What is the Caste System in India? Describe the definition of Caste system in India

Introduction of Caste System in India

The word  ‘ caste’ is used in everyday life and we use it to distinguish one person from another. We say such and such person belongs to a particular caste. In saying it we generally mean to convey that he is born to that parents or is a member of that family who is said to belong to a particular caste. In this way, caste is a heredity group and is biologically towards the use of heredity and descent. The word ‘caste’ has been derived from the Latin word  ‘CASTUS’ which means clean and pure.

Here  we will describe the definition of  Caste system in India

 Describe the definition of Caste System in India

Of many definitions offered by different scholars. Some are reproduced below: –

  1. According  to Martindale and Monachesi: –  ” a caste is an aggregate of person’s whose share  of obligation and privileges is fixed by birth sanctioned or supported by religion and magic .

  2. According to Ketker: – “A caste  is a group of having two characteristics:  First: Membership is confined to those who are born of members and includes all persons so born, Second:  The members are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group.”

Here we have finished the information of describe the definition of Caste system in India .

Features of the Caste System in  India

The features of  caste are as follows: –

  1.  Determination by Birth: – The membership of a caste is determined by birth. A  person remains a member of the caste in which he is born and his membership does not undergo any change even if the change takes place in his status, occupation, education, wealth, etc. 

  2.  Rules and Regulation Concerning Food: – Each caste has its laws which give the food habits of its members. Generally, there are no restrictions against fruit, milk, butter, dry fruit, etc. but raw food (bread, etc.) can be accepted only by members of one’s own or of a higher caste.

  3. Definite Occupations: –  In the Hindu scriptures there is a mention of the occupation of all varnas. According to Manu the functions of the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudra were definite. The functions of the Brahmins were to study, teach, guide, and perform religious rituals and to give and receive alms,  that of the Kshatriya to study, perform religious rituals, give alms, punish the evil and go to war; that of the Vaishya to study,  perform religious rituals, give alms, work in agriculture, trade and animal husbandry; that of the Shudras to do menial work for all the other varnas. Having developed from the varna system the occupations in the Caste system are definite. 

  4. Endogamous Group: – The majority of persons marry only within their caste. Brahmin, Kshatriya, Shudra, and Vaishya all marry within their respective castes. Western has considered this to be a chief feature of the caste system. Hindu community does not signify inter-caste marriage even now.

  5. Rule concerning Status and  Touchability: – The various castes in Hindu social organization are divided into a hierarchy of ascent and descent one above the other. In this hierarchy of ascent and descent one above the other. In this hierarchy, the Brahmins have the highest and untouchables in the lowest position.  The sense of superiority among the Brahmins is also conjoined to the law of untouchability. This sense of superiority is much exaggerated and manifests in the South.

Characteristics of the Caste System in India

The characteristics  of the Caste System in India are as follows: –

  1. Members of caste cannot wed outside their caste.

  2. There  are similar but have less strict laws governing the partaking of food with members of other groups

  3. In many cases, the occupations are fixed 

  4. There is some accepted stratification among the castes in which Brahmin have been accorded the best place at the top.

  5. Birth determines the castes of the individual for his entire life so long as he is not extradited from if of violating its laws. There is no other possible way of transferring from one caste to another.

  6. All occupations are based on the respect of the Brahmins

Difference between  Class and Caste 

Class

Caste

  1. The membership, status, standard of life, etc as based on objective facts.

  2. There is an open stratification in class, meaning that a person can change his class.

  3. The members of the class are class-conscious.

  4. The class system does not hinder democracy

  5. An individual has comparatively greater freedom in class.

  6. Comparatively less social distance.

  1. Membership of Caste is based on birth.

  2. There is a closed stratification in caste, meaning that a person cannot rise above his caste.

  3. There is no need for any subjective consciousness in members of caste.

  4. The caste system does not hinder democracy

  5. In the Caste system, there are comparatively more strict restrictions on marriage, etc.

  6. Comparatively more social distance.

Difference between Varna and Caste System

VARNA

CASTE( JATI)

  1. VARNA means to select or choose. Varna is acquired by a person according to his nature.

  2. Thus, Varna is based on action rather than birth. A Brahmana is respected under the Varna system only when he has acquired knowledge and imparts it to others.

  3. The Varna system was a flexible and changing system. There are many examples of change in varna, and inter-varna marriages during and even after the Vedic period.

  4.  Varnas are four in number.

  1. JATI is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘JAHA’ meaning ‘to Born’. JATI is determined by the birth of a person.

