Caste in Contemporary Indian Society

2015

Caste as a social system has always been in limelight for those who made effort to understand the Hindu culture, and often vaguely interpreted due to its complexity and genesis. Caste is expansion of Varna due to further development of social needs. However, they both are different things. The article focuses on the influence of various cultural elements and concurrent process happened in course of time which propelled to emerge a system that became a reality and has been affecting the Indian social setup positively and negatively both respects. Indian society is divided into several castes and groups. Each Caste group is distinctive than the others and reflects in various ways such as life style, thinking process, professional choice as well as social behavior etc. Indeed, caste system is a social institution full with unique reality and as an institution with hierarchy giving professional choice for those living in it as part. It concludes that Caste is a professional group with ...

The Caste System of India has played an integral role in the shaping of Indian Society. With time and under diverse circumstances, it has changed its form and role, fulfilling different functions while evolving. The aim of this paper is to briefly track the evolution of the Caste System within Indian society focusing on how its role has changed, especially in a contemporary Indian setting.

PURVADEVA, Peer Revied Bilingual International Research Journal, 2022

The caste system categorizes people into various hierarchical levels, which determine and define their social, religious, and hegemonic standings within the society. The caste system has also maintained a nexus and a sense of community for caste members for more than 2,000 years. A classic example of the caste system is the one found in India, which has existed there for hundreds of years. The caste system in India was traditionally a graded hierarchy based on a purity-pollution scale; it has undergone many changes over the years. After India’s independence, there has been a de-ritualization of caste, and it has moved toward being a community based on affinity or kinship rather than representing a fixed hierarchy. The association of each caste with a distinct occupation has weakened considerably, and inter-caste marriages across different ritual strata, even crossing the Varna boundaries, are not uncommon. In present day society because of industrialization, urbanization, modern education system, modern means of transport and communication, remarkable changes have been experienced in features of caste system, such as occupation, marriage, food, drink, social intercourse etc. But at the same time there are some factors like emergence of political parties, method of election, constitutional provision for S.C., S.T. and other backward classes have gradually encouraged the problem of casteism in India. So, it is difficult to predict about the future of caste system in India. In this context, I am trying to find out the present position and future of Indian caste system. The aim of this paper is to understand the continuity and the changes in the caste system in India.

Contemporary South Asia

This special issue of Contemporary South Asia seeks to capture the diversity and situatedness of the caste experience and deepen our understanding of caste dynamics and lives in the twenty-first century. In this Introduction, we highlight the continuing salience of caste, offer an overview of theoretical understandings of caste and foreground the importance of analysing caste in the present as a dynamic form of human relations, rather than a remnant of tradition. Following on from this, we highlight the increasingly global spread of caste and reflect on what happens to castebased social relations when they traverse continents. In conclusion, we introduce the papers that make up this special issue. Taken together, they speak to changes in attitudes towards caste, but also the persistence of caste-based identities and dynamics in India and Britain. Even though the papers presented in this special issue work with the assumption of caste being a reality in and among the Indians, caste-like status hierarchies have existed in most, if not all, societies, and they continue to persist and intersect with other forms of differences/inequalities.

Community Development Journal

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, 40 (1), 2015

Singh, Hira, Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane. New Delhi: Sage, 2014. 287 pp., $49.95 hardcover (9788132113461) Hira Singh's monograph Recasting Caste, is an important contribution to the field of sociology of caste, which uses a nuanced Marxist perspective to conclude that "sociologists of caste have invoked religion, cognition, cosmology…to find the secret of the genesis, growth, and survival of caste and the caste system. In the process, they have missed the real secret of caste and the caste system, which lies in the intersection of political economy and ideology" (16). Singh demonstrates how the economic infrastructure intersects with the cultural superstructure to (re)produce the practice and hegemony of caste based inequalities.

Power Shifts in East Asia and Their Implications for Asia-Europe Relations, 2019

It is widely acknowledged that Indian society is still significantly plagued, not only by jāti itself, but also omnipresent caste-ridden politics. The aim of this essay is to analyze this social structure in terms of contemporary Indian democracy and explore how it is perceived and evaluated inside of India. I address questions of whether the word democracy is suitable for a country whose society is hierarchically organized, in which the egalitarian tradition remains very limited. This article contributes to the understanding of the coexistence of these seemingly contradicting concepts -Indian caste and democracy. In this article, I elaborate highly influential Dumont's theory of caste along with two different research studies of Indian scholars. My interpretation is also based on two months of field research during my voluntary work in north-western India in 2016/2017.

I argue, in this paper, that caste is a product of complex histories and exists today in multiple forms. There has been a major change from treating caste as a rigid ritual stratum to caste as “identity to negotiate power and resources.” It operates as a symbol of collective identity and a basis for collective bargaining of limited resources and representation in various organizations and administrative institutions. The caste system eroded at the ritual level, but emerged at the political and economic levels in India and Nepal.

This paper is written to attempt to highlight the historical wrongs that have been done to certain mistakenly defined marginalized communities. These communities have been made to suffer due to some social, cultural, and religious myths that have unjustly been consolidated throughout the ages. Factually, there has been some apparent evidence onground situation that are inhuman and illogical from ethical point of view. An urgent need arises to highlight the unjust state of so-called low caste communities and the immediate initiative must be taken by the guardians of the nation to reclaim the lost respect related to these marginalized communities. Only then there would be caste-free society wherein multicultural, and good inter-caste relations would be possible in terms of social harmony and that an elevated mental state with cooperative spirit for tolerance would be a step forward to humanism. Abstract-This paper is written to attempt to highlight the historical wrongs that have been done to certain mistakenly defined marginalized communities. These communities have been made to suffer due to some social, cultural, and religious myths that have unjustly been consolidated throughout the ages. Factually, there has been some apparent evidence on-ground situation that are inhuman and illogical from ethical point of view. An urgent need arises to highlight the unjust state of so-called low caste communities and the immediate initiative must be taken by the guardians of the nation to reclaim the lost respect related to these marginalized communities. Only then there would be caste-free society wherein multicultural, and good inter-caste relations would be possible in terms of social harmony and that an elevated mental state with cooperative spirit for tolerance would be a step forward to humanism.