Has caste lost its relevance in understanding the multi-cultural Indian Society? Elaborate your answer with illustrations. (150 words) [ UPSC MAINS 2020 - General Studies Paper 1]
Caste has for long been viewed as a distinctive feature of the Indian society. It is not merely an institution that characterizes the structure of social stratification in India. ‘Caste’ has often been seen to represent the core of India. It has been viewed both as an institution as well as an ideology.
- Institutionally, ‘caste’ provided a framework for arranging and organizingsocial groups in terms of their statuses and positions in the social and economic system. It fixed individuals into the structure of social hierarchy on the basis of their birth.
- As an ideology, caste was a system of values and ideas that legitimized and reinforced the existing structure of social inequality. It also provided a worldview around which a typical Hindu organized his/her life.
Apart from being an institution that distinguished India from other societies, caste was also an epitome of the traditional society, a ‘closed system’, where generation after generation individuals aid similar kinds of work and lived more or less similar kinds of lives.
Caste is losing its relevance
Due to various factors such as modern education, industrialisation, urbanisation, Indian Constitution etc. Indian multi-cultural society has started giving less consideration to the ‘caste’.
- Growing dissociation between caste and hereditary occupation: No longer one can deduce a person’s caste by looking at his occupation. A person who is working in a salon may not be a barber.
- All castes have given importance in the socio-political field: There is improvement in the socio-economic conditions of lower caste people. They are protected by the different policies of the government. They get equal power with other caste categories in expressing their decision in nation building.
- Change in the caste identity: People are no more identified according to their caste identity or ascriptive status; rather they are identified according to achieved status.
- Educational qualification, occupational position, income etc. are the bases of identification of the individual.
- Now Indian society is more tolerant of inter-caste marriage: The number of inter-caste marriages is increasing day by day, particularly among the urbanised and educated group of each caste.
- Restaurants, shopping malls, regional celebrations, local festivals, public institutions, private establishments, do not consider the caste factor.
‘Caste’ is still prevailing
- In India,different political parties represent the interests of different caste groups. During elections, the political parties compete with each other in utilising the same kind of caste calculus.
- Violence based on caste has also erupted in recent times, much of it involving attacks on Dalits.
- Despite the changes though, caste identities remain strong, and last namesare almost always indications of what caste a person belongs to.
- Manual scavenging, the worst surviving symbol of untouchability is still an occupation of people from lower castes.
One of the most significant yet paradoxical changes in the caste system in the contemporary period is that it hastended to become ‘invisible’ for the upper caste, urban middle and upper classes. For the so-called scheduled castes and tribes and the backward castes – the opposite has happened. For them, caste has become all too visible.
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