Invention or Inversion? Revisiting the Question of Caste Tradition

Bryan S. Turner (ed.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2017

This entry discusses the transformation of caste in the Indian context. The entry starts with a discussion of the Indological and anthropological accounts of caste and then examines whether “caste” is essentially unique to Hinduism. Furthermore, the entry discusses the possibility of mobility within the ritual hierarchy of caste. In the final section, the entry shows how caste, once described by the Christian missionaries and the colonial state as an irrational traditional institution, has transformed into a modern entity and become a vital instrument of democratic mobilization in contemporary India.

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.

Economic and Political Weekly , 2016

An evolutionary and historical method has not helped us to understand the Caste System and its exploitative nature in Indian Society. Therefore, we need to analyse it from a new perspective , that is, from a contemporary perspective which on the one hand highlights the domination and monopolization of secular institutions of governance, production, education etc. by so-called upper castes. And exclusion and simultaneous assertion of the so-called lower- castes Dalits. The paper has deliberately avoided the status and assertion of the intermediary and Other Backward (Shudra) Castes because paucity of space.

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 ...

2007

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Rangers' influential volume, The Invention of Tradition, remains a milestone in scholarly approaches to the study of tradition. However, in emphasizing conscious manipulations of tradition, and in employing a notion of invention that lacks nuance, the authors of that volume do not sufficiently acknowledge the degree to which invented traditions draw from prior traditions. I explore here the limits of conscious constructions of tradition, arguing that traditions that serve as powerful touchstones for identity cannot be invented ex nihilo. I look at an instance of elite formulation of tradition , the Dravidian Movement in Tamil Nadu, South India, in the first half of the twentieth century, which articulated a new formulation of Tamil tradition based largely on European models and ideals. The leaders of this movement envisioned an ancient Tamil community that was egalitarian, scientific, and non-Hindu, and they employed this vision in their development of policies for education, religious institutions, and industrialization. Their failure to mobilize popular support for their cause was repeatedly demonstrated in their electoral defeats at the hands of the Congress Party, which promoted a reformist tradition based on Hindu symbols and ritual practices. I argue that the Dravidian Movement failed to win political support because they discarded nearly all the components of prior Tamil tradition, and the novel tradition they authored in turn was unrecognizable to ordinary Tamils.

2021

This book presents an alternative view of caste in Indian society by analysing caste structure and change in local communities in Orissa from historical and anthropological perspectives. Focusing on the agricultural society in the Khurda district of Orissa between the eighteenth century and 2019, the book links discussions on the current transformation of society and politics in India with analyses of long-term historical transformations. The author suggests that, beyond status and power, there is another value which is important in Indian society, namely ontological equality, which functions as the politico-ethical ground for asserting respect and concern for the life of others. The book argues that the value of ontological equality has played an important role in creating and affirming the diverse society which characterises India. It further contends that the movement towards vernacular democracy, which has become conspicuous since the second half of the 1990s, is a historically groundbreaking event which opens a path beyond the postcolonial predicament, supported by the affirmation of diversity by subalterns based on the value of ontological equality. This important contribution to the study of Indian society will be of interest to academics working on the social, political and economic history, sociology, anthropology and political science of South Asia, as well as to those interested in social and political theory.

In a democratic set-up, the idea of demos being superior or upper to one another just by the sheer accident of their birth is oxymoronic. By embracing the parochial and obsolete lifestyle of the ancient and modern-past, Indians irrespective of their religion harbor such vulgar sentiments. The group of castes who still want to identify self as the “upper caste” audaciously declare that there is someone lower to them.

Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 2017

Explorations: E-journal of Indian Sociological Society, 2022

This article outlines the shifting meanings and modalities, relational and governmental aspects, of caste, power, and representation claims in modern and contemporary India. Beyond the questions of exclusion, humiliation, protest, and caste reforms, it extends the engagement with this subject to India"s development path, experiences of capitalist modernisation, the functioning of colonial institutions, and parliamentary democracy and labour relations. The recent publications examined here suggest that the shift from the mobilisation of ranked identities to unranked identities advanced in the Republic of India, accompanying the change from patrimonial to the participatory polity. These twin shifts ensured that caste as a source of identity remained conspicuously persistent while attenuating as an axis of inequality. Although the constitution outlawed untouchability, to some publicists of social justice, the reservation law, alongside the personal laws, unnecessarily consecrated caste and religion; others maintain that parliamentary democracy brought about an irreversible rupture in the tradition of castes.

2000

The role of caste as a constitutive element in the politics of India has been interpreted in a variety of ways in the period since Independence. Early views about the negative effects of caste gave way to a positive appreciation of its contribution to the process of democratization and political inclusion. However casteism is now once again used widely as a pejorative term. This paper reviews the history of ideas about the relationship of caste and politics in India. It also examines the political importance of caste today in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and asks if the contemporary criticisms of the influence of caste in politics are justified.