Caste System in India: Origin, Features, and Problems

Throughout South Asia, individual castes and subcastes are referred to as Játi, an Indo-Aryan word meaning a category of related persons thought to be of the same physical and moral substance, though the word can also mean genus, species, or race and other allegedly natural types. Caste, meaning the systematic basis upon which individual játis are organized, has never perfectly conformed to either popular or scholarly models; not only do the customs and practices of játi hierarchies vary from region to region, they also are commonly interpreted in different ways even within a single village.

The caste system in India is an important part of ancient Hindu tradition and dates back to 1200 BCE. The term caste was first used by Portuguese travelers who came to India in the 16th century. Caste comes from the Spanish and Portuguese word “Casta” which means “race”, “breed”, or “lineage,” but many Indians use the term “jati”. There are 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes in India, each related to a specific occupation.  

Jāti may be translated as caste and refers to birth. The names of jātis are usually derived from occupations, and considered to be hereditary and endogamous, but this may not always have been the case. The jātis developed in post-Vedic times, possibly from the crystallization of guilds during its feudal era. The jātis are often thought of as belonging to one of the four varnas.

Caste not only dictates one’s occupation but dietary habits and interaction with members of other castes as well. Members of a high caste enjoy more wealth and opportunities while members of a low caste perform menial jobs. Outside of the caste system are the untouchables. Untouchable jobs, such as toilet cleaning and garbage removal, require them to be in contact with bodily fluids. They are therefore considered polluted and not to be touched. The importance of purity in the body and food is found in early Sanskrit literature.

Varna (वर्ण) is a Sanskrit word which means color or class. Ancient Hindu literature classified all humankind, and all created beings, in principle into four varnas:

> the Brahmins: priests, teachers, and preachers.

> the Kshatriyas: kings, governors, warriors, and soldiers.

> the Vaishyas: cattle herders, agriculturists, artisans, and merchants.

> the Shudras: laborers and service providers.

Caste as a Hindu Social Construct:

This school of thought understands caste as a Hindu social construct, a total symbolic world, unique, self-contained, and not comparable to other systems. Most of these theorists would agree with the classic definition given by Bouglé, who wrote that the spirit of caste unites these three tendencies: repulsion, hierarchy, and hereditary specialization. Here controversies are primarily about which of these aspects is stressed. Those who argue that caste as a unique phenomenon has viewed it within three sub-categories, that I have termed after Louis Dumont’s description of the Hindu caste system: Pre-Dumontian, Dumontian, and Post-Dumontian. 

Pre-Dumontian Views of the Hindu Caste:

When Max Weber prepared his study of religion and society in India, as a part of his famous treatise on the sociology of religion, all the major Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism had been made available in high-quality translations, through the efforts of orientalists. Weber was well acquainted with these sources, and he was also familiar with the census reports, which he described as "scientifically excellent”. 

Weber construed caste as a special and extreme case of status groups. Whereas a class was considered as being constituted by individuals in similar economic positions, the cohesive force of a status group was honor and prestige. Identity was created and maintained by imposing restrictions on social intercourse and marriage with those who "do not belong", primarily those being inferior in terms of honor and prestige. In the Indian caste system, this mechanism was developed to the extreme with strict caste endogamy and the religious concept of pollution. Caste was thus a more perfect variety of closed status of the class. 

Dumont on Caste:

Louis Dumont was a French scholar and the author of the famous book on caste, Homo Hierarchicus, originally published in French in 1966 and translated into English in 1970. The book constructed a textually informed image of caste, portraying two opposing conceptual categories of purity and pollution as the organizing principle of caste structure and hierarchy.

Speculative histories and detailed catalogs of caste-based customs dominated colonial anthropology until systematic village-based fieldwork in the 1950s looked at these customs’ everyday context to see how caste actually worked. That more sophisticated approach, which the influential Indian anthropologist M. N. Srinivas exemplified, helped undermine stereotypes of caste society as static and passively determined by religious ideology. Srinivas showed that wealth and physical force often trumped mere ritual (1959), and that, although an individual’s ritual status was indeed fixed by their játi, whole játis could sometimes increase their status by adopting the customs of higher-ranked castes (1956). 

Dumont’s brilliant synthesis of the existing scholarship made Homo Hierarchicus a standard reference for all future discussions of caste, despite disagreement over its visionary epistemology. At one extreme, American anthropologist McKim Marriott (1976) embraced an all-determining cultural hiatus between India and the West even more absolute than Dumont’s, for the secular factors Dumont had merely downgraded to a subordinate level were dissolved entirely in Marriott’s Ethno-Sociology- an account built completely on native categories, thereby consigning non–culturally recognized reality to theoretical oblivion. On the other side, many sober-minded anthropologists continued to regard both secular realities and caste ideology as a matter of empirical inquiry, while nevertheless accepting the culturalist definition of caste as ritual order

POST-DUMONTIAN Views of Hindu Caste:

This picture, however, would soon be questioned by two distinct groups of researchers: ethnographers studying the lowest-ranked “untouchable” castes (Dalits), and historians investigating transformations of native society under colonial rule. Both questioned the social and political bases upon which official knowledge about caste had been produced; both ceased to assume that caste had some singular cultural essence, analyzing it instead as a composite phenomenon intrinsically and irreducibly involving relations of power.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that anthropologists’ neglect of the subaltern evidence meant they had simply reproduced the timeless ideology of elites. On the contrary, considerable evidence suggests that much of what anthropologists- as well as most Indians- have come to recognize as caste is a fallout of colonization and the practices by which colonizers sought to know and control the colonized. Research by historian Nicholas Dirks (1993), for instance, suggests that the subordination of kingly power to brahminical ritual, seen by Dumont as Hindu civilization’s timeless truth, was, in fact, the handiwork of colonial power, which had reduced indigenous kings, for the first time in history, to a purely symbolic and genuinely inferior status. 

