Indian Society

India is a land of contrasts as seen in the emerging paradox of caste: the rising caste groups/identities, declining caste system. India’s caste system divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma is among the world’s oldest forms of surviving social stratification (more than 3,000 years old). The Indian caste system is a complex social structure wherein social roles like one’s profession became ‘hereditary,’ resulting in restricted social mobility and fixed status hierarchies. Furthermore, we argue that the inherent property of caste heightens group identification with one’s caste. Highly identified group members would protect the identity of the group in situations when group norms are violated.

Factors Contributing To Decline Of Caste System

1. The caste system is said to be declining due to the forces of Indian modernity, democracy, and capitalism.
2. Economic development has reduced the emphasis on caste by causing people to prioritize matters of livelihood over rigid social norms.
3. The most conspicuous rule among the caste rules regarding purity was that of commensality or rules regarding eating and drinking with or accepting food and water from other castes. Post-independence, industrialisation, education, and urbanisation, amongst other factors, made the applicability of some of these hardbound rules unfeasible.
4. Large scale urbanisation has diminished the awareness of caste by necessitating increased physical proximity and constant intermingling of people from different castes who interacted for work in large factories. Similarly, students of different castes, unaware of commensality rules freely ate with each other in school and at large public gatherings such as marriages, inter-caste mingling happened.
5. Growth of literacy and education has helped to decrease the belief in caste as a social practice that should be discarded or abrogated instead of the universal notion of freedom, liberty, and equality of all individuals.
6. Occupational mobility is possible now and children are not compelled to continue the profession of the family or father. Industrialisation and post-liberal reforms have created the avenue for a variety of new, caste-free professions. This paved the way for challenging the social hierarchy created by associating a particular occupation with a specific caste identity.
7. Efforts of social reformers like Phule, Gandhiji, Ambedkar against the caste system have helped to promote the notion of a casteless society. This legacy is reflected in post-independent India‘s constitutional mandates and legal provisions.
8. Rural regions like villages were more prone to following the rigid caste rules and implementing parallel and inappropriate justice mechanisms like honour killings. But the weakening of the position of landlords in the villages has led to declining of the rigid caste barriers in villages.
9. The punitive measures associated with caste-based discrimination as outlined in fundamental rights has helped to create a deterrence against caste-based crimes. Constitutional provisions such as the Right to Equality of all before the law have helped to prevent discrimination legally to a particular extent.
10. The policy of reservation of seats in local self-government bodies and legislatures as well in educational institutes have helped to uplift the political, social, and economic position of lower castes.

Factors For Rising Caste Groups/Identities

1.Development policies targeting the backward castes and scheduled have benefitted only a section of the population who have emerged as the elite. This has created a division within the backward castes with them asserting their caste identity more than before. 2.In place of caste rules, a mythology of the ethno-futures (of caste) that embraces and celebrates caste identities as cultural identities, caste pride as a cultural assertion, and caste endogamy as natural affinity to those who are culturally alike. 3.Viewed as a positive contribution to India‘s cultural diversity, caste is set to enter public policy, not as a problem of inequality, but as a problem of ‘management’ of ethnic and cultural diversity. 4.In contrast to the older structure, various caste communities have asserted themselves and began to politically mobilize by forming political parties based on caste identities. For example- Bahujan Samaj Party. Political mobilization based on caste has been rising. Lingayats’ demand to be considered as a minority community. 5.The welfare policies have led to social stigma among the castes which are not included. These policies have strengthened the caste-based mobilization. For example:

1. Dominant castes like Marathas, Kapus, and Patidars have been demanding reservation.
2. Socially empowered and landholding communities like Jats have also mobilized themselves and have demanded reservation.

6.The expression of social exclusion and maintaining the caste-based division by the communities has however not vanished but has only become more subtle.For example-

1. The matrimonial advertisements are frequent in the newspapers that especially demand brides and grooms from particular communities.
2. Even religions that do not follow caste systems like Muslims and Christianity have observed caste-like discrimination. Dalits who have converted to Christianity have separate graveyards in States like Kerala.

7.Caste is being used as pressure groups for seeking favourable changes in policies e.g. demands for affirmative action by Patels of Gujarat, Marathas of Maharashtra, and Jats of Haryana.

Reasons For The Paradox

The paradox is that despite the declining caste system, the rise in caste groups and caste identities has been observed. These are invoked in public, and persist and flourish in Indian society, not only in matrimonial markets and electoral politics but also in everyday life-shaping access to land, credit, capital, employment, housing and knowledge, prestige, and power. This can be attributed to multiple factors:

1. Politically, democratization or modernization which views castes positively as political interest groups, instead of as shackles for the free association is helping in the decline of the caste system.
2. Cultural perception of substantialization or ethnicization which views caste again positively as ethnic groups or independent communities of cultural identity contributing to India‘s diversity, instead of a status hierarchy and inequality.
3. Economic Discourses such as capitalization or productivity valorize caste as innovative networks of social (trust) and economic capital instead of as exploitative relations.
4. Caste is perceived as private and domestic practices (such as endogamy) that do not affect life-chances, instead of as public sites for reproducing caste networks and inequality.
5. Caste-based divisions are considered to offer solidarity and psychological strength to various marginalized groups, even if the caste-based discrimination is diffused through the legislative enforcement the divisions of identity will be difficult to erase.

The above factors advance the claim that castes can exist without a caste system because caste is fundamentally about ‘social difference’ not hierarchy and it is only the latter that requires a caste system. Further, the existence of castes need not be considered a social problem since caste groups are simply ‘cultural communities’ or ethnicities, and caste identities are cultural identities that enrich India’s diversity. There should be the caste-conscious anti-caste political mobilization of multi-caste groups for critically demanding an anti-caste agenda from the caste-conscious mobilization of jati-clusters for electoral purposes, explicitly reject the liberal disavowal of casteism as a fundamental organizing principle of current Indian society, and recognize the need for anti-caste politics to work through identity towards solidarity.