brahmin hood, but you might not be able to see them as a Brahmin. So in the identity parade situation, I might not be able to identify the Brahmin in the parade as a Brahmin, even though I might see

8:07their Brahmin-ness. So Thamakirti objected to that position. What was his argument? So Dharmakirti is opposed to positing general properties, the way Kumarila and his Brahminical comrades would posit. So Dharmakirti does not think there are general properties of dogness, cowness, and so on, over and above the individual dogs or cows. But for the sake of argument, Dharmakirti grants his opponents that there are these general properties, which do exist over and

8:41above the individual dogs and properties. But what he wants to argue is that there is no property of Brahmin hood that exists over and above individual human beings. So there might be a property of dogness, he's prepared to concede that, but he rejects the idea that there's a universal when it comes to different castes. Have I got that right? That's correct. And why does he make that claim? Yes. So there's a difference between what Dharmakirti himself says and what Dharmakirti's

9:13commentators say. Dharmakirti himself seems to be saying something quite basic, namely that there are only certain conditions under which we can grasp natural distinctions amongst objects that we perceive. So we can perceive natural distinctions amongst them when there's a difference in their structure, the physical structure of the object, or when there's an important difference between the attributes the object has, and when it comes to the causal powers that the object has. The example that

9:48he gives is of cows and horses. So we want to say that there's a natural distinction between cows and horses because cows have a different shape or structure than horses. Cows have different attributes. For example, their milk tastes a certain way than, let's say, the milk of a horse. And a cow has different causal powers. Cows can do things that horses cannot do. So on the basis of that, we can posit a natural distinction. Or we can even grasp, as he puts it, a natural distinction. Now, according to him, there is

10:25no such distinction amongst Brahmins and the other caste classes, like the Shudras. According to Dharmakirti, Brahmins don't differ either in their bodies or in their intellect or in their capacities from other castes. So there is no reason, according to Dharmakirti, for us to think that we can trust this natural distinction between the different castes. For Dharmakirti, more generally, if we want to posit something out there in the world, that that thing has to earn its keep. So how does it earn its keep?

11:01According to Dharmakirti, it does it by showing that it can be causally efficacious. It can produce effects in the world. So if something does not have any effects, we have no reason to posit it. And he would argue, ultimately, perhaps, that Brahminhood is exactly like that. It makes no causal difference whatsoever to the world. Obviously, in the real world, there are castes and they're identifiable because people have different roles and different functions and different life prospects because of their caste. Is Dharmakirti saying in modern lingo that caste

11:36is a social construct? That's a good question. So Dharmakirti certainly thinks a lot of things we think and talk about are constructed through the concepts or the conceptual capacities that we possess. So he would say most of the things, in fact, like tables and chairs, other properties like the color brown and so on. These are all, in some sense, are conceptually constructed, things we think and talk about. Yet, at the

12:09same time, he would say that, well, these are real in a different sense because, well, even though they are constructed through our conceptual capacities, we have to acknowledge them to be real in order to get by because otherwise ordinary activities would be impossible. Dharmakirti seems to think caste designations like brahmins, shudras, and so on. These are very much like occupational designations. So we call someone a brahmin either because they perform various kinds of activities like offering sacrifices and so on, or

12:42because they're born in a family of people. Those people used to do things like that. In this respect, he says that it's no different from occupational designations like physician or merchant, which basically have, by Dharmakirti's time, had turned into these kinds of surnames for people by which we could identify the traditional occupation of their families. So he thinks there's no difference between those things. Now, that leaves open the question of whether he thinks caste is socially constructed in the way we mean the term,

13:15socially constructed. On one way of thinking about it, you might think something is socially constructed, but it does not exist. So you might think the category of a witch is socially constructed due to certain kinds of material conditions in medieval Europe, but the things of that category that belong to that category don't really exist because it presupposes that people have magical powers and people don't have magical powers. There's a different notion of socially constructed, which I'm more interested in, which is that something can be socially constructed and still have a certain kind of objectivity.

13:49So for example, you might think that money is socially constructed. No one is going around denying the existence of money, but it is socially constructed. It's like our distinction between dollar notes and other kinds of, let's say a pound note, is not tracking a natural distinction between two pieces of paper. So it might be compatible with Dharmakiti's view that caste is socially constructed in this latter sense, that it depends on our social practices, but it still has a certain kind of objectivity.

