The Rise of the Caste System: Bhram Ka Pulinda (A Bundle of Delusions)

 

The Rise of the Caste System:  Bhram Ka Pulinda 

 Bhram Ka Pulinda (भ्रम का पुलिंदा, roughly “A Bundle of Delusions”) is a Hindi-language polemic on ancient Indian history, published by Samyak Prakashan, New Delhi. The first edition appeared in 2021 (Buddhist Era 2565) and a second edition followed the same year. It runs to roughly 175 pages and was priced at ₹250 (ISBN 978-93-91503-14-7).

The book argues that India’s original culture was a Buddhist-centered “Samyak culture,” and that a later priestly class rewrote history, language and religious vocabulary to make Brahmanical and Vedic tradition appear ancient. It moves through the Stone Age, the Indus Valley, the Mauryan, Shunga, Satavahana, Kushan, Gupta and Pala periods, and then the Mughal era, using photographs of inscriptions, coins and sculptures as its main evidence. Its recurring demand is that claimed ancient texts and authors be shown on stone or metal inscriptions. Its tone is combative, with frequent insults aimed at its opponents, and it is better read as advocacy than as neutral scholarship.

It is presented as part of a series. The author repeatedly refers readers to his earlier books from the same publisher, Vaidik Yug ka Ghalmel (“The Muddle of the Vedic Age”) and Buddhijiviyon ka Shadyantra (“The Conspiracy of the Intellectuals”).

The Author

Rajiv Patel is credited as the author, with Kumar Singh listed as co-author and Sanjay Kumar named in the credits. The front matter gives little biographical detail, and the book does not state his academic qualifications or institutional affiliation. His writing places him within the Ambedkarite and Buddhist-revivalist stream of Hindi publishing, which reads Indian history through a Buddhist and anti-caste lens.

Society before the caste system

According to Patel, the Indian society documented by archaeology before about 850 CE was fluid (taral). Rich and poor were not fixed groups. Any family, group or lineage could rise from poverty to wealth through skill and sound policy, and could just as easily fall through poor policy. Even a poor person could become an emperor through intelligence and ability.

He supports this with the record of dynasties: the Haryanka (Bimbisara), Naga, Nanda, Maurya, Satavahana, Shunga, Kanva, Shaka, Pahlava, Kushan, Gupta, Vardhana and Pala houses each rose through skillful rule. Their descendants then lost power through poor policy and vanished into the general population, and no one today can say where they went. The same holds, he says, for the great guides and scholars: Charvaka, Makkhali Gosala, Nigantha Nataputta, Purana Kassapa, Ajita Kesakambali, Pakudha Kaccayana, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, Alara Kalama, Moggallana, Sariputta, Mahakassapa, Nagasena, Milinda, Nagarjuna, Shilabhadra, Dharmapala, Chandrapala and Gunamati. None of them left behind a known lineage.

In this period, he says, anyone could become a guide, a scholar of any subject, a teacher at an educational institution, or ruler of a republic. No ruler before the Common Era described himself by caste or varna in his inscriptions. Hereditary clan or dynasty names (kula, vamsa) existed only for kings and chiefs, to keep a name constant when rulers changed, and ceased when power was lost. Teachers and scholars carried no such names.

The word for a scholar was bamhan (in Ashoka’s inscriptions bāmhana, later bābhana in the Gupta period). It was a quality-noun for a learned person, as Megasthenes also describes. Society in this period, he says, lived in equality, each person freely choosing a livelihood, and no family or community was subject to another.

The shift from fluid to solid

Around 850-950 CE, he says, Indian civilization turned from this fluid classification to a solid (thos) one. Society became varna-bound, fixed in “pegs.” The result was that no matter how talented, strong or skilled someone was, he could no longer become an emperor, and no one outside a particular group could earn recognition as a scholar. Two roles, scholar and ruler, were reserved for two groups, closing the older openness.

