614784

research-article2015
CSI0010.1177/0011392115614784Current SociologyJodhka

Article CS

Current Sociology

Ascriptive hierarchies: Caste

1­–16
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392115614784
contemporary India csi.sagepub.com

Surinder S Jodhka
Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Abstract
Social science literature on caste tends to view it as a peculiar institution of the
Hindus, emanating from their past tradition and religious beliefs/scriptures. This view
also presumes that the processes of urbanization and industrialization, unleashing the
process of modernization, will end caste, eventually producing a shift from a closed
system of social hierarchy to an open system of social stratification based on individual
achievement, merit and hard work. Drawing from a large volume of recent writings
the author argues in this article that this approach to the understanding of caste is
based on an assumption of Indian exceptionalism. Such an orientalist view of caste also
denies the possibility of deploying the framework of caste for understanding caste-like
ascriptive hierarchies that exist in many other (if not all) societies. Some of the recent
theorizations of caste could perhaps provide useful conceptual tools for developing a
comparative understanding of social inequalities.

Keywords
Caste, discrimination, hierarchy, India, inequality

Introduction
The popular textbook view of caste tends to approach it almost purely in cultural terms,
a uniquely Indian practice that distinguished the traditional way of life of the region from
the modern West and its cultural moorings. In this popular view, as an ancient institution,
caste was embedded in the religious ideology of the Hindus. It drew its operational legiti-
macy from ideas like varna, karma and dharma pronounced in a book called the
Manusmriti and some other ancient texts. These ideas were socially translated into a
hierarchical order, structured around the notions of purity and pollution. The varna

Corresponding author:
Surinder S Jodhka, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067,
India.
Email: ssjodhka@yahoo.com
2 Current Sociology 

system thus divided the Hindus into four or five mutually exclusive categories with the
Brahmins (ritual experts and priests) at the top, followed by the Kshatriyas (warriors),
the Vaishyas (traders) and the Shudras (cultivators/workers). Beyond the four varnas
were the achhoots, the untouchables, who carried out various polluting jobs for the rest
of Hindu society and occupied a position at the very bottom.
Mainstream social science scholars and their conceptual frames, the structural-
functionalists and the Marxists, anticipated that as an aspect of traditional culture and ide-
ology, caste would inevitably decline and eventually disappear on its own. The processes
of urbanization and industrialization, development of capitalist economy, modernization of
mental frames and social institutions and democratization of its political system would
make the caste system redundant and meaningless for India. With economic development
and social progress, quite like the modern Western world, Indian society too would see a
shift away from a closed system of hierarchy to an open system of social stratification
based on individual achievement to be acquired through merit and hard work.
This has indeed not happened. Over the past century or so, India has seen quite a rapid
change in its economy, social structure and political system. Though demographically
India is still predominantly rural, its social and economic life is no longer reproduced in
isolated ‘village communities’ (if it ever was!). Even India’s rural/agrarian economy has
seen many radical changes over the past five decades and more. The traditional caste-
based occupations have disintegrated almost everywhere. In most of India the production
cycles of agrarian economy are closely linked to the local, national and global markets.
Agriculture as a sphere of economic activity in the national life has also declined quite
significantly. Even though two-thirds of India is rural, the share of agriculture in national
income in the second decade of 21st century is already down to around 13 or 14%.
India’s progress toward political modernization is evident from the successful institu-
tionalization of a flourishing political democracy with a Western-style liberal Constitution.
However, notwithstanding these fundamental changes in India’s economic and politi-
cal life, caste has persisted. Many would say that its presence in popular and political
discourses in contemporary times is much more pronounced today than was the case a
century back, when the institutional hold of caste was perhaps much stronger. One may
explain this persistence of caste by attributing it to a flawed or still incomplete process of
modernization that India has pursued or to its institutionalization by the state system in
the form of quotas for certain caste groups in the name of social justice and affirmative
action, as many do. Popular media often tend to attribute the survival of caste to its politi-
cization by the ‘entrepreneurs’ of India’s electoral democracy. However, the reality of
caste in contemporary India matters beyond the politics of votes and quotas. Caste con-
tinues to matter in many different ways, and most importantly as an important aspect of
social and economic inequality, as a reality that shapes opportunity structures, status
differences and cultural values in contemporary India.
Its persistence raises many questions, empirical, theoretical and political/moral. This
article1 tries to engage with some of these questions by providing (1) a critical overview
of the popular theorizations of caste and their flaws; (2) a broad view of the changing
dimension of caste; and (3) alternative ways of approaching caste that could help us
understand the present-day realities of caste and modes and manners in which it repro-
duces itself in everyday life, beyond its traditional sphere, the village.
Jodhka 3