Caste arrogance and modern relevance

14:21But what's the relevance of this debate today? Because caste is still very much alive and well in South Asia.

14:31Yes. So I think there are two things we can take away from this debate. So I want to start with a caveat. The function of caste in South Asian society has not remained the same since Dharmakiti's time. It constantly shifts. However, there is a constant aspect of a caste-based society, namely that it has this kind of a hierarchical structure and it has certain kinds of attitudes associated with it. For example, it is quite common for people who belong to certain kinds of caste classes, at least in my experience,

15:07to, for example, think of themselves as intellectually superior in various ways. Dharmakiti, in fact, this is what I find the most powerful part of Dharmakiti's critique of caste. When he ends the first chapter of this magnum opus that he has written called The Detailed Commentary on the Sources of Knowledge, he lists five signs of stupidity. And one of them is arrogance based in a belief in caste. When Dharmakiti's commentators explain this idea,

15:40they point out that given what Dharmakiti himself has said about caste, we can see that this kind of arrogance is an epistemic failure. It's a failure of rationality, like not responding to the evidence that is available to him. They point out that arrogance on the basis of caste might be based on two kinds of reasons. One is that you think caste tracks this kind of natural distinction that we have been talking about. That might explain why Brahmins have a certain kind of superiority. The other kind of reason for caste-based arrogance might be that basically you think that Brahmin bodies

16:14are more pure, ritually speaking, than other kinds of bodies. And they point out that neither of these reasons can be tenable given what Dharmakiti has said. Dharmakiti has told us that there is no material or intellectual difference between Brahmins and other caste classes. So this kind of arrogance is simply unreasonable. And that, I think, is the lesson to withdraw from Dharmakiti's argument. And it does suggest, does it not, if there aren't these universals when it comes to caste,

16:45that caste as a concept ought to be much more fluid than it currently is.

16:52It ought to be much more fluid, especially, for example, South Asians I know of still hesitate to get into inter-caste marriages, for example. This would be just irrational on Dharmakiti and Brahmins. But even more importantly, contemporary Buddhist movements, especially inspired by B.R. Ambedkar in South Asia, who want to say that, in fact, we should just get rid of caste-based hierarchies. It's not just there should be more fluid. It should have no place in our lives.

17:24And I think Dharmakiti's critique lays the foundations for that kind of eliminativism. Eliminativism when it comes to caste. Let me ask you a personal question. It sounds like caste has played a role in your life. Is there a reason you got into this area of research? Yeah, so there are two reasons. So one is that I'm quite generally interested in universals, given my other interests in metaphysics and epistemology. I have also found that as I've studied Sanskrit texts, especially in South Asia, I've often run into obstacles, given my own caste

17:59background. I could not, for example, as a student, study Mimansa and Vedanta texts, precisely because they involve engaging in the Veda, because I'm not a Brahmin. In fact, I come from a caste class, like a caste group, which around Dharmakiti's time would have been treated as Shudras. I think caste is very much like a reality that I have been forced to grapple with in my younger years, not these days that much. Final question. You're unusual in that you're steeped both in Indian

Bridging philosophical traditions

18:33and Anglo-American philosophical traditions. They tend not to have much to do with one another, and I wonder what you think about that and whether you think they could learn a lot if there was more interaction? Yes, my own doctoral work was in contemporary formal epistemology. My interest in South Asian philosophy began much earlier while I was in India as an undergraduate. As I was studying both of these things together and later separately, I realized that many of the debates

19:06that contemporary Anglo-American philosophers are interested in, for example, in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of action, not only have analogues in pre-modern South Asian philosophy, but they, in fact, pre-modern South Asian philosophers have things to say about these debates which would be useful for us to bring to light in order to make progress in the same debates that we are engaged in. I don't want to do the argument mining thing where I go back to pre-modern South Asian texts only to look

19:40for things that I'm already independently interested in. I often think doing history of philosophy helps us to think about issues differently and think about new topics, topics that we are not currently concerned with. And I think engaging with pre-modern South Asian philosophy is interesting in both of these ways. So on the one hand, it throws new light on contemporary debates, and it also opens up new avenues of thought, which we have not considered before. Neil Anjan Das, thank you very much indeed.

20:13Thank you very much. You've been listening to Philosophy Bites. This episode was made in association with the Institute of Philosophy and supported by the Ideas Workshop, part of Open Society Foundations. For more Philosophy Bites, go to philosophybites.com.