He credits this change to those he calls cunning, deceitful “Bhramik” (delusion-makers), who:

1. Took the scholar’s title for themselves. They Sanskritized the quality-noun bamhan/bābhan into brāhmaṇa and turned it into the name of their own caste.
2. Made the chiefs into Rajputs. They approached the many small chiefs and tribal heads who had become feudal lords, flattered them with imaginary stories, and renamed the old title lājā-putta (“king’s son,” found in Ashoka’s inscriptions) as rājaputra, giving the Rajput caste. The Rajput caste, he says, has since led the Kshatriya varna.
3. Connected the Rajputs to imaginary ancestors. The new Kshatriyas were given descent from solar and lunar lines, such as Raghuvanshi and Yaduvanshi, taken from invented epic poems.
4. Fed off the arrangement. The Rajputs lived by extracting from the working communities; the Bhramiks lived by cheating and misleading them, taking free sweets and meals from the feudal rulers.

He calls both groups the staunch supporters of feudalism.

How occupations became castes

Patel states that the formation and naming of castes is documented history: castes were named after the technical and occupational skills of their groups. Whatever a group did with its skill, its technical name was later fixed into a caste. In the earlier culture (before the 9th century) these descriptive names were fluid. After the 10th century they were bound into rigid names.

His examples:

• Flower gardening: Mali, Saini, Phule.
• Animal husbandry: Ahir, Gwala, Dhangar, Gadariya.
• Farming: Kamma, Kapu, Kutumbi, Reddy, Kudmi, Kunbi, Kurmi, Lodh, Gujjar, Jat.
• Craft skills (iron, wood, clay pots, leather): Lohar, Kashthakar, Kumhar, Charmakar.
• Oil pressing: Teli.

Tribal chiefs turned into Rajputs

He names the first caste made after the rise of feudalism as a tribal ruler of the Gujjar-Pratihara in the west, taken in hand by the “Bhramshils” and made a Rajput, while his Gujjar tribe is still known as Gujjar and still lives by farming and herding. Other examples he gives:

• The Kachwaha king became a Kachwaha Rajput, but the Kachwaha community is still known as Saini, Maurya and Kushwaha.
• Pratap Dhaval, who was himself an Adivasi, became a Rajput (source cited: Francis Buchanan’s account of the Shahabad district, 1812-13).
• The Gond kings became Chandel-descended Rajputs, and now occupy Gond land and forest.
• Alha and Udal, kings of the Vindhya region from the Banaphar community, were made Rajputs, though their kin remain Banaphar.
• Suheldev, king of Shravasti, who by the Mirat-i-Masudi was from the Bhar-Tharu (Pasi) community, was drawn in and became a Rajput.
• The Gohil line (Pasvan caste) became Gehlot Rajputs, as did the Abhira (Ahir) and Scindia (Kunbi) chiefs.

Some exceptions existed, he adds, where such leaders were fighting against feudalism. Everyone else continued to live by their technical skills under their occupational caste names. He notes that some people today call these converted feudal castes “foreigners,” which he treats as itself part of the delusion.

The Brahmin mark on the new society

After this, he says, the scholars who appeared (such as Kumarila Bhatta, Ramanuja and Madhva) all joined the Brahmin caste-varna, and it became natural for all learned people to be Brahmin. Likewise, every ruler was now either Kshatriya by birth or longed to become Kshatriya. The posts of scholar and emperor became the property of two varnas alone.

The majority then lost their ability, because they were taught that they could never be scholars or emperors. This belief, he says, was set like a line in stone. The remaining groups were told that service to the higher castes in this life was atonement for karma of a previous one, and that an invisible fate, ghosts and a supernatural “God” governed life. Honest people took the cunning intellectuals as their well-wishers and followed their instructions.

