Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0167/01674.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 19KB | 328 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01674}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 5A.   Social Systems}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{P. A. Kluck}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{caste
social
purity
castes
ritual
pollution
ranking
village
contact
jatis}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      P. A. Kluck
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 5A.   Social Systems

     Indian society of the mid-1980s was one of extreme contrasts and
contradictions. Caste-a religio-cultural way of life with a millennia-old
history-continued to be the basis of social life, but its modern permutations
and adaptations made it a dynamic, changing system. As an institution it
transcended the subcontinent's deep-seated religious, ethnic, and linguistic
differences; it unified at the same time that it divided the country's
diverse population.

     At its most basic, caste provides a rationale for ranking all social
groups: they are stratified in terms of their relative purity or impurity.
Purity and pollution are pivotal concepts in South Asian thought; caste is
a hierarchical and inegalitarian ranking of social groups-including
non-Hindus-based on how pure or impure each is. At the top of the scale are
Brahman priests, who as a group must maintain their purity in order to
intercede with the gods; at the bottom are untouchables, who are assigned the
most polluting tasks.

     Maintaining the purity of caste and family is at the heart of much of
traditional social relations. The numerous strictures on intercaste
activities, such as commensality or marriage, are designed to keep those less
pure from tainting those who are more so. Purity and pollution provide the
basis for interdependence and a division of labor among the various castes.
Those less pure perform essential, if polluting, tasks that those of higher
rank are enjoined not to do.

     Although ideas of purity and pollution are pervasive and general
agreement exists about what the most defiling acts are, there is no single,
Pan-Indian scale for ranking the thousands of castes. The system is regionally
diverse and highly particularized. There is consensus about the upper and
lower ends of the scale, but the intermediate steps vary from village t
village.

     Caste structures social relations, and it is inextricably interwoven
with kinship as the focus of the individual's loyalties and sense of identity.
Villages are conglomerates of a number of castes. All of a person's kin
belong to the same caste. Traditionally, castes mediated almost all of the
exchange of goods and services within the village. Caste councils debated
and defined a course of caste action as the need arose.

     The caste system permits some group social mobility. A group that
manages to accumulate any measure of prosperity rapidly sets about improving
its status in the ritual hierarchy. Independence and electoral politics have
widened the arena for caste rivalries and jockeying for advantage. Elective
offices and access to influential government bureaucrats are important ways
of enhancing a caste's ritual standing.

     Untouchables too have tried to improve their socioeconomic status.
Education, political activism, and religious conversion are among the
means at the untouchable caste's disposal. Since independence the government
has instituted various pieces of protective and compensatory legislation
designed to aid low-ranking castes. On the whole, such efforts have done
little to ameliorate the situation of the most disadvantaged. Any wholesale
effort on the part of untouchables to better themselves threatens all higher
ranking castes, who do everything possible to thwart untouchable efforts at
improvement.

     Family and kin remain the center of daily life and the most basic element
in the caste system. Life outside of a family, typically an extended family,
is simply unimaginable for most Indians. Family roles and relationships are
structured in such a way as to reflect the underlying values of caste:
hierarchy, purity, and pollution. The individual owes his or her family total
loyalty; the individual's position within that group is defined, with great
specificity, by sex and relative age.

     Most Indians continue to live in the more than 500,000 villages dotting
the countryside. Even for many who live and work in cities, the village
remains the focus of their social life; family and friends remain in the
village long after many a rural-urban migrant has begun an urban career.
Power and dominance within the village reflect the pattern of landholding.
New sources of wealth are important to a family trying to play a major role
in village affairs, but landownership remains basic.

     Factionalism is a perennial feature of village social and political life.
Factions composed of a few landowning families and their followers vie for
scarce resources-votes, government aid, irrigation water, ceremonial
prerogatives. Factions can have a pervasive impact on social life; any
dispute, however trivial, can be escalated to a villagewide confrontation.

     Forces of change have transformed many traditional mores. The growth
of the cash economy, independence and political participation, massive
urbanization, and modern education have offered new options to individuals
and groups. Proper caste behavior has changed in the relative anonymity
of urban living. Cash incomes in city and countryside alike have dramatically
altered the customary intercaste exchanges. Education and a host of new
occupations offer individuals opportunities undreamed of even a generation
ago.

Caste

Theory of Caste

     Caste has been and remains central to South Asian history, politics,
and society. Historically, the subcontinent was an agrarian economy with a
small surplus of craftsmen, priests, rulers, soldiers, and bureaucrats.
Political instability was chronic. There was no single overarching political
authority. The prohibition against intercaste marriage meant that no single
dominant caste developed over the subcontinent as a whole; there was no
equivalent of a national aristocracy. Caste itself has been the unifying
feature of Indian society and culture. As an institution in all of its
diversity, it transcends religious, linguistic, and regional boundaries.
Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Parsis on the subcontinent have retained
Hindu ideas about how social groups are stratified and ranked on the basis
of ritual purity. In contemporary India, although some traditional features
of the caste system are changing, social relations, many economic exchanges,
and political brokering take place through the medium of caste.

     The Hindi term jati refers to a variety of linguistically and regionally
distinct groups. In the anthropological literature, the word is often used
to refer to the local, endogamous group that is typically rendered in English
as caste. The word caste comes from the Portuguese casta; like jati, the
word often refers to a wide variety of tribes, linguistic groups, and regional
populations. Little unanimity in terminology exists among students of Indian
social organization; the terminology is as slippery as the complex social and
cultural of South Asia.

     The Vedic scriptures offer the most ancient justification of caste in
the form of a fourfold division of human society into varnas (literally,
color) from which most modern castes are believed to derive (see Sacred
Scriptures, ch. 3). The Rig-Veda tells of the sacrifice of a superman: from
his mouth came priests (Brahmans); from his arms, rulers and warriors
(Kshatriyas); from his thighs, landowners and merchants (Vaishyas); and from
his feet, artisans and cultivators (Sudras-pronounced and often spelled
Shudras). Initially, membership in the various varnas was not based on birth;
rather, it described the functioning groups that made up society. The first
three varnas are "twice-born"; males are initiated, and they are entitled to
wear a sacred thread over their shoulders. In