Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

1979:115-118). As seen in Faridpur today there is on the
one hand, a caste system, but on the other hand, a
complex of multiple, fluid identities overlapping each
other that from the outside might be seen as
contradictory. This empirical context may therefore
enable a discussion of some of the premises in the
structuration process by which caste hierarchies are
constructed, contested, or maintained.
Different vehicles in history
There are different vehicles in history, which have
various effects upon the constitution of society. The
interconnected time cycles move with various rhythms.
In the word of Braudel, “History exists at different
levels, I would even go so far as to say three levels but
that would be only in a manner of speaking, and
simplifying things too much. There are ten, a hundred
levels to be examined, ten, a hundred time spans. On the
surface, the history of events works itself out in the short
term: it is a sort of microhistory. Halfway down, a
history of conjunctures follows a broader, slower
rhythm…And over and above the “recitatif” of the
conjuncture, structural history, or the history of the
longue durée, inquires into whole centuries at a time”
(Braudel 1980:74). There is no single past alive in the
present, but a multiple of various pasts co-exit at the
very same moment. These various structures or
modalities are present at the same time, and the different
levels of history are inevitably connected to materiality,
and the spatial use of materiality illuminates, creates,
and maintains hierarchies. As Braudel said, the threedivision
of the historical structures is a simplification,
but I will nevertheless use a tripartite classification
which may illuminate some of the structural principles in
the development of castes in Faridpur. The individual
history will be seen as microhistory and the collective
history (“culture”) as a history of conjunctures, and
finally the environmental history as the longue durée.
Firstly, at an individual level it is necessary to adopt an
actor’s perspective, which stresses in line with Giddens
that it is “in and through their activities agents reproduce
the conditions that make these activities possible”
(Giddens 1993:2). An important factor in this regard is
the self-acknowledgment and self-respect each person
possesses. One does not rank oneself at the bottom
voluntarily, and seen from an emic perspective most
self-ascriptions emphasise the positive and crediting
aspects of oneself. Hence, most people perceive
themselves as pure, and they are concerned about the
relative differences in terms of purity-impurity expressed
by water as a medium.
Secondly, at a collective level one has to include the
community as a whole. T. S. Eliot rhetorically asked the
question “what life have you if you have not life
together?” and his answer was that “there is no life that
is not in community […]” (Needham 1970:xiii). Despite
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one’s own self-ascriptions these are incorporated,
challenged, or accepted in a broader culture. External
groups may have possibilities for defining others as
groups either by power or authority relations. Power-
and authority relations, that is domination, play a
fundamental role in the practice of assigning ethnic as
well as religious identities (Jenkins 1998:53). The
absence of Brahmans are therefore of the uttermost
importance in the particular development of castes in
Faridpur. Despite the persisting ideology of Brahman
orthodoxy, these ideas have little impact in daily social
interactions since there are few actors to advocate and
manifest them. Society is structured around water, and
on a collective level the absence of Brahmans has
enabled a situation where water is a medium for the
transgression of social borders and hierarchies, which
opens up for fluctuation regarding the perception of
status and interaction between different groups.
Thirdly, regarding the longue durée, “it functions along
the border between the moving and immobile, and
because of the long-standing stability of its values, it
appears unchanging compared with all the histories
which flow and work themselves out more swiftly, and
which in the final analysis gravitate around it” (Braudel
1980:74). Materiality does not exist as a linear trajectory
in space, but rather as a relational spatial positioning of
physicality. Materiality defined in a broad sense,
including nature and the physical surroundings, is a
medium and a memory for constructing, manifesting,
and remembering relative time differences (Miller
1987). Particularly important in this case is the water
world and the annual floods which have re-occurred for
centuries and even millennia. Positively, the life-giving
waters in Ganga and Brahmaputra make this area one of
the most fertile places on the globe, where it is possible
to produce up to three crops a year. Negatively, the
floods are so persisting, dangerous, and fundamental in
the world for everyone irrespective of religion that the
water-world defines a religious-environmental curtain
even for the Muslims.
Combining these three levels of history, the river as a
background encompasses everything from birth to death.
There is no difference between the creature and the
creator, and all things, elements, and beings are part of
the total cosmos. Water is the first element from which
all elements originate and to which all will again return.
The supernatural exists in nature, and nature is
conceived as an order which includes man
(Khubchandani 1995). The environmental diversity is
incorporated in the practical life: “The peasants live in a
cosmocentric universe having accepted them as part of
their ecosystem, subjecting themselves to the elemental
powers, in spite of their inherent capacities to dominate
these powers as members of the human race” (Chandran
1995:158). The ecosystem is a microcosm, and nature is
spiritualised (ibid:159). As a consequence of microcosm
being identical to macrocosm, ecological crises are not
only a profane disruption of the environmental balance,