With the Supreme Court of India declining to hear petitions moved by the Bihar State Government seeking to stay the Order of the Patna High Court over caste census, the skeletons in the closet of Indian casteism seem to resurface.
Earlier, the Patna High Court on the 9th of May had rejected the Petition by the Bihar Government which had sought an early hearing upon the interim stay imposed by the Patna High Court with respect to the caste-based survey in the state.
The High Court of Patna had fixed the hearing for the 3rd of July and had clarified that the stay would remain in effect until then.
Here it would be appropriate to elucidate upon the traditional hierarchical caste system prevalent in the Indian society.
Genesis of Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes:
According to Dipankar Gupta (1984) in his special article published in the Economic and Political Weekly:
“Contemporary scholarship on caste continues to be influenced by the concerns of early European scholars who, in addition to being perplexed by this peculiar institution, also pondered over the possibility of India’s entry, into the modern age burdened as it was by the incubus of the caste system. India today has entered the modern age, without perhaps adequate streamlining, as the caste system refused to be steam rolled into a distant past.”
Dipankar (1984) further commented that:
“The early scholars like the greate Indologist Max Mueller, the scholar missionary Abbe Dubois, or even the sociologist Max Weber were not very certain if India would even succeed in modernising itself as they felt that the caste system would continue to frustrate all attempts towards social and economic progress.”
Caste:
According Marecek, J. (2014) in the Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology:
Caste is a mode of social differentiation based on hereditary membership. Caste is common across much of South Asia, though its meanings and significance varies.
Caste categories sort populations into groups; the extent and nature of contact between these groups is regulated. Caste membership serves as means of social organization, including labor exchanges, social restriction, social segregation, and rankings.
Endogamy, the practice of restricting marriages and other close personal relationships to group members, is a feature of most caste systems.
Casteism:
Casteism is a social system that has been in place in India for centuries. It is based on the principle of social stratification, where people are divided into groups based on their occupation, social status, and economic class.
The caste system is a hierarchy, with the Brahmins at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. The Dalits, or untouchables, are at the bottom of the caste system and are considered to be outside of the four main varnas.
Caste and Development:
According to David Mosse, at the SOAS University of London in his Development Review Article which was published in the World Development Journal in 2018:
Inherited caste identity represents an important determinant of life opportunity for a fifth of the world’s population, but it has not been given the same significance in global development policy debates as gender, race, age, religion or other identity characteristics;
By taking India as its focus, it was found that caste had been treated as an archaic system and source of historical disadvantage;
Caste was found to be a complex institution, simultaneously weakened and revived by current economic and political forces; it served as a contributor to persisting national socioeconomic and human capital disparities, and had major impacts on subjective wellbeing;
Caste effects were not locational; they travelled from the village to the city and into virtually all markets;
Caste persists in the age of the market because of its advantages “ its discriminations allow opportunity hoarding for others; and the threat of the advancement of subordinated groups provokes humiliating violence against them.
Supreme Court observations:
Interestingly, in the year 2016 a Supreme Court Bench comprising of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Prafulla C Pant have reiterated that:
“a person can change his religion and faith but not the caste, to which he belongs, as caste has linkage to birth.”
Class:
A social class has been defined as an abstract category of persons arranged in levels according to the social status they possess.
A social class consists of a number of individuals who share similar status often ascribed at birth but capable of being altered. Class, therefore, does not consist of organised closed groups defined by law or religion as does caste, nor are the various strata in the system as rigid and easily identifiable.
Social (Class) Mobility:
Social mobility refers to change in a person’s socio-economic situation, either in relation to their parents (inter-generational mobility) or throughout their lifetime (intra-generational mobility).
Social mobility is linked to equality of opportunity: the extent to which people have the same chances to do well in life regardless of the socio-economic background of their parents, their gender, age, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, birthplace, or other circumstances beyond their control.
Social mobility and equality of opportunity can be measured in terms of earnings, income, or social class, but can also be understood to encompass other well-being dimensions such as health and education.
There are several features and processes of mobility, including:
- Sanskritisation
- Westernisation
- Secularisation
- Industrialisation, and
- Urbanisation
Mobility in Caste:
While the general impression has been that caste is a ‘closed’ system of stratifications, yet in reality this is far from true.
No society is static and even in the traditional set up where ascription was the prime determinant of one’s ritual and occupational standing, access to rewards and resources and social mobility both upward and downward was not totally absent.
Social mobility in the caste system is evident in the increasing discrepancy between caste and occupations.
