Abstract
India’s enormously diverse sociocultural landscape has fed into her perennial quest for the core common characteristics eloquent, purportedly, of the country’s unity or a sort of essence. The caste system has been serving for long as one such unifying category in much of the Indian social science discourse and sociological theorising.
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Notes
- 1.
Indeed, the relevant literature is much too vast and well known to need a list of references here just to show how much has been made of the caste system in the Indian social science discourses.
- 2.
The prominence of this broad but distinct regional contrast in culture and its ramifications could be traced to a few seminal writings in the early 1980s (e.g. Miller, B., The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in Rural North India, Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1981; Sopher, D.E., An Exploration of India, London: Longman, 1980; Dyson, T. and M. Moore, ‘On Kinship Structure, Female Autonomy and Demographic Behaviour in India, Population and Development Review, vol. 9, 1983; see also Croll, E. (2000), Endangered Daughters: Discrimination and Development in Asia, London: Routledge, 2000; Desai, S. (1994), India: Gender Inequalities and Demographic Behaviour (New York: Population Council).
- 3.
See Dyson and Moore 1983 ibid.
- 4.
See for example Bardhan, P., `On Life and Death Questions', Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number; Miller 1981 op.cit; and also Krishnaji, N. (2000), ‘Trends in Sex Ratio: A Review in Tribute to Asok Mitra”, Economic and Political Weekly, 1161-1165.
- 5.
See e.g. Krishnaraj, M. and A. Shah (2004), Women in Agriculture, New Delhi: Academic Foundation:pp.47-52.
- 6.
See e.g. Kalpana Bardhan, ‘Women’s work, welfare and status’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20(51/52), 21-28 December, 1985; and Sunita Kishor, ‘Gender Differentials in Child Mortality: A review of evidence’, In: M. Das Gupta, L. Chen, and T.N. Krishnan (eds), Women’s Health in India: Risk and Vulnerability, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995; Banerjee, N. and D. Jain (2001), ‘Indian Sex ratio through time and space: development from women’s perspective’, In: Mazumdar, V. and N. Krishnaji (eds), Enduring Conundrum: India’s Sex Ratio, Noida: Rainbow Publishers Ltd, 2001.
- 7.
Maharatna, Arup (2005), Demographic Perspectives on India’s Tribes, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- 8.
Kosambi, D.D. (1965), The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
- 9.
This is particularly important as researchers often make casual interpretations of the Dravidians as indigenous people, but not tribals, because the former currently ‘share few attributes in common with the tribals who stand dispossessed, exploited and marginalized’; Xaxa, V. (1999), ‘Tribes as Indigenous People of India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 34(51), p.3592. But this interpretation seems to miss the fact that the Dravidian society and culture in the south do appear pretty akin to traditional tribal socio-cultural and demographic moorings. See Maharatna 2005, op.cit., especially chapters 1 and 2.
- 10.
See Agnihotri, S. ‘Survival of the Girl Child: Tunnelling out the Chakravyuha’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38(41):4351–4361.
- 11.
T. Scarlett Epstein, South India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, London: Macmillan, 1973.
- 12.
See Dirks, N. (2001), Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
- 13.
Nielsen, B.B., L.J., M. Hedegaard, S.H. Thilsted, and A. Joseph (1997), ‘Reproductive pattern, perinatal mortality, and sex preference in rural Tamil Nadu, South India: community-based, cross sectional study’, British Medical Journal 314:152; Basu, A.M., ‘Fertility Decline and Increasing Gender Imbalance in India, Including a possible South Indian Turnaround’, Development and Change, 1999, vol. 30:237-63; Rajan, S.I., S. Sudha, and P. Mohanachandran (2000), ‘Fertility Decline and Worsening Gender Bias in India: Is Kerala no longer an Exception?’ Development and Change, 2000, 31:1085-95.
- 14.
For example, so-called 'marriage squeeze' and related dowry escalation, lowering ‘value’ females to the parents, has been analysed in a few recent studies: e.g. Bhat, Mari P.N. and S. Halli (1999), ‘Demography of Brideprice and Dowry: Causes and Consequences of the Marriage Squeeze’, Population Studies, 1999, 53(2); Verma, S., ‘Marriage Squeeze in India’, Demography India, 2003, 32(2): 181-199. Similarly, the adverse implications for female children of a growing tension that almost inevitably results from an increasing motivation for controlling family size along with unreformed and unrestrained preference for sons, are analysed by Monica Das Gupta and P.N. Mari Bhatt, P.N. 1995, 'Intensified Gender Bias in India: a consequence of fertility decline', Working Paper No. 95.02, Harvard Center For Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MA, 1995.; and also Basu, A.M. (1999), op.cit.
- 15.
See e.g. L. Suran, S. Aamin, L. Hug, and K. Chowdhury (2004), ‘Does Dowry Improve Life for Brides? A Test for the Bequest Theory in Rural Bangladesh’, Working Paper, Population Council, New York.
- 16.
Bhat, P.N. Mari and S. S. Halli (1999), ‘Demography of brideprice and dowry: Causes and Consequences of the Indian marriage squeeze’, Population Studies, 53(2):129-148; Rao, V. (1993), ‘The rising price of husbands: A hedonic analysis of dowry increases in rural India’, Journal of Political Economy, 101(4):666-677.
- 17.
See Siwan Anderson (2003), ‘Why dowry payments declined with modernization in Europe but are rising in India’, Journal of Political Economy, 111(2):269-310.
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Maharatna, A. (2013). Aping the ‘Awful’? Recent Trends in India’s North–South Sociocultural Divide. In: India’s Perception, Society, and Development. Springer, India. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1017-7_20
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