The starting point of my argument is a complete rejection of the formulations that

look at caste from the perspectives of Indian exceptionalism and locate its explanation
solely in the Hindu religious tradition. Instead, I approach caste as a system of ascriptive
hierarchies, quite like Weber’s notion of status as a dimension of power and inequality
(Weber, 1946), and as a system of symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1984), a regime of dis-
crimination, which makes it possible for us to compare it to similar realities and struc-
tures elsewhere, such as race and other forms of vertical ethnic formations. Perhaps the
most obvious point of comparison for such a discussion on caste would be to begin with
revisiting the history of the caste–race relationship.

Caste and race

For the students of caste in contemporary India, the starting point of the race–caste rela-
tion has come to be the 2001 United Nations Conference against Racism in Durban where
some activists from India had argued for recognition of caste-based discrimination on a
par with racial discrimination by the relevant UN body. However, the history of compara-
tive scholarship on the two institutions within the discipline of sociology is much longer.
This relationship has been debated in different ways for more than a century now.
Starting with Charles Sumner, scholars like William Thomas and WL Warner had
extensively argued that ‘race’ in the United States was a kind of caste system where rela-
tions between Whites and Blacks were systematically ordered and maintained like the
hierarchical structure of caste. Quite like the caste system, the status of individuals in a
racial group was further determined by a system of hierarchy within each colour-caste
(see Thomas, 1904; Warner, 1936). However, this ‘caste school of race studies’ declined
rather rapidly after the well-known American sociologist Oliver C Cox (1948), devel-
oped a very influential critique of the position in his celebrated book Caste, Class and
Race, published in the middle of 20th century.
Disagreeing with the proponents of the caste school of race studies, Cox had argued
that caste could not and should not be used as a framework for describing ‘racial’ differ-
ences or inequalities in American society because the nature and the origin of the two
realities were fundamentally different. While caste was an ancient Indian cultural inven-
tion of the Hindus, ‘race’ was a more recent social construct that was reproduced
through racial ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’ as a dynamic of the capitalist market
economy. So effective and influential was his criticism of the ‘caste school of race stud-
ies’ that it rapidly declined soon after the publication of his book and has largely
remained so until now.
Interestingly however, his critique was based on an understanding of caste that was
derived directly from the then dominant orientalist common sense about India, which
viewed it as being a peculiarly Hindu social system. Its existence elsewhere, accord-
ing to this view, made no sense. Invoking the classical orientalist notion of caste, Cox
had argued:

Where in the world outside of Brahmanic India do caste systems exist? And the answer must be
briefly: Practically nowhere. The caste system is an Indian cultural invention. (Cox, 1948: 538,
emphasis in original)
4 Current Sociology 

His objection to the use of the term ‘caste’ to describe race relations in the United
States also had political reasons. The system of caste hierarchy, he thought, produced
legitimacy for itself, and worked almost on its own. However, in his understanding
race was not such a ‘natural form of social organization’ or a type of society, like the
caste system was:

The idea of a ‘type of society’ obscures the actual pathological racial antagonism, leaving some
diffused impression that it is socially right, even as the caste system in India is right. (Cox,
1948: 544)

In the following chapter of his book he discusses this ‘pathological racial antagonism’,
and provides a fascinating account of the phenomenon of racial lynching of the Blacks in
Southern USA. Interestingly, however, his account of such racial violence sounds strik-
ingly similar to what we know today in India as ‘caste atrocities’.2 Quite like the caste
atrocities in today’s India, the function of the targeted lynching of the Blacks, as he
argues, was reassertion of White domination. It is worth quoting some text from his dis-
cussion of the phenomenon. Lynching, he argues:

… is a special form of mobbing – mobbing directed against a whole people or political class.