Shaivas, Vaishnavas and the akharas

Once the Shaiva line (from Adi Shankara) and the Vaishnava line (Ramanuja, Madhva and later Ramananda) arose, rivalry between them grew into violence. Citing Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K. Jha’s Ayodhya: The Dark Night, he says:

• The Dashnami akharas (Shaiva, following Adi Shankara) and Ramanandi akharas (Vaishnava, following Ramananda and Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas) kept armed naga ascetics.
• The akharas were allegedly formed to seize Buddhist viharas, monasteries, Jain math and educational institutions, and each other’s temples.
• A massacre occurred at the Nasik Kumbh in 1690, and a bloody clash at Haridwar in 1760, killing thousands of naga sadhus on both sides.
• He recounts a Dashnami naga, Bhairav Giri Goswami, vowing not to eat until he had killed a Vaishnava a day, and a Ramanandi, Ramdas, vowing the same in return.

He dates the origin of these communities to after the 9th century and says they existed in this form until before independence.

The Mughal period

The Rajput kings, he says, were the toy of the two sects. In their conflict with foreign Muslim invaders, the Rajputs lost power through cowardice or foolishness, and sovereignty passed to the Turks and Mughals.

He then describes the Bhramiks as taking permanent places at the Mughal courts as advisers:

• Brahmin advisers proposed a sectarian tax (jizya) to the Muslim rulers to raise revenue. When it was imposed, they called themselves Aryans, tied the word to an unknown foreign land, and told the Mughal emperor they were outsiders like him, thereby escaping the tax.
• At this time, he says, a few pages of the Vedas were expanded into a large book describing the Bhramiks as a separate race, and presented at the Mughal court. Only this community, not the other devout groups, feudal kings or merchants, escaped the jizya.
• The Mughal emperors enjoyed luxury in their forts and saw India only through their courtiers, while the Bhramiks exploited the population outside.
• Many Buddhist institutions and sites were destroyed or converted into Shaiva and Vaishnava temples in this period, and the Vedas, Gita and other texts were written. This, he says, is what is called the origin of Vedic tradition.
• Untouchability and caste discrimination reached a peak. Many people from the majority communities, tired of the harassment, adopted the faith of the foreign rulers to avoid the system of untouchability.
• Reformers appeared in response: Kabir, Tukaram and Guru Nanak, whose Guru community (the Sikhs) he describes as a rebellion against the Brahmanical order.

The Arya Samaj and the Aryan origins

When the exploited began leaving, he says, the Bhramiks rebranded. Arya Samaj was the first attempt: it said Indian culture had been Vedic but not birth-based varna, that people had chosen their varna through deeds, and that people should not join the Sikh path. He charges that it interrupted the social movement of Kabir and Nanak, produced a new version of the old books (Satyarth Prakash), spread the sacred-thread ritual to the majority communities, and gave them the role of performing rituals, but never gave them the top posts. He adds that the founder’s family’s daughters were married by arrangement to hereditary Brahmins, not to the newly converted ones.

Under British rule, he says, some Brahmin leaders presented themselves as the best-suited class to run Indian administration and wrote that their ancestors had come from abroad around 1500 BCE. He lists their contradictory claims about the Aryan homeland:

• Rahul Sankrityayan (Volga se Ganga): from the Volga.
• Tilak (The Arctic Home in the Vedas): the North Pole.
• Gangnath Jha: an unknown Brahma-land.
• Dayanand: Tibet.
• Avinash Chandra Das: the Sapta Sindhu region.
• Jawaharlal Nehru (Discovery of India): Central Asia.

He calls this variation a sign of authors writing whatever dreams came to them, with no archaeological basis. He also claims that in the Pali sources ariyo meant a follower of the Eightfold Path, and that in South India the same word became Ayyar and then Iyengar.

His conclusion on caste

For Patel, caste and varna are therefore a creation of the period after the 9th century, the work of a priestly community that converted a quality-word for scholars into its own caste name, drew a ruling class into the Rajput caste, froze occupations into birth-based groups, and used the Mughal and British rulers to protect and extend its position, while destroying the evidence of the earlier, open, Buddhist-era society.