  2. Thus, Caste is based upon birth rather than action. In the caste system,  an Uneducated  Brahmana is respected while an educated Shudra is looked down upon.

  3. The caste System forbids marriage among different castes, each caste considering marriage right if these are in the same caste itself.

  4.  Castes are 400 in number, on the authority of census report.

Caste System in India during the Colonial Period

The caste system was changing and acquiring new political dimensions. For administrative purposes, the British government had brought a good deal of improvement in communication. The immediate effect of this writes Srinivas, was that it increased caste consciousness and inter-caste competition. This happened because now the caste relation could outgrow its regional and develop caste association to bargain for some concessions from the British government on the plea of backwardness in order the catch up with the advanced castes. At the same time, the caste associations worked for the elevation of social status.  This was a new dimension and function of caste, unknown before

Thus, we find that the caste system began to acquire new functions and dimensions in the changing social, economic, and political ambiance of the pre-independence period. I undermined the vocational basis of caste, its economic rationality, its interactional restriction, and as spatial and political isolation. However, changes in the caste system notwithstanding, the grip of this institution on the social matrix didn’t loosen to any appreciable extent. ‘Caste continued to persist, albeit in a different form from its feudal embodiment.’

Caste System in India after Independence

A democratic polity based on the principle of the adult franchise was perhaps the most crucial factor that reinforced caste with a lot of vigor. According to Moin Shakir, there is a dual role of caste in the post-independence era: democratizing the system and hampering the rise of evolutionary class organizations.  The type of mass politics operating after independence is radically afferent from that of British India. Its activities are primordial institutions.   Thus caste, religion, etc. become relevant inputs in the main politics in India.

As regards the mobilization of the people based on castes, Rudolph and Rudolph say that there are three types of mobilizations. They are as follows: –

  1. Vertical mobilization,

  2. Horizontal mobilization

  3. Differential mobilization

  1. Vertical mobilization: – Traditional notables in local societies organize and integrate them through rank, mutual dependence, and the legitimacy of traditional authority.

  2. Horizontal mobilization: – It involves the marshaling of political support by class or community leaders and their specialized organizations.

  3. Different Mobilization: – It involves marshaling direct or indirect political support by political support by political parties (and other integrative structures) from viable but internally differentiated communities through parallel appeals to ideology, sentiment, and interest. The political implication of this development is the recruitment of leaders, provision for political personnel, legitimization of the traditional authority pattern, and creation of group consciousness and divisions along narrow sectarian lines.

In this context, an important development is that lower castes have become significant in elections. Leaders of all the major parties and formations agree that the crucial Dalit vote can make or break their fortunes. A new phase of Dalit assertion had begun in states such as UP, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh. Kanshi Ram set up the Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti and formed the Bahu Jan Samaj Party (BSP) in 1982. Since then, BSP has emerged as a significant force. The RPI, formed in 1956 by BR Ambedkar was a larger experience and a richer intellectual tradition to draw from. It has witnessed radical militancy under the Dalit Panthers in the 1970’s producing an inspiration and vigorous Dalit literature.

In India, the persistence of feudal relations and the very retarded growth of capitalism are responsible for the close caste-class relations, rather than any ritual or numerical status. Working within the framework of direct, personal subservience, often the villagers vote as a near unity irrespective of higher/ lower caste divisions. This is where the caste affiliation of the rich and the medium land owners become important, though numerically they form only a small percentage of the total rural population or even among the agricultural population. The concentration of specific regions helps them to carry more weight with the lower castes in the villages. Equally the coming together of various middle and lower castes based on the common interest of the peasantry class has helped these groups to further consolidate themselves.

Caste System in India During Elections Since Pre-independence

In the 1950s, India’s newly franchised were not aware of the power of their numbers, although they made up the majority. That is changing ever more rapidly. Now the underclass knows that vote is the most potent weapon of all in its hands. Over the past few years, India’s low places have made their influence felt in organized politics as never before. There has emerged a cognitive revolution in the minds of the untouchables and the lower castes. With the government having failed to ameliorate their conditions, the deprived are taking matters into their own hands, armed with the realization that only their activities will undo injustice. They, therefore, no longer allow landed elites to tell them how to vote, as they often did in the 1950’s. Their protest, of course also invites individual and group atrocities perpetrated by higher castes and classes. 

Second, there are also emerging conflicts within ruling classes particularly between the rich peasantry and urban industrial classes. The ruling block provokes the Jats alarmingly through ethnic game-playing instead of political competition based on issues and ideological considerations.  The Jats as a community are conspicuous by their absence in Bihar. After the Muslims and Scheduled castes, they are the largest single group in the state being around 11 percent of the population.

