Here is your essay on the Caste-Class Nexus in India !
“In some societies it is not uncommon for individuals to move up or down the social ladder. Where this is the case the society is said to have ‘open’ classes. Elsewhere there is little shifting individuals remains through a life -time in the class into which “they have chance to be born. Such classes are “closed and if extremely differentiated constitute a caste system, observed by Ogburn and Nimkoff.” It is said that castes are a special form of social classes which in tendency at least are present in every society.
Maclver says, “When status is wholly predetermined, so that men are born to their lot without any hope of changing it, then class takes the extreme form of caste. According to Sangeetha Rao, if castes are detached from religion, class may run parallel to castes.
Hindu society was composed of classes such as (1) Brahmin or the priestly class, (2) Kshatriya or the military class and (3) Vaishya or the merchant class and (4) Sudra or the artisan. This was considered as a class system .according to B.R. Ambedkar. Among the Hindus the priestly class maintains social distance from others through a closed policy and becomes a caste by itself.
The other classes undergo differentiation, some into large and some into very minute groups. The natural thing about these sub-divisions is that they have lost the open-door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called castes.
He further argues that since the Brahmins remain detached from others through endogamy it was wholeheartedly imitated by all the non-Brahmin sub-divisions or classes who became endogamous castes.
“Castes are the building blocks of the Hindu social structure. Caste is an important factor in the identification of other backward classes among the Hindu communities .Caste is also a class of citizens, as observed by Mandal Commission in its report.
Several Marxist writers have made castes synonymous with classes. Accordingly, castes are nothing but classes which in course of time have mingled into classes. Sripad Amrit Danger, in an analysis of the movement of non-Brahmins against Brahmins, referred to non-Brahmin castes as non-Brahmin classes’.
The struggle of non-Brahmin classes for enhancement of their status began when Hindu society divided itself into various castes and classes. Marxists in India appear to have realised the significance of caste as a social reality and have embarked upon incorporating the caste reality in India, in one form or the other, in their analysis of class phenomenon. Marxist writers seem to realise that the members of lower classes also belong, by and large, to lower castes. Caste organisations are construed as class organisations which emerged when the rural poor went beyond symbolic reform to upgrade their caste status by raising economic issues.
A peasant class is nothing more than a group of individuals belonging to various castes and possessing land to cultivate. Traditionally, the Zamindars were of the highest caste. The landless labourers were of the lower caste and in between were the members of the cultivating castes. The agrarian hierarchy has its root in the caste structure, in the traditional social system.
But it must be borne in mind that there is only broad correspondence between the agrarian class and caste hierarchies. There are many exceptions. Breman’s study of a South Indian village revealed that the village is characterised by the process of depatronisation of relationship between dominant land owning castes on the one hand and the labouring castes on the other Louis Dumont, A.C. Mayer, M.N Srinivas and Andre Beteille and others talked about Jati as a structural and segmentary system.
The relationship which is established between a Master and a Servant, land owner and tenant .creditor and debtor, all cut across the barriers. Nevertheless, looking at India’s history over the millennia, one reaches the unavoidable conclusion that the most important consideration while determining the constituents of the classes is the caste Ramakrishna Mukherjee found the inter-mixture of caste and class in East Bengal.
The class basis of caste system in India has been highlighted by Cathleen Gough in her reference to conflict and litigation between different castes in a Tanjore village based on economic inequalities
Proof Y. Singh is of the view that classes operate within the framework of castes. Commenting on the nexus of caste and class, he writes, “The situation corresponds to a ‘prismatic ‘model of change where traditional sentiments of caste and kinship undergo adaptive transformation without completely being diffracted into classes or corporate groups.
K.L. Sharma observes that caste inhered in class and class inhered in caste for centuries in the Indian context and Indian society continues to have their inseparable mix even today. Class consciousness is created among the members of a caste on the basis of common economic deprivations. The upper castes, being conscious of the probable threat to their status, to be generated by the lower castes, strive to prevent the emergence of class consciousness among the lower classes.
A.P Singh’s study of a Pun jab village reveals that the rich farmers are the Jat Sikhs and the Harijans work in their farms .P.K. Bose’s study of social mobility and caste violence in Gujarat shows the congruence of caste and class in the agitation against reservation of seats for postgraduate medical courses.
There are a number of points which have so far remained unclarified in regard to the nature of caste and class in India .Bailey refers to three types of definitions of caste. These are (1) the ‘rigidity type. (2) the cultural type and (3) the ‘structural’ type. The first type of definition is found inapplicable as it refers to status immobility hence ‘analytic’. The second type is found ‘useful’ as it refers to religious ideas, namely opposition based on purity and pollution and hierarchy. The third type of definition refers to exclusiveness exhaustiveness and ranking as the ‘structural’ criteria of the caste system.
