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This chapter addresses women's roles in Tantra, examining how and whether women function as actors within Tantric rites or to what degree they function merely as objects of male desire. This chapter argues that Tantric texts are varied, offering a multiplicity of views. Particularly, this chapter presents evidence from Tantric sources associated with the Northeast region of India in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries for a particular Tantric tradition that accords women respect and in which we find women as gurus and initiates. This chapter proposes that the model for understanding the veneration of women in these texts finds a parallel in the veneration of the Brahmin, where women in these texts are by analogy likened to Brahmins.

This chapter examines caste, the most important differentiator in Indian social life. It is a better indicator of social origin and class than parental occupation. The figures used here are census ones from the 1980s. Seventy-seven of the ninety-three judges were Hindus. The most striking thing is that brahmins, one-nineteenth of the nation’s population, held thirty-three of the judgeships. Brahmins, many very emphatically, said that their caste was not only irrelevant in their own appointment but that caste had nothing to do with the selection of any other judge. The usual explanation for the overrepresentation of brahmins is that they were the privileged group before the British arrived, that they were the first to learn English and take advantage of modern education. Still, the discussion notes that the judges of the highest rank in all or nearly all nations are not representative of the social make-up of their country.

This chapter investigates the changing relations between caste, class, and power. The distribution of power creates a hierarchy which is different from the hierarchies of caste and class. The relations between class and power, and the role of caste in party politics are then examined. Sripuram constituted an agraharam village. One can obtain a variety of class positions with different degrees of probability, whatever one’s position in the caste structure may be. Several factors were responsible for the power and influence of the old landowning class in Sripuram. The changing relationships between the Brahmins and a variety of political parties are explored. The processes of economic change and political modernization have led the productive system and the organization of power to acquire an increasing degree of autonomy. It would appear that a certain measure of “discreteness” is enjoyed by each of the three orders considered: caste, class, and power.

This chapter describes how the author's study of Rampura, a multi-caste village in Mysore, began in 1945–46 when he was a doctoral student in social anthropology at Oxford. According to Radcliffe-Brown, the author's teacher, it is a fact that extant studies did not give an idea of day-to-day social relations between members of diverse castes living in a small community. An important social process in Mysore, if not in South India as a whole, is the urbanization of Brahmins. This process is yet to be studied, and its many consequences and implications understood.

This chapter examines the development and growth of the Mahābhārata (MBh) between the empires. The four anthologies of Bhīṣma's anuśāsana came into existence as one side of a complex process of negotiation between some members of the brahmin elite of northern India and the putative new brāhmaṇya kṣatra whom those brahmins wished to coax into a mutually beneficial existence through invoking the “Great” Bhārata. According to this hypothesis, the more fundamental juxtaposition is between the regulating theme of the Rājadharmaparvan (RDhP), on the one hand, and the consummation of that theme in the Dānadharmaparvan (DDhP), on the other. The core of the RDhP promulgates a fundamental charter of brāhmaṇya kingship. The Āpaddharmaparvan (ĀDhP) and the Mokṣadharmaparvan (MDhP) play critically important auxiliary roles in establishing and clarifying the proper relationships among brahmins, their royal clients, and the larger society in which both the brahman and the kṣatra must exist and survive.

In British India, the colonial state was assumed to be a centred and decisive entity that put in place norms and strictures concerning print which were contested and transformed in their colonial context. In Goa, print was reintroduced as a defiant declaration of constitutionalism. Moreover, print was influenced by the fact that the indigenous elite were granted representation in the Portuguese Cortes during the early decades of the nineteenth century. The formal and political implications of these print relations crucially shaped the print sphere. This chapter discusses the political nature of newsprint in Goa and how newspapers and pamphlets were used as the means by which interpretations of the political actions of chardos and brahmins could be countered or recontextualized by the other.