The Janata Dal Launched in October 1968 with the merger of the Janata Party, Lok Dal, and the Jan Morcha clearly showed that apart from its concern for so-called clean politics it represented essentially a bid by the OBCs for power at the Centre.

 Thus, VP Singh decided to adopt the only readymade constituency available to him. But understandably, he had to make the right noises as regards the under-privileged groups. So, while Devi Lal revived the AJGAR (Ahir, Jat, Gujar, and Rajput) formulation (first propagated by the legendary pre-independence Haryanvi politician Sir Chottu Ram and later practiced by Choudhary Charan Singh without ever using the term (AJGAR) VP Singh had to couch this in a different language by talking about giving 60 percent of Janata Dal tickets to SC, ST, and OBC’s. Statistically speaking the AJGAR alliance is about as numerous as the Congress’s traditional base of the Brahmins, Harijans, and Muslims.

The Congress’s response to V.P. Singh’s AJGAR was to float a parallel AJGAR. The induction of Satyendra Narain Sinha (a Rajput) as Bihar Chief Minister, the importance lavished on Bir Bahadur Singh‘s progeny in Uttar Pradesh, the crucial role played by Rajesh Pilot (a Gujar), and the wooing of Yadav leaders like Ram Naresh Yadav, all pointed out earlier these sections had deserted the Congress long ago. Thus, the Janata Dal in 1989, by large, gathered the support of non-brahmin upper caste and newly awakened backward.’ Parties of all hues cultivate their socio-economic constituencies and nurse their vote banks.

The phenomenon particularly gained importance in – the 1960s. Charan Singh was among the first leaders to recognize the electoral potential of peasant castes and worked assiduously towards consolidating it. Karpoori Thakur in Bihar was another leader to articulate the Other Backward Castes (OBC) in particular.

After the 1969 Congress split Mrs. Gandhi also tried to rely upon the support of backward castes leaders. The Janata Party’s victory in the 1977 elections, apart from the slogan of restoration principally upon a coalition of three major social forces – the middle and rich peasant’s castes, the Muslim and the Scheduled Castes. The Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar aided the struggle of the “backward” castes (1978-79) on the issue of reservation. The Janata Party rule awakened the middle and lower middle castes to the understanding that they needed to seize political power to bring about genuine upliftment for themselves.

Changes in the traditional power hierarchy, also brought conflict sometimes violent, between the rising, yet so-called “backward castes and the Scheduled Castes.

The latter, with marginally greater access to education and a relatively better economic situation, was now able to protest against their victimization and exploitation by the newly dominant castes.

Certain groups, having found new economic prosperity, accentuated the tensions of caste society by giving up old practices of merely. To imitate the upper caste culture (the process of Sanskritization) and prepare for direct political confrontation, one must take an active

steps. 

The traditional upper castes, continuing to hold dominance over governmental economic, political, and social resources, responded to the challenge posed by the rising middle class.

Caste system in India with its  Trends

From the above discussion, it becomes clear that caste important factor in Indian policies.

Within the new context of political democracy caste remains a central element of Indian society while adapting itself to the

values and methods of democratic politics.

Thus, while the form of our politics is secular, the style is essentially casteist.

In a wide range of social and economic activities in admission to schools and colleges, in student politics, in

employment opportunities, in private houses as also in certain categories of employees in the services, in the recruitment pattern of

autonomous institutions, in the distribution of benefits based on discretionary power in the three-tier Panchayati Raj and over bureaucratic

decisions caste consideration plays more than a marginal part.

Rasheeduiddin Khan points out that some who hold that the caste system is growing more powerful advance the thesis that modern

means of communication the spread of education, increased prosperity, expanding political opportunities and above all the formation of caste associations, have strengthened the bonds of caste with greater vigor.

They argue that with the adoption of a universal franchise, tremendous possibilities have opened to the majority of middle castes who were hitherto denied their legitimate share of power.

These were the caste groups that had captured the Congress during the liberation struggle and aligned themselves with the

modern integrative agency – Political Parties and the fusion gained new strength.

The emerging power structure of the Panchayati Raj reveals the entrenchment of the rural caste elite in the vital sector

of the political process.

Though the working of welfare politics is concerned as it is with the distribution of benefits, they have dislodged the urban

elite, by casting wide their net of patronage and power.

Here we are completed with the information of   describe the definition  of the Caste  System in India.

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