… lynching is not a spontaneous act. … There seems to be a recognizable lynching cycle. … A

growing belief among whites in the community that Negros are getting out of hand – in wealth,
in racial independence, in attitudes of self-assertion …

… lynchings function to maintain white dominance … the socio-psychological matrix of the

power relationship between the races. (Cox, 1948: 549–551)

Had Oliver Cox been a student of caste in the late 20th century, his conclusions about
caste and its comparability with race would have been very different.

Conceptual trajectories of caste

Oliver Cox is not the only one who approached caste from the perspective of Indian
exceptionalism. The dominant view of caste has been to look at it as a unique cultural
reality, a part and parcel of the Indian/Hindu tradition. The enduring influence of
Dumont’s work on the subject (Dumont, 1998 [1971]), despite its very powerful cri-
tiques (Berreman, 1991; Béteille, 1986; Dirks, 2001; Gupta, 1981; Raheja, 1989), is a
case in point, and a subject that needs a separate treatment.3 Even when they critiqued
Dumont’s ‘book-view’ of caste, those who carried out empirical studies of the village
society from the 1950s through the 1970s also did not approach caste from a critical
perspective (see Jodhka, 1998). Even though there were exceptions and some scholars
did talk about caste in the framework of power and domination, it was the orientalist
view of caste that largely prevailed. Caste was primarily viewed in the framework of
tradition and the cultural specificity of India, almost until the 1990s (for a detailed dis-
cussion of this see Jodhka, 2012b).
One of the obvious implications of this identification of caste with culture and tradi-
tion was that considerations of caste could not become part of the hard questions of
Jodhka 5

economic redistribution, privilege and poverty, or the mainstream development dis-

course. The discussions and diagnoses of the questions of economic inequality during the
early decades after independence were deliberated almost exclusively through purely
economic categories such as incomes, assets and productivity. Even when empirical
studies of village society showed a close link between caste and the prevailing agrarian
social structure, caste was rarely represented or conceptualized as a material reality,
shaping the economics of inequality and exploitation in the countryside.
This had larger developmental effects and implications. One good example of this
‘caste-blindness’ is the Indian discourse of the Land Reforms during the 1950s and
1960s, when caste was rarely included as an aspect of the prevailing economic disparities
that needed to be reformed through direct legal action.
This selective view of caste was not accidental. As mentioned above, the dominant
mode of thinking about caste has almost always looked at it from an evolutionary frame,
the underlying assumption being that caste would disappear ‘automatically’ with the
dawn of modernity. The near universal acceptance of this view is evident from the fact
that notwithstanding their ideological and political positions, theories of social change
that acquired prominence in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Western Europe and
their translations and applications to the Indian context, the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ in India
have amazingly common attitudes toward the subject of caste. Caste has no future. The
process of modernization would weaken caste and eventually replace it with ‘modern’
structures based on individual achievement. Social inequality, or stratification, would be
structured around the ‘open’ category of class that modern societies of the West have.
For modernization theory, that had its origin in the structural-functional frameworks of
conceptualizing human society and acquired prominence in the social sciences during the
post-Second World War period, caste was a textbook case of a traditional institution. As a
structure of social relations, its functional utility was confined to pre-modern times. The
evolutionary process of structural differentiation that accompanied the growth of urban
and industrial societies in the West, transformed the traditional community (Gemeinschaft)
into an associational society (Gesellschaft).4 The new social order was based on relation-
ships entered into out of individual choice. The same should/would happen in India.
As the proponents of such theories of human society would argue, the idea of indi-
vidual identity is of very little relevance in the traditional communitarian mode of social
organization. It is the collective identity of the group that matters. Personal identities in
such contexts do not develop into individuals, thinking for themselves or their self-
interest. Collective identity of the group over-determines the personal selves of its mem-
bers. The idea of individual identity, or individualism, emerges only in modern times,
with the growth and complexities of urban life organized around industrial and devel-
oped market economies. Individual autonomy grows because it becomes a functional
prerequisite for modern societies, if they are to work well. As Durkheim would argue,
modern societies, based on the idea of organic solidarity, encourage and promote the
ideas of individual choice because they require individual specializations and division of
labour (Durkheim, 1997 [1893]). Individuals are encouraged to focus on cultivation of
what is unique about them. Rewards, thus, get distributed on the basis of individual
merit. Consequently, unlike the ‘closed’ systems of social organization that characterize
traditional societies, modern societies are open. They allow individual mobility based on
ideas of merit and the propensity to do hard work.
6 Current Sociology 

