A Caste in a Changing World. The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans, 1700-1935

Abstract

JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES the Indian economy as it existed until independ- ence. Barun De's The Colonial Content of the Bengal Renaissance is an abstract of what could have been a major revisionist Marxist essay on Indian history. Alas, it seems that this very im- portant short piece was written during the long journey from Calcutta to London in between sips of gin-and-tonic. Many provocative ques- tions are ask~d and not answered. D . H . Kill- ingley's Vedanta and Modernity refers to in- teresting but already known views on the sub- ject. It is a pity, for the author is well acquainted with his subject and knows Sanskrit and Ben- gali. Kenneth Ballhatchet is a man of few words. His note on ''The Elphinscone Professors and Elphinscone College, 1827-1840 raises some important questions regarding the history of higher education in western India. It shows the difficulty, in the colonial context, of building up an institution of higher studies. There were In- dian patrons and sympathetic English educators, but no students. M. D. Wainwright's Continu- ity in Mysore is a competent, if dull, piece of research on British administration in Mysore. There are two papers on the missionary activi- ties and conversion: A. A. Powell's Muslim Re- action to Missionary Activity in Agra and Rob- ert Erik Frykenberg's The Impact of Con- version and Social Reform upon Society in South India during the Late Company Period: Questions Concerning Hindu-Christian E n- counters with Special Reference to Tinnevelly. The Germanic title and the formidable scholarly apparatus (202 footnotes) of Frykenberg's essay should not stop readers; this important work shows that conversion to Christianity was one tool of major social change in South India. But the government was not 3n agent in this process of modernization (if upward mobility can be considered a symptom of modernization). S. N. MUKHERJEE University of Sydney A Caste in a Changing World: The Chitra- pur Saraswat Brahmans, 1700-1935. BY FRANK F. CONLON. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. xv, 255 pp. Maps, Tables, Glossary, Bibliography, In- dex. $15.00 The strengths of this book lie in Conlon's wide-ranging source materials, including inter- views and materials in vernacular languages, and in the questions it raises concerning the history of corporate groups in India. Conlon works with three major themes. First, he recognizes the im- portance to the Chitrapur Saraswats (who fall within the G aud Saraswat Brahman caste-cate- gory) of the political recognition of their swami (pp. 9 1 40) and hence, implicitly, the depen- dence of caste or sect boundaries on political l:oundaries. Material for this theme is found throughout the book. The Saraswats' successive employment with N ayaka rulers, Hyder Ali, the Marathas, and then the British resulted in shifts of caste centers of employment, residence, and matha establishment. But the reader must con- struct his/her own charts to make these con- nections over t ime. The second and very explicit theme is that of the Saraswats' Smarta sectarian affiliation, and their establishment of a line of swamis and ma- thas beginning in the eighteenth century. Here, too, the reader must chart out the succession of swamis, the changing location of the central matha, and the powers behind the swamis, and relate these factors to the changing political are- na. For example, the choice of successive swamis was controlled by the Shukla Bhat fam- ily, revenue accountants for the Nayaka rulers at Bednur, until British government employees in Mangalore displaced them in the 183os. Conlon shows that then, after the 1859 British division between north and south Kanara and the 1862 transfer of north Kanara to Bombay Presidency, the Saraswats moving into Bombay city were beyond the sphere of interest of the Shirali matha and swami; and he hints at disruption of marriage relationships between the northern and southern Saraswats as well (although this is unclear). He focuses on ideological issues (such as the swami's orthodox stance on widow mar- riage versus that of social reformers) rather than institutional ones (such as the same swami's at- tempted enforcement of the collection of annual tithes to support the matha- and perhaps to ex- tend its p11rohi1 services to the growing Bombay Saraswat community). The third theme is that of urbanization and the reconciliation of the sectarian authority with the Bombay Saraswat caste association mem- bers. Here Conlon does a very good job of showing the trade-offs involved, as the Bombay

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