Abstract
The book presents meticulously compiled rich empirical data covering economic, political and cultural aspects of caste in contemporary rural and urban India. It is divided into three parts. Part One, consisting of three chapters, deals with untouchability, atrocities against dalits, resistance by the latter, and caste and democratic politics. Two chapters in Part Two deal with dalit business and caste in corporate hiring. Two chapters in Part Three deal with dalit social mobility and struggles for autonomy and dignity in global and local contexts. Questions of conceptual frameworks and theories of caste are discussed in the Introduction and Conclusion.
The book refutes the notion of uniqueness of caste arguing that ‘status hierarchies’ have existed and continue to exist in different societies, underlining the relevance of cross-cultural comparative studies of social inequalities. One could not agree more. To understand the basis of hierarchy, exploitation and coercion, discrimination and dehumanisation, resistance and struggle, persistence and change in the caste system (areas covered by the book), the importance of comparative study cannot be over-emphasised.
The book breaks new ground by exploring caste in urban areas to conclude that caste-based discrimination in housing, admission to educational institutions, hiring and firing in the public and private sector (more in the latter) continues replicating the ‘norm’ of the old order. To its credit, the book does not attribute prevalent discrimination to subjective conditions alone, reminding us that the history of prejudice and discrimination in caste is the history of production and power relations, underlining the relevance of a historical-materialist approach which is by and large avoided in caste studies. Further, the story of caste discrimination and segregation in urban India parallels the tale of two cities—white and black—in every single metropolitan centre in America today, underlining the significance of a comparative study of caste and race inequalities.
Caste, a traditional institution exposed to the forces of modernisation, should have evaporated, but that it did not is the folklore of the sociology of caste. Marx predicted the caste division of labour to be blown apart under new production–property relations of colonial capitalism. So did Weber. The Indian railways, he predicted, would dissolve caste by not providing segregated toilets for the ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ castes. Marx’s prediction being falsified is often cited as a tribute to the resilience of caste, but there are no citations of Weber’s prediction of the impending death of caste in railway toilets. For Marx, the dissolution of caste was premised on the dissolution of pre-capitalist forces and relations of production. For Weber, it was the violation of the ritual dimension—rules of purity–pollution. Irrespective of the common fate of their predictions, the fundamental difference between the two perspectives on the structure of caste, its persistence and dissolution, is as relevant today as it was at the time they were written.
The book does an excellent job of constructing a trajectory of persistence and change in caste noting change at all levels in all regions, with no single evolutionary or linear path of progression. The old order has nearly disintegrated, but caste has not disappeared. Caste divisions and inequalities continue to matter, a phenomenon of existing objective and subjective conditions. Of particular significance in this context is a change in the position of the erstwhile dominant castes. Rather than taking their dominance for granted, they have now to compete with other, formerly subordinate castes. Growing up in a village in eastern UP, I observed similar strains in the traditional caste structure. Going back to the 1960s, following the abolition of zamindari and extension of universal franchise, traditionally dominant castes held as ‘natural leaders’ for centuries had to confront the challenges from below, unleashing violence, a trend continuing to manifest in varied forms in various parts of the country.
Is the concept of the ‘dominant caste’ still relevant? Yes. Traditional dominant castes may be replaced by new ones, but so long as unequal access to economic, political and cultural power—the foundation of domination and subordination in caste—continues, division between the dominant and subordinate castes will be produced and reproduced, with all its features: exploitation, coercion, discrimination and humiliation, all core concerns of the book.
A notable feature of the book that sets it apart is its engagement with an arguably old but unarguably most important question—how to theorise caste? It confronts the choice between mainly two competing theoretical paradigms, Marxist and Weberian (characteristic of sociology in general). While recognising the role of economic–political factors and rejecting the view of caste as religious—articulated most notably by Dumont in his conceptualisation of hierarchy—the book argues for retaining the concept of caste as status (and distinct from class), as conceptualised by Weber. Is status a viable concept?
Arguably, the only group that fits the notion of status, that is, group with highest social honour without economic–political power, is the Brahman of the varna system. Whatever its heuristic value as ‘ideal type’, the idea of the economically and politically deprived Brahman enjoying highest social honour in any part of India at any period of Indian history—ancient, medieval, modern—is a myth that is testified to, among many more studies, by the book under review. The overwhelming majority of sociologists studying caste over the past sixty years have been using the conceptual framework of status in opposition to class, Dumont’s Homo hierarchicus being a prominent illustration. What is the outcome for theory? Status in Weber is exclusive of class. Caste is not class, but it is not exclusive of class. Status exclusive of class as the conceptual tool for a theory of caste needs critical scrutiny. Caste in Contemporary India is a significant contribution to caste studies, a valuable resource for academics and non-academics alike interested in understanding caste in rural and urban India today.