According to D’ Souza:
Caste is not an exclusively cultural system. Caste and class are different forms of social stratification. Jatis are ranked in the caste systems, whereas positions are ranked in social stratification particularly, with reference to class stratification. The ranking of endogamous groups and not endogamy as the rule of marriage is the hallmark of the caste system.
D’ Souza’s contention is that changes in the caste system have brought about changes in the properties of individual members. A ‘hereditary group’ might continue in the caste system as a ‘class’.
This fact explains the similarity between caste and class. In fact. D’ souza emphasises the significance of the continuum of the rigidity – fluidity dimensions in regard to both caste and class. Thus, the individual and his properties are the real units of analysis rather than the endogamous groups.
Having realized that caste alone is not the totality of social stratification and that caste is not being replaced by class as the two are not necessarily antithetical to each other. Beteille. following Weber’s ‘trio of ‘class, status and party’ analyses patterns of social stratification in a Tanjore village in terms of ‘caste, class, and power.
‘He is not quite clear about the phenomenon of class. He says that “classes are categories rather than groups”. But he contradicts this statement when he writes that “by class we mean a category of persons occupying a specific position in the system of production”. The first statement and the second statement signify Weberian nition of class and Marxian notion of class respectively.
In fact, it is Anil Bhatta who has done more justice to the attributional approach in studying social stratification. Bhatta’s trio comprises ‘caste, class and polities’. He observes that social stratification in India has deviated considerably from the traditional caste model. Caste does not encompass economic position and political power. A caste is internally differentiated in terms of class and power of its members.
Thus, Bhatta finds status incongruence relative openness, mobility and competition as the salient features of the emergent system of social stratification Bhatta has relied on secondary data and attitudinal responses. It is more of a ‘formalistic’ approach and does not go into actual details regarding the functioning of institutions related to caste, class and power Agrawal (1971) and recently Chauhan (1980) have also followed the viewpoint adopted by Beteille. There is no doubt that Beteille has presented a new approach to the study of social stratification in India .but without realizing the incongruity between his approach and the method of his study.
The understanding of caste and class demands an approach which has (i) dialects, (ii) history, (iii) culture, and (iv) structure Dialects refers to the effective .notions which bring about contradictions and highlight relations between unequal segments and men and women.
Thus, it does not simply mean binary fission in the cognitive structure of Indian society as perceived by structuralists in terms of pure and impure. History provides a substantial account of the conditions of human existence. Culture defines the rules of the game, the nature of relations between the haves and the have-nots. Thus culture does not include only cultural practices, rituals, rites etc. Structure refers to relations between social segments at a point of time as a historical product and as an existent reality. Dialects, history, culture and structure refer to a combination of theory, structure and process about the social formation of Indian society. Together they explain the historicity of Indian society from the point of view of its genesis.
The debates today are whether changes in caste and class are ‘transformational ‘or they are’ replacements,’ whether caste is ‘closed ‘and class is ‘open ‘, whether caste is ‘organic’ and whether class is ‘segmentary and whether caste is replaced by class. These are questions which have come up quite often as the idea of ‘social formation ‘has not gained currency in our understanding of caste and class. The obsession of considering caste and class as polar opposite has prevented us from thinking of caste and class as dimensions of the historicity of India’s social formation.
Several scholars have denied the ‘congruence ‘version about caste, class and power in ancient India .They have conclusively established that social mobility existed in ancient and medieval India .The jajmani system was never completely ‘organic ‘in practice. The idea of the contrapriests exposes the hollowness of the concepts of hierarchy and pollution- purity. In the place of Sanskritisation, Westernisation and dominant caste etc, it is necessary to study downward mobility and proletarianization, upward mobility and embourgeoisiement, the migration of the rural rich to towns etc.
To conclude, there are sociologists like Y. Singh and K.L. Sharma who take the synthetic view of caste and point out the class dimension of caste and caste dimension of class. There is no doubt that all the high castes are property owners. But there are also exceptions. According to Bailey, division of wealth no longer followed the same lines as caste divisions. In his study of Bisipara village in Orissa, Bailey also maintains that although there was an internal reshuffle of positions, the caste system continued to order political relations between the groups concerned and to reflect their economic status.
Caste has inhered in class and class is also inhered in caste for centuries in the Indian context, and Indian society continues to have this inseparable mix even today .Role of caste and class in elections is an evidence of this mix. However, caste operating as a ‘marriage circle ‘ is a different way from the way it functions in other arenas.
Hypergamy explains the role of status and wealth within caste. Class-like distinctions within caste and caste-like styles within a class are part of the people’s life situations. Class has been an inbuilt mechanism within caste, and therefore, caste cannot be seen simply as a ‘ritualistic ‘system, and class cannot be seen as an open system as it has often been influenced by the institution of caste. In order to go deep into such a phenomenon the structural-historical perspective becomes inescapable.
