Abstract
The changes that have occurred in Indian society, especially after India’s decolonization, have led to a de-ritualization of caste. With the erosion of rituality, a large part of the support system of caste has collapsed. Caste now survives as a kinship-based cultural community but operates in a different, newly emergent system of social stratification. By forming themselves into larger horizontal social groups, members of different castes now increasingly compete for entry into the middle class, changing its old pre-independence character and composition. This new and vastly enlarged middle class is becoming, even if slowly, politically and culturally more unified but highly diversified in terms of the social origins of its members.
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Notes
- 1.
The Portugese account of caste presented here and the following discussion on the colonial discourse draw heavily on Bernard S. Cohn “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture”, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays, (Oxford University Press, Delhi 1987) pp. 139–40.
- 2.
Ibid., pp. 141–162.
- 3.
For a detailed discussion on changes in castes under British Rule in India and the impact the colonial policies had on the caste system, see G.S. Ghurye, “Caste During the British Rule” in his Caste and Race in India (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962) pp. 270–305. Also see Marc Galanter, “Reform, Mobility, and Politics under British Rule” in his Competing Equalities: Law and Backward Classes in India(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984) pp. 18–40.
- 4.
Collective self-awareness among the lower caste as a people, oppressed socially and economically by the ritually high-ranking castes, developed and found organizational articulation through their participation in anti-Brahman movements which grew in the early decades of this century. See Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movements in Western India—1873 to 1930. (Bombay: Scientific Socialist Education Trust, 1976); see also Eugene F. Irshick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movements and Tamil Separatism 1916–1929. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969).
- 5.
Galanter sees this development during the colonial rule as having brought about some important changes in the caste system: ‘Caste Organization brought with it two important and related changes in the nature of castes. The salient groups grew in size from endogamous jatis into region-wise alliances. Concomitantly, the traditional patterns of organization and leadership in the village setting were displaced by voluntary associations with officials whose delimited authority derived from elections’ Galanter, (note 1 supra) p. 23.
- 6.
For a recent argument articulating a contrary position emphasizing that the caste system has, even in the face of such changes, maintained systemic continuity, see A.M. Shah, “A Response to the Critique on Division and Hierarchy” in A.M. Shah and I.P. Desai, Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat (Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 1988) pp. 92–133. Shah sees horizontal divisions as intrinsic to the caste system itself, representing another principle of caste organization which has always operated in juxtaposition with ‘hierarchy’. The horizontal divisions in caste, in his view, are thus produced and reproduced as part of the continuous process within the system, a kind of change that a system undergoes for its own survival and maintenance. Whereas for his interlocutor in the debate, i.e., I.P. Desai, the horizontal divisions which existed prior to caste but were integrated in the system of castes by the principle of ritual hierarchy are now breaking away from that hierarchy and interacting in horizontal social and political spaces. In this sense, for Desai, horizontal divisions represent a new principle for the emerging stratificatory system, which has undermined the caste principle of ritual hierarchy, I.P. Desai, “A Critique of Division and Hierarchy”, in the above cited Division and Hierarchy, pp.40–49.
- 7.
For an illuminating discussion on the changed relationship between ritual status and occupation and its implications for the emergence of a new type of stratificatory system in India, see I.P. Desai, “Should ‘Caste’ be the Basis for Recognizing Backwardness?”Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 19, No. 28, July 1984) pp. 1106–1116.
- 8.
Of late, such recognition of systemic changes in caste is reflected in the mainstream sociological writings. For example, M.N. Srinivas in one of his latest writings has characterized the changes that have occurred in the caste system as systemic in nature: ‘As long as the mode of production at the village was caste-based, denunciation of inequality from saints and reformers, or from those professing other faiths proved ineffective. It was only when, along with ideological attacks on caste, education and employment were made accessible to all, and urbanization and industrialization spread that systemic changes occurred in caste’ (italics mine). See “Introduction” in Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar, M.N. Srinivas (ed.), (New Delhi, Viking, Penguin India, 1996), p. XIV.
- 9.
For an overview of comprehensive, systemic changes that have occurred in local hierarchies of castes in rural areas, see G.K. Karanth, “Caste in Contemporary Rural India”, in M.M. Srinivas (ed.) Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar (note 7 supra) pp. 87–109. Karanth, in his concluding remarks to the essay, observes the following: ‘In the first place, it may not be appropriate any more to refer to caste in rural India as a “system”. Castes exist as individual groups, but no longer integrated into a system, with the dovetailing of their interests’ (p. 106).
- 10.
The writings and politics of Ram Manohar Lohia, a renowned socialist leader, however, constituted an exception to this approach of the Left parties to political mobilization. In his view, horizontal mobilization of lower castes on issues of social justice had greater political potential for organizing the poor and deprived populations of India than the ideology of class polarization, which, in his view, lacked an empirical, social basis for mobilizational politics. See Ram Manohar Lohia, The Caste System (Ram Manohar Lohia Samata Vidyalaya Nyas, Hyderabad, 1964). Also see D.L. Sheth, “Ram Manohar Lohia on Caste in Indian Politics”, Lokayan Bulletin (Vol.12, No. 4, January–February 1996) pp. 31–40; also D.L. Sheth, “Ram Manohar Lohia on Caste, Class and Gender in Indian Politics”, Lokayan Bulletin (Vol. 13, No. 2, September–October 1996) pp. 1–15.
- 11.
The concept of ‘politicization of castes’ was first used by Rajni Kothari in the early 1970s, to describe changes that had occurred in the caste system with its involvement in democratic politics. See “Chapter 1: Introduction” in his Caste in Indian Politics, (note 22 supra) pp. 3–25.
- 12.
Rajni Kothari in his pioneering work on the Congress party saw this aspect of Congress’s politics, i.e., expanding its social base through management of caste-based political factions regionally and seeking consensus on issues of development and modernization nationally, as crucial to the Congress party’s prolonged, political and electoral dominance. See Rajni Kothari, “The ‘Congress System’ in India”, Asian Survey (Vol. 4, No. 12, December 1964) pp. 1161–1173; see also “The Congress System Revisited”, in his Politics and People: In Search of Humane India, Vol. 1 (Ajanta Publishers, Delhi, 1989) pp. 36–58.
- 13.
See D.L. Sheth, “Reservations Policy Revisited”, Economic and Political Weekly (November 14, 1987) pp. 1957–87.
- 14.
M.N. Srinivas, “Varna and Caste” in Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1962) pp. 63–69. Also see Andre Betelle, “Varna and Jati”, Sociological Bulletin (Vol. 45, No. 1, March 1996). pp. 15–27.
- 15.
I would like to emphasize that presented here are preliminary findings of the survey. The author and the research team at the CSDS are in the process of refining the index of middle-class membership. In the final analysis, percentage figures for the representation of social formations into the middleclass and for the magnitude of the middleclass may slightly change (by about ±1–2 per cent). I have reported here ‘work in progress’ and not a completed analysis of the composition of the middleclass, which will soon appear in a separate monograph. The idea is to give a broad, even if slightly tentative, picture of the emerging new middleclass.
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Sheth, D.L. (2018). Secularization of Caste and the Making of a New Middle Class. In: deSouza, P. (eds) At Home with Democracy . Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6412-8_8
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