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The Mandal Commission report marks the culmination of the attempt at social engineering that began with the Christian missionary (followed by British governmental) campaigns against the Brahmin community in the early part of the 19th century. It was not accidental that Brahmins emerged as the principal target of British attacks. Britishers of all pursuits, missionaries, administrators and orientalists, were quick to grasp; their pivotal role in the Indian social arrangement. They were all agreed that religious ideas and practices underlay the entire social structure and that, as custodians of the sacred tradition, Brahmins were the principal integrating force. This made them the natural target of those seeking to fragment, indeed atomise, Indian Society. This was as true of the British conquerors as it was of Muslim rulers in the preceding centuries. Mandal takes off from where the British left.
The British were not wrong in their distrust of educated Brahmins in whom they saw a potential threat to their supremacy in India. For instance, in 1879 the Collector of Tanjore in a communication to Sir James Caird, member of the Famine Commission, stated that “there was no class (except Brahmins ) which was so hostile to the English.” The predominance of the Brahmins in the freedom movement confirmed the worst British suspicions of the community. Innumerable CID reports of the period commented on Brahmin participation at all levels of the nationalist movement. In the words of an observer, “If any community could claim credit for driving the British out of the country, it was the Brahmin community. Seventy per cent of those who were felled by British bullets were Brahmins”.
Role slighted To counter what they perceived, a Brahminical challenge, the British launched on the one hand a major ideological attack on the Brahmins and, on the other incited non-Brahmin caste Hindus to press for preferential treatment, a ploy that was to prove equally successful vis-à-vis the Muslims.
In the attempt to rewrite Indian history, Brahmins began to be portrayed as oppressors and tyrants who wilfully kept down the rest of the populace. Their role in the development of Indian society was deliberately slighted. In ancient times, for example, Brahmins played a major part in the spread of new methods of cultivation (especially the use of the plough and manure) in backward and aboriginal areas. The Krsi-parasara, compiled during this period, is testimony to their contribution i
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