Liberated from foreign rule, the Democratic Republic of India has introduced numerous policies to protect Dalits from abuse and to better their lot, and, in the arena of electoral politics, parties representing Dalits and other disadvantaged castes have begun to encroach on what was once the preserve of caste elites. Yet Dalits remain significantly below non-Dalit counterparts in all social and economic indicators, and as Smita Narula’s well-corroborated Human Rights Watch report (1999) attests, in much of rural India dominant castes continue to stigmatize, exploit, and violently suppress Dalits. Even in more urbane settings, Dalits describe a pervasive climate of discrimination in housing, the workplace, and classrooms, and Dalit activists have sought international recognition for their plight—most prominently at the 2001 U.N. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. Indians from more privileged backgrounds, however, frequently lament Dalit antagonism as the “politicization of caste,” a development they trace to colonial divide-and-rule policies. 

Caste in a Comparative Perspective:

Caste as a structural phenomenon is considered as a category or type within a general theory of social stratification, comparable in many respects to hierarchical organizations elsewhere. In this vein, Berreman (1972, p. 197) argued that “to define caste in terms of its uniquely Indian attributes eliminates or at least diminishes its use as a cross-culturally comparable phenomenon.” Berreman argued that a caste system resembles a plural society whose discrete sections are all ranked vertically. Indian caste, therefore, is analogous to social structures elsewhere in which rank is ascribed, such as, for instance, racial differentiation in the United States. 

Characteristics of the Caste System:

> Segmental Division of Society: The society is divided into various small social groups called castes. Each of these castes is a well developed social group, the membership of which is determined by the consideration of birth.

> Hierarchy: According to Louis Dumont, castes teach us a fundamental social principle of hierarchy. At the top of this hierarchy is the Brahmin caste and at the bottom is the untouchable caste. In between are the intermediate castes, the relative positions of which are not always clear.

> Endogamy: Endogamy is the chief characteristic of caste, i.e. the members of a caste or sub-caste should marry within their own caste or sub-caste. The violation of the rule of endogamy would mean ostracism and loss of caste. However, hypergamy (the practice of women marrying someone who is wealthier or of higher caste or social status.) and hypogamy (marriage with a person of lower social status) were also prevalent. Gotra exogamy is also maintained in each caste. Every caste is subdivided into different small units on the basis of gotra. The members of one gotra are believed to be successors of a common ancestor-hence prohibition of marriage within the same gotra.

> Restriction on Food and Drink: Usually a caste would not accept cooked food from any other caste that stands lower than itself in the social scale, due to the notion of getting polluted. There were also variously associated taboos related to food. The cooking taboo, which defines the persons who may cook the food. The eating taboo which may lay down the ritual to be followed at meals. The commensal taboo which is concerned with the person with whom one may take food. Finally, the taboo has to do with the nature of the vessel (whether made of earth, copper, or brass) that one may use for drinking or cooking. For eg: In North India Brahmin would accept Pakka food (cooked in ghee) only from some castes lower than his own. However, no individual would accept Kachcha(cooked in water) food prepared by an inferior caste. Food prepared by Brahmin is acceptable to all, the reason for which domination of Brahmins in the hotel industry for a long time. The beef was not allowed by any castes, except Harijans.

> A Particular Name: Every caste has a particular name though which we can identify. Sometimes, an occupation is also associated with a particular caste.

> The Concept of Purity and Pollution: The higher castes claimed to have a ritual, spiritual, and racial purity which they maintained by keeping the lower castes away through the notion of pollution. The idea of pollution means a touch of lower caste man would pollute or defile a man of a higher caste. Even his shadow is considered enough to pollute a higher caste man.

> Jati Panchayat: The status of each caste is carefully protected, not only by caste laws but also by the conventions. These are openly enforced by the community through a governing body or board called Jati Panchayat. These Panchayats in different regions and castes are named in a particular fashion such as Kuldriya in Madhya Pradesh and Jokhila in South Rajasthan.

Caste Divisions – The future?:

The caste system in India is undergoing changes due to progress in education, technology, modernization, and changes in general social outlook. In spite of the general improvement in conditions of the lower castes, India has still a long way to go, to root out the evils of the caste system from society. 

New developments took place after India achieved independence when the policy of caste-based reservation of jobs was formalized with lists of Scheduled Castes (Dalit) and Scheduled Tribes (Adivasi). Since 1950, the country has enacted many laws and social initiatives to protect and improve the socio-economic conditions of its lower caste population. These caste classifications for college admission quotas, job reservations, and other affirmative action initiatives, according to the Supreme Court of India, are based on heredity and are not changeable. Discrimination against lower castes is illegal in India under Article 15 of its constitution, and India tracks violence against Dalits nationwide.

Conclusion:

In the beginning, caste was a system for the division of labor, and social relations between different caste groups were regulated by the Jajmani system. With the decline of the Jajmani system and increasing livelihood diversification, caste identity became an instrument to mobilize people for economic and political gains. A basic shift took place in caste: from ritual hierarchy to identity politics, from ascribed and designated status to negotiated positions of power, from ritual definitions of roles and positions to civic and political definitions of the same (Kothari 1994). The caste system eroded at the ritual level but emerged at the political and economic levels.