Interestingly, the Marxist notion of social change, seen from the perspective of caste,
is also not very different from the above-discussed functionalist mode of thinking about
human societies. Given that caste is often identified with Hindu religion and is popularly
believed to have emerged out of the ritual order of Hinduism, as a value system or ideo-
logical system, it belongs to (a) the superstructure of the social formation, and (b) the
pre-capitalist mode of production. Thus, in the Marxist common sense, caste-based divi-
sions flourished in pre-capitalist agrarian social formations, in the ‘idyllic village com-
munities of India’. Even though caste was based on the idea of inequality, it helped in the
reproduction of the social equilibrium of such ‘communities’. However, caste was not
the foundational feature of pre-modern Indian society, or the determining factor, but an
effect of historically produced economic and social order, the agrarian social structure.
At another level, Marx himself viewed caste as a part of the conservative social and
cultural framework within which the ‘village communities’ were circumscribed. Caste
played a role in keeping India static and self-contained. As he wrote:

… these idyllic village-communities … were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by

slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the
sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never
changing natural destiny. (Marx, 1853)

However, the traditional social organization of India, Marx thought, was fast disintegrat-
ing under the influence of the British colonial rule because of (a) its growing integration
with the British capitalist market and (b) through the introduction of new technology into
Indian society, particularly after the introduction of railways:

Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of
labor, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and
Indian power.5

What is true about Marxism is perhaps doubly true about the so-called modernization
theory. More interestingly perhaps, despites its wide-ranging criticisms and near com-
plete debunking by social science academics during the 1970s, the idea of evolutionary
modernization continues to be influential in many different ways even today. It has
become a part of the common-sense view on social change among the Indian middle-
classes and elsewhere. Similarly, even though the old theories of social evolutionism are
no longer accepted uncritically, their hold over the popular notions of history continues
to be significant.

Changing caste
The institution of caste has seen many radical changes over the past four or five decades.
These changes have come about thanks to a variety of efforts: (1) from ‘below’, through
the social movements of those who have been at the receiving end of the ‘traditional
hierarchies’; (2) from ‘above’, thanks to the Constitutional provisions and other state
policies for empowerment and development of those on the margins of the traditional
social order of caste hierarchy; and (3) from the ‘side’, as a consequence of the general
Jodhka 7

processes of social and economic change, such as the agrarian transformation or the
development of industry and urbanization.
Some of these changes in the traditional system of social hierarchies structured
around caste have indeed been quite significant or even ‘radical’. For example, the
textbook view of the traditional caste system that described it primarily in terms ritual
and occupational hierarchies, a closed system of stratification, no longer exists in most
parts of rural India (Charsley and Karanth, 1998; Jodhka, 2002; Manor, 2012; Sahay,
2004). Those located at the lower end of caste hierarchy have, to an extent, success-
fully worked out strategies to reduce their dependence on the locally dominant and
powerful caste groups.
Independence from the colonial rule was an important turning point for the economy
and its social organization. State investments in rural development and agricultural
growth provided positive impetus to the process of change on the ground. Social anthro-
pologists studying rural social and economic life began to report about declining tradi-
tional hierarchies and old structures of dependency sometime in the early 1970s (see
Béteille, 1996 [1971]; Breman, 1974; Thorner, 1982). This process of change also had its
impact on the local-level caste relations. By the early 1980s these changes became quite
visible and started to be reflected even in democratic or electoral political processes.
On the basis of his fieldwork in Rajasthan villages in the 1980s, Oliver Mendelsohn
(1993) reported that the idea of the ‘dominant caste’, as proposed by MN Srinivas in the
1950s after his fieldwork in a South India village (Srinivas, 1959), no longer made sense
in rural Rajasthan. He also argued that ‘land and authority had been de-linked in village
India and this amounted to an historic, if non-revolutionary transformation’ (Mendelsohn,
1993: 807). By the turn of the century Srinivas himself argued in a paper, which he
described as ‘An obituary on caste as a system’, that the ‘systemic’ features of caste were
soon disappearing from the rural society in different parts of the country (Srinivas, 2003).
We can notice similar claims emerging from the writings of many other scholars who
have been closely observing the dynamics of caste in contemporary India (Béteille,
1997; Charsley and Karanth, 1998; Gupta, 2000; Kapoor et al., 2010; Karanth, 1996;
Krishna, 2001; Vaddiraju, 1999).

