ABSTRACT
Critiques of caste and ‘Brahminism’ featured prominently in the social, political and intellectual life of colonial India. It is often assumed that Brahmins took the lead in developing such critiques as a consequence of the ideological influences of liberalism and nationalism. But how do we account for such critiques, articulated by Brahmins themselves, in India’s precolonial centuries? My essay will explore ‘religious’ materials from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries in which Brahmins appear to be agents in the creation of anti-caste and in particular anti-Brahmin sentiment. I situate this Brahminical anti-caste and anti-Brahmin discourse within a largely performative public sphere, where Brahmins balanced their role as ‘knowledge specialists’ in heterogeneous social, religious and cultural contexts where they were a significant minority. Here, Brahmin advocates of anti-Brahmin and anti-caste sentiment offered a ‘double’, a discursively constructed ‘Brahmin’, thus deflecting or diffusing criticism, and enabling the Brahmin performer or composer to maintain a position of importance as a Brahmin in the world of bhakti and the larger premodern public sphere.
