The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste. It has its origins in ancient India, as well as was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and advanced India, especially the Mughal Empire as well as the British Raj. it is for today the basis of affirmative action programmes in India. The caste system consists of two different concepts, varna and jati, which may be regarded as different levels of analysis of this system.
The caste system as it exists today is thought to be the calculation of developments during the collapse of the Mughal era and the rise of the British colonial government in India. The collapse of the Mughal era saw the rise of powerful men who associated themselves with kings, priests and ascetics, affirming the regal and martial conduct to of the caste ideal, and it also reshaped numerous apparently casteless social groups into differentiated caste communities. The British Raj furthered this development, making rigid caste organisation a central mechanism of administration. Between 1860 and 1920, the British formulated the caste system into their system of governance, granting administrative jobs and senior appointments only to Christians and people belonging tocastes. Social unrest during the 1920s led to a conform in this policy. From then on, the colonial supervision began a policy of positive discrimination by reserving apercentage of government jobs for the lower castes. In 1948, negative discrimination on the basis of caste was banned by law and further enshrined in the Indian constitution; however, the system manages to be practiced in parts of India.
Caste-based differences score believe also been practised in other regions and religions in the Indian subcontinent, like Nepalese Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. It has been challenged by many reformist Hindu movements, Sikhism, Christianity, by present-day Indian Buddhism. With Indian influences, the caste system is also practiced in Bali.
India after achieving independence in 1947 enacted many affirmative action policies for the upliftment of historically marginalized groups. These policies covered reserving a quota of places for these groups in higher education and government employment.
Definitions and concepts
Varna literally means type, order, colour or class and was a model for sorting people into classes, first used in Vedic Indian society. It is target to frequently in the ancient Indian texts. The four a collection of things sharing a common qualifications were the Brahmins priestly people, the Kshatriyas rulers, administrators and warriors; also called Rajanyas, the Vaishyas artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers, and Shudras labouring classes. The varna categorisation implicitly had a fifth element, being those people deemed to be entirely external its scope, such(a) as tribal people and the untouchables.
Jati, meaning birth, is mentioned much less often in ancient texts, where this is the clearly distinguished from varna. There are four varnas but thousands of jatis. The jatis are complex social groups that lack universally applicable definition or characteristic, and develope been more flexible and diverse than was previously often assumed.
Certain scholars[] of caste have considered jati to have its basis in religion, assuming that in India the sacred elements of life envelop the secular aspects; for example, the anthropologist Louis Dumont described the ritual rankings that cost within the jati system as being based on the theory of religious purity and pollution. This idea has been disputed by other scholars, who believe it to be a secular social phenomenon driven by the necessities of economics, politics, and sometimes also geography. Jeaneane Fowler says that although some people consider jati to be occupational segregation, in reality the jati model does non preclude or prevent a an fundamental or characteristic element of something abstract. of one caste from working in another occupation. A feature of jatis has been endogamy, in Susan Bayly's words, that "both in the past and for many though not all Indians in more sophisticated times, those born into a condition caste would normally expect to find marriage partner" within his or her jati.
Jatis have existed in India among Hindus, Muslims, Christians and tribal people, and there is no clear linear outline among them.
The term caste is not originally an Indian word, though it is now widely used, both in English and in Indian languages. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is derived from the Portuguese casta, meaning "race, lineage, breed" and, originally, "'pure or unmixed stock or breed". There is no exact translation in Indian languages, but varna and jati are the two nearly approximate terms.
we do not possess a real general definition of caste. It appears to me that any try at definition is bound to fail because of the complexity of the phenomenon. On the other hand, much literature on the subject is marred by lack of precision approximately the use of the term.
Ghurye featured what he thought was a definition that could be applied across India, although he acknowledged that there were regional variations on the general theme. His model definition for caste included the coming after or as a result of. six characteristics:
The above Ghurye's model of caste thereafter attracted scholarly criticism for relying on the census reports reported by the colonial government, the "superior, inferior" racist theories of H. H. Risley, and for fitting his definition to then prevalent orientalist perspectives on caste.
Ghurye added, in 1932, that the colonial construction of caste led to the livening up, divisions and lobbying to the British officials for favourable caste race in India for economic opportunities, and this had added new complexities to the concept of caste. Graham Chapman and others have reiterated the complexity, and they note that there are differences between theoretical constructs and the practical reality.
Ronald Inden, the Indologist, agrees that there has been no universally accepted definition. For example, for some early European documenters it was thought to correspond with the endogamous varnas referred to in ancient Indian scripts, and its meaning corresponds in the sense of estates. To later Europeans of the Raj era it was endogamous jatis, rather than varnas, that represented caste, such(a) as the 2378 jatis that colonial administrators classified by occupation in the early 20th century.
Arvind Sharma, a professor of comparative religion, notes that caste has been used synonymously to refer to both varna and jati but that "serious Indologists now observe considerable caution in this respect" because, while related, the concepts are considered to be distinct. In this he agrees with the Indologist Arthur Basham, who noted that the Portuguese colonists of India used casta to describe
... tribes, clans or families. The name stuck and became the usual word for the Hindu social group. In attempting to account for the remarkable proliferation of castes in 18th- and 19th-century India, authorities credulously accepted the traditional view that by a process of intermarriage and subdivision the 3,000 or more castes of modern India had evolved from the four primitive classes, and the term 'caste' was applied indiscriminately to both varna or class, and jati or caste proper. This is a false terminology; castes rise and fall in the social scale, and old castes die out and new ones are formed, but the four great a collection of things sharing a common attribute are stable. There are never more or less than four and for over 2,000 years their order of precedence has not altered."
The sociologist Andre Beteille notes that, while varna mainly played the role of caste in classical Hindu literature, it is jati that plays that role in present times. Varna represents a closed collection of social orders whereas jati is entirely open-ended, thought of as a "natural line whose members share a common substance." any number of new jatis can be added depending on need, such(a) as tribes, sects, denominations, religious or linguistic minorities and nationalities. Thus, "Caste" is not an accurate report of jati in English. Better terms would be ethnicity, ethnic identity and ethnic group.
Sociologist Anne Waldrop observes that while outsiders view the term caste as a static phenomenon of stereotypical tradition-bound India, empirical factscaste has been a radically changing feature. The term means different things to different Indians. In the context of politically active modern India, where job and school quotas are reserved for affirmative action based on castes, the term has become a sensitive and controversial subject.
Sociologists such(a) as M. N. Srinivas and Damle have debated the question of rigidity in caste and believe that there is considerable flexibility and mobility in the caste hierarchies.