Beginning with Mr Sampath: The Printer of Malgudi (1949) and culminating with The Painter of Signs (1976), the novels of R. K. Narayan's middle period represent his finest achievement. The protagonists of these novels are usually small businessmen in the second asrama of life, whose occupations are contemporary versions of the scribal and priestly roles traditionally undertaken by Tamil brahmins. Narayan's other works include The Guide (1958), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Financial Expert (1952) and The Vendor of Sweets (1967). Though their particular subjects and angles of focalisation vary, the recurrent concern of the middle-period novels is an exploration of the conflicts that occur when seemingly settled Hindu values, usually personified by the protagonist, are challenged by the incursion of alien forces. These novels also demonstrate an investigative approach to the narrativisation of Malgudi.

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai explores perceptions of national loyalty held by college-educated northern men during the war. His work draws on the writings of a group of New England graduates, whom he labels the New Brahmins. He highlights how their sense of moral duty as educated elites, along with their commitment to the Union, compelled them to enlist into the army. Focusing on McClellan’s leadership, the controversy of emancipation, and the election of 1864, Wongsrichanalai shows how these men viewed military and political issues through nonpartisan lenses. Holding military success and union victory as the priority, these soldiers were quite critical of partisan devotionand unquestioned support of the government. According to the author, the New Brahmins reflect an understudied northern honor or nationalism, in which elite young officers pursued the greater good of society without fear of individual consequences.

The introduction highlights the importance of understanding how, in globalizing south India, families engage through memory with the question of how kinship norms, ideals, and experiences can enhance social mobility. It critically reviews and bridges three sets of literature: firstly, the historical critique developed within postcolonial and feminist tradition on the relation between colonialism, middle classes, and gendered family reforms; secondly, classical and recent anthropological approaches on political history and memory; thirdly, contemporary analysis of kinship within and beyond South Asia. The introduction argues that an analysis of the relationship between kinship, memory, and social mobility reveals to be timely and original to reconnect the well-known colonial middle-class projects of family modernity with the much less explored dimension of how (actual and aspiring) middle classes have engaged across history with these projects.

The campaign in the Punjab saw Alexander, supported by his Indian ally Taxiles, attack Porus, who lived beyond the Hydaspes River. The battle, at the beginning of the monsoon season, involved a division of the Macedonian forces. One part faced Porus at the river crossing, where the current and the elephants in the Indian army made a direct attack virtually impossible. Alexander took a portion of his army and marched upstream. Once across the river, he drew Porus away from his defensive position and defeated the Indian ruler in a battle fought primarily by cavalry, although the Macedonian pikemen inflicted injuries on the elephants, which became a danger to their own troops. After the Hydaspes victory, Alexander advanced to the Hyphasis (Beas), where the army refused to cross in order to march to the Ganges. The whole episode was contrived, since Alexander clearly had no intention of going farther east. His failure to reach the eastern end of the world was thus attributed to the timidity and war-weariness of his soldiers. During the descent of the Indus river system, Alexander received a near-fatal wound at the hands of the Mallians. Once he recovered, Alexander conducted a series of bloody massacres as he sailed to the mouth of the Indus and accomplished his goal of sailing out into the ocean. Although the Indian campaign was by far the bloodiest of the expedition, there was little long-term gain from the conquest.

Chapter 5 deals with interactions between devotees and the political other, such as kings and Brahmin ministers at kings’ courts, and locates a complex message in Harihara’s treatment of the court as a worldly and ethically corrupting arena but also a useful power center for the betterment of the society of devotees. In Ragaḷegaḷu stories that involve the court, the role of the opponent other is always taken up by Vaiṣṇava Brahmins, who are repeatedly depicted as corrupt and devious. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the possible social conditions that might have enabled Harihara to freely express his basically anti-court stance.

This chapter examines the how the literature of the Dharmaśāstra expresses both the way that social relations and worldviews articulate conceptions of the human body and the way that the body comes to be experienced by individuals. The material examined includes mythical and cosmological views of the human body, followed by consideration of the Brahmin’s body, the ascetic body, the criminal and sinning body, the impure body, the body of the penitent, the corpse, and others. The chapter argues that texts such as Manu Smṛti set up a strong correlation between cosmological conceptions, social hierarchy, and ways in which the body is dealt with as the subject of dharma. As a result, the body comes to be experienced as the locus of these broader cultural values.

