Casts and politics

Résumé du document

India has always been a great mystery to the foreign mind. Indian society has, its own mythology, customs and traditions, such as the very peculiar division of society, which is quite different from the common segmentation into economic classes. The Hindu social organization divides society in different castes. According to Lundberg, a caste (jati) is a rigid social class in which one is born and out of which one can escape only with extreme difficulty. We can also define a caste, with H.Risley, as "a collection of families or groups of families, bearing a common name and claiming a common ancestor?. A caste is a homogeneous social group. Contrary to class, caste gives a social status and not an economic status. Mobility within the caste system is vertical. It is not possible to move from one caste to another, but one can move within the jati.

Extraits

[...] The traditional hierarchy between the different jatis tends to disappear for the benefit of an opposition between the diverse interests of the different castes. It seems that indeed, the caste had and has an important impact on the political life in India. The Jati has been, as the beginning of democracy, the group of interest the individual identified himself to. The ideology of the caste system, if it is anti-equalitarian, does not seem to prevent the indian democracy of functionning properly. [...]

[...] Indeed, caste is first an identity in the social intercourses. It plays an important role in the matrimonial and kinship relationships. Caste is one of the primordial groups of the individual. And the caste one refers to in such social intercourses is the most endogeneous group, the very peculiar Jati one belongs to. As Ghanshyam Shah explains it, an individual will not identify himself as a Kshatriya, but as a Khant or as a Bareeya, when marriage or Kinship are in question. [...]

[...] The impact of the caste should not be under-estimated in contemporary politics. If the Jati does not always correspond to the group of interest one identifies himself to, it remains even nowadays an important factor in the political choice of many individuals. Caste, a political re-construction If caste has an impact on politics, the impact of politics on the caste system should not be forgotten. Indeed, the caste system and the caste identity has known a strong revival through the development of policies such as the system of reservation. [...]

[...] Restrictions on feeding and social intercourses also exist. We can therefore speak of an important and strong division of society. However, if the castes can be categorized in four groups, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vairnyas and the Sudras, it should not be forgotten that there is really a multitude of castes. Moreover, endogamy is respected within the caste system, and one's occupation is given by the caste in which one is born. The castes can be therefore considered as homogeneous groups, from a social but also until a certain point from an economical perspective. [...]

[...] As we said in Introduction, the founding fathers of the indian democracy have debated on the issue of the caste system. It seemed indeed to be the anti-thesis of the political system they wanted to instaure. They created therefore some policies, which goal was to minimize the social and economic inequalities between the castes. If the division of society as it is provided by the Varna system remained, it is almost certain that the notions of purity and pollution tend to disappear. Rituals and social status tend to become separate issues. [...]