Caste

About: Caste is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5681 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91330 citations. The topic is also known as: caste system.

The Caste System of India

Abstract: i. Endogamy. The Caste system is a hierarchy of endogamous groups that individuals enter only by birth. A caste differs from a clan or sib in being endogamous and recognizing various ranks. It differs from a class in its strict enforcement of permanent endogamy within caste groups. The largest enumeration of castes was in the I9oi Census which listed "2,378 main castes and tribes" (No. I, 537, 557) some of which in turn are divided into endogamous subcastes of which the Brahmans are said to have 8cc. All ancient occupations used to be organized on a caste basis, even those now considered anti-social. The Census speaks of 4,500,000 persons belonging to castes and tribes "whose hereditary occupation is crime of one kind or another-theft, burglary, highway robbery, or even assassination, combined in many instances with prostitution." 2. Compelling religious sanctions. The caste system of India differs from the class systems of other countries mainly in being invested with the mighty sanctions of the ancient Hindu religion, as is evidenced by the very name given to the system, varna ashrama dharma. Varna means color, ashrama may be translated religious discipline, while dharma covers religio-social righteousness, obligations and mores. The families of a caste often have a common name and occupation. To be a good Hindu a man may believe anything or nothing but he must fulfill his caste obligations. Orthodox Hinduism prohibits him from marrying his child to a person of another caste, from eating and drinking with an outsider, from eating unfit or unclean food, from touching an Outcaste or letting his shadow fall upon him, and from following an unsuitable occupation. A villager's failure to observe minutely all the taboos and elaborate ceremonial rules usually leads to his being boycotted by his fellow caste-men as to marriage and food, and sometimes as to companionship, drink and tobacco. Even the village artisans will not deign to serve him. Until a few decades ago no strict Hindu might cross the "black waters" of the ocean with impunity. To be received back into caste he had to make atonement by swallowing a pellet of the five products of the sacred cow, including the dung and urine. In the authoritative Bhagavadgita, when Arjuna hesitates to slay his distant relatives, his divine charioteer Lord Krishna reminds him that he is a Kshatriya (warrior) and that he must never swerve from his caste diarma:

Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Politics in the middle: mediating relationships between the citizens and the state in rural North India

Abstract: Caste and patron–client links have been regarded most often as the building blocks of political organization in India, especially in its rural parts (Migdal 1988; Weiner 1989), and caste associations have been thought to be the pre-eminent mode of interest formation and interest articulation for ordinary villagers (Bailey 1957; Morris-Jones 1967; Panini 1997). Caste has changed over the last twenty-five years, however, and the links between caste and occupation and caste and wealth are no longer as close as they used to be (Mayer 1997; Sheth 1999). Many observers continue to stress caste and patron–client linkages as important factors explaining political mobilization in rural India (Karanth 1997; Kothari 1997; Manor 1997). The relation of caste to political organization is mediated, however, by the nature of state policies. Changes produced by state policies over the last twenty-five years have had the result of diminishing the utility for villagers of older caste- and patronage-based conduits. In sixty-nine villages where I studied these features, located in the northern Indian states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, different forms of political association have arisen and gained ground, and the salience of older patronage-based associations has waned considerably in comparison. Varying stimuli produced by the state at different times have resulted in reconfiguring caste and political association, the historical account shows (Bayly 1988; Dirks 2001). As the nature and the rules of the political game have changed once again over the past twenty-five years, caste and other forms of social aggregation have changed further in response.

The cultural politics of shit: class, gender and public space in India

Abstract: In this article we seek to interrogate the cultural, political and economic conditions that generate the crisis of sanitation in India, with its severe implications for the poor and the marginalized. The key question we ask is how to interpret and explain the spectre of ‘open defecation’ in India's countryside and its booming urban centres. The discussion is divided into three parts. Part one examines the cultural interpretation of ‘shitting’ as symbolic action underpinned by ideas of purity, pollution and ‘the body politic’. Part two takes the political economic approach to gain further insights into contemporary discourse, performance and cultural politics surrounding toilets and open defecation in India. Part three examines civil society activities, state campaigns and media accounts of open defecation to explore the disruptive potency of everyday toilet activities, and how these interplay with issues of class, caste, and gender. Drawing on interviews and a review of ethnographic work, we seek to inter...

Grappling with Modernity India’s Respectable Classes and the Culture of Domestic Servitude

Abstract: This article explores the culture of servitude of Kolkata’s (formerly Calcutta) respectable classes against the backdrop of their project of modernity. In societies with long and unbroken histories...

Education and caste in India

Abstract: This paper analyses the policy of reservation for lower castes in India. This policy is similar to that of affirmative action in the United States. The paper provides a brief overview of the caste system and discusses the types of groups that are eligible for reservation, based on data from government reports. The stance of this paper is that affirmative action has not benefited the lower castes due to contextual factors like low school enrolment and completion rates, and high dropout and failure rates. Also, continuous addition of more and more castes to the fold of reserved categories has diluted the positive impact of the reservation policy. This paper suggests that under-representation of any social group in educational institutions should be assessed with reference to sub-populations of secondary school completers and argues that, unlike Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Other Backward Castes are not markedly under-represented. Hence, the 27% quota declared by the government recently is not justified. The...