Caste in Modern India

Abstract

IT IS my aim in this essay' to marshal evidence to show that during the last century or more, the institution of caste has found new fields of activity. The manner in which the British transferred political power to the Indians enabled caste to assume political functions. In independent India, the provision of constitutional safeguards to the backward sections of the population, especially the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, has given a new lease of life to caste. It is hardly necessary to add that this contrasts with the aim of bringing about a casteless and classless society which most political parties, including the Indian National Congress, profess. The political system of pre-British India was characterized by clear territorial cleavages marking off the territory of one chieftain or raja from the territories of others. Usually, above the chieftain or the raja, there was the viceroy of an emperor or the emperor himself, and below the chief were the headmen of single villages. The boundaries of a chief's or raja's domain were mobile, being subject to expansion or contraction depending upon the military prowess of the chief vis-a-vis other chiefs, and also upon the firmness with which the viceroy or emperor exercised his control. However, while the boundaries were mobile over a period of time, at any single moment they constituted effective barriers between people living in different chiefdoms. Such a political system naturally imposed severe limits on the horizontal extension of caste ties. In short, political frontiers determined the effective, if not the maximum, social space of each caste living within them.2 The fact that over a period of time the boundaries were mobile meant that cultural ties frequently cut across the existing political boundaries. The coincidence of the cultural and political frontiers, a principle which is explicitly recognized in the Report of the States Reorganization Commission, is, on the whole, a new event in Indian history. A natural consequence of the territorial limits imposed by the political system on the horizontal tendency of castes was the stimulus it gave to castes living in an area to co-operate with each other. Occupational specialization stressed this