Rising caste identities and groupings and a diminishing caste system are today’s main caste paradoxes. Explain your reasoning behind this conundrum.
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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
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:
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-
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:
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.