The notions of class (varṇa) and caste (jāti) run through the Dharmaśāstra literature on all levels. They regulate marriage, economic transactions, work, punishment, penance, entitlement to rituals, identity markers like the sacred thread, and social interaction in general. Although this social structure was ideal in nature and not equally confirmed in other genres of ancient and medieval literature, it has nevertheless had an immense impact on Indian society. The chapter presents an overview of the system with its three privileged classes, the Brahmins, the Kṣatriyas, and the Vaiśyas, the fourth underprivileged class, the Śūdras, and, at the bottom of the society, the lowest so-called untouchable castes. It also discusses the understanding of human differences that lies at the center of the system and the possible economic and political motivations of the Brahmin authors of the texts.

This chapter investigates how a concern for “geo-mapping” mythological narratives to physical sites of worship (tīrthas) inspired purāṇic composers of the second millennium (c. 1000–1600) to retell the Viśvāmitra legends in such a way that emphasized the compassionate dimension of the Brahmin Other. The Gautamī Māhātyma of the Brahma Purāṇa located the older Vedic, epic, and purāṇic legends of Viśvāmitra to tīrthas along the Godāvarī River in Maharashtra, thus extending Brahmin authority to encompass pilgrimage practices at these holy sites. The Nāgarakhaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa mapped Viśvāmitra’s exploits to tīrthas in the town of Vadnagar in northwest Gujarat, thereby generating a positive regional identity for local Brahmin tīrtha officiants. Similarly, the seventeenth-century Viśvāmitrī Māhātmya remapped the Viśvāmitra legends to tīrthas near Vadodara, Gujarat and allowed Viśvāmitra’s role as the Brahmin Other to speak to the changing social status of Brahmin communities in this time and place.

This chapter examines the active role of Viśvāmitra’s mythological persona within the social history of colonial and postcolonial India over the last century—within the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, the political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, cinema and television, and especially within the Marathi devotional performance tradition known as nāradīya kīrtan. Special attention is given to a colonial-period critique of Viśvāmitra’s egoism (ahaṃkār) that appeared in the context of Brahmin social reform in Maharashtra, and how, by the onset of the twenty-first century, his hybridity has now come to reflect a desire to internalize traditional Brahmin identity amidst the corrupt politics, hyperurban chaos, and transnational cultural flows of contemporary Maharashtrian life, pointing toward a new, “postmodern” configuration of Brahmin social power.

The Hindu caste system developed over thousands of years into a prominent method of social demarcation based on a hierarchy whose placement related to theoretical degrees of purity. To avoid polluting the upper castes, distances between the various strata were manifested in “pollution” rules. Brahmin ideology granted entitlements to caste Hindus by virtue of their birth. Privileges accorded the Nambudiri Brahmins, as they were called in Travancore, included temples for their sole use. Those Hindus who held no caste were not allowed on temple roads, could not drink from the village well, and lived outside the village. They were considered lower than members of the lowest caste, because they could “pollute” the purity of the upper castes. They were called “untouchables,” “unapproachables,” “unseeables,” “backward communities,” “depressed classes,” “Harijans” (Sanskrit derivation, children of God, coined by Gandhi), “scheduled castes,” and Dalits. From their ranks would come advocacy, organizing, and mobilization.

On September 1, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi became the maharani regent, ruling over 4 million persons. She swiftly freed 20 Vykom detainees. A savarna jatha, a grand procession of high-caste Hindus (men), would present a “monster petition” to her. The chapter brings to light from oblivion an event in the history of civil resistance. Hundreds walked in military formation to Travancore’s capital, Trivandrum, in yellow costumery, despite rains. Another jatha trod from Suchindram in south Travancore, both converging on November 11. A delegation presented the petition with 25,000 high-caste signatures to the maharani. The Travancore Legislative Council resolved that every Vykom temple road be opened to all, suspiciously defeated 22–21, February 7, 1925. Gandhi visited Travancore. On March 10, 1925, in three hours meeting with Vykom’s orthodoxy, Gandhi experienced the full brunt of intransigence and presumed privileges of the Nambudiri Brahmins, who summarily dismissed three offers that Gandhi extended.