Memory, History, and Casteless Consciousness

Abstract Chapter 3 analyses why Tamils, who had been marginalized as outcastes, took to Buddhism and how they reinforced their casteless consciousness and practices through it. By building on Judith Butler, it shows that the caste-oppressed Tamils/Indians emerged as ‘self-narrating beings’ not just to reject the casteist social order but also to assert themselves as descendants of casteless ancient Buddhism. By deploying scholars of memory studies, such as Jan Assmann, Aleida Assmann, Avishai Margalit, and Paul Connerton, this chapter argues that the collective, cultural, and communicative memories of oppressed Tamils enabled their rediscovery and reassertion as a vernacular Tamil Buddhist community. And that Buddhism influenced Tamils to acquire a universal understanding of humanity beyond the divisions of caste, race, gender, and region. Furthermore, this chapter demonstrates that a direct consequence of such a perception of Buddhism in modern India was that the people who were subjugated as untouchables by brahminism/casteism could find caste-free ways of identifying, representing, and centring themselves by repudiating brahminical valorizations of caste.