Declining hierarchy, persisting inequality and the

reproduction of caste today
Perhaps the most surprising and interesting thing that the reality of caste presents in con-
temporary India is the fact that precisely at a time when all sociological evidence points
to its decline, it is becoming more visible and complex. Not only has the academic and
popular interest in the subject of caste seen manifold increase, but the caste question also
presents itself in newer and more complicated forms. My own fieldwork clearly shows
that the processes of capitalist development and rapid mechanization in the northwest
region have made the traditional framework of social organization of agricultural produc-
tion completely redundant. However, there is absolutely no evidence to show that this
process of change in any way enables dissolution of caste-based differences and identities
in rural areas. On the contrary, as I have shown through my work (Jodhka, 2015), eco-
nomic inequalities across caste groups in some sense witness a further escalation.
8 Current Sociology 

Socially and politically also the experience of caste differences becomes more intense
as those at the lower end begin to experience a change in their self-image. As the decline
of their dependence on an agrarian economy and the dominant castes enables them to
formally participate in the democratic political process as equal citizens, their entitle-
ments over local resources remain circumscribed by caste and the ‘position’ they have
occupied in the old system of hierarchy, as the dominant groups view it. Those at the
lower end do not accept it any longer and they make claims over ‘common’ resources of
the village, which have hitherto been under the exclusive control of the dominant caste
communities. These assertions are not easily entertained by the dominant groups, and
often result in social boycotts of the Dalits by the dominant castes and occasionally also
in violence (Jodhka, 2004).
This is not simply a matter of perception. Resistance and caste-related atrocities mani-
fest a clear trend. A broad range of scholars concede the fact that while the traditional
ideological facade of caste or even its institutional hold has weakened, including the
decline of untouchability, violence toward Dalits appears to be increasing, particularly
over the past two or three decades (Béteille, 2000b; Gorringe, 2005, 2012; Mohanty,
2007; Shah, 2000; Teltumbde, 2010).
At another level, these growing strains in caste relations, even when they manifest
themselves in bloody violence, also result in renegotiations of power relations (see
Pandian, 2013). The language of citizenship is no longer alien to the rural hinterlands of
India. Regular participation in electoral democracy has provided the Dalits with a new
language of bargaining, and they are quickly learning to use this language to their advan-
tage, even when power relations do not change radically.
The experience of mobility of those located at the lower end of the traditional caste
hierarchy, i.e. their moving out of the village and agrarian economy, is also not an easy
process. Those who move out of the rural/agrarian economy, into urban entrepreneur-
ship, find it very hard to make headway beyond the margins of the emerging urban
economy. Caste matters in urban markets in many different ways for the Dalits trying to
establish themselves in business. Urban markets have never been as open as they are
made out to be in the textbooks of economics and sociology. In the Indian context, caste
and kinship (sometimes, religion-based) communities actively try to preserve their
‘monopolies’ in a given trade. Even when it becomes virtually impossible to do so, kin-
ship networks play a very critical role in urban business economy. Apart from working
as gatekeepers, the kinship networks also matter in mobilizing capital, through banks and
otherwise, the most critical requirement for businesses anywhere in the world. Those
from the historically deprived communities also do not own collateral, such as agricul-
tural lands or urban properties. The lack of ‘social capital’ and economic resources is
further compounded by the presence of active ‘prejudice’ that manifests itself in many
different ways in their everyday business life and aids in the reproduction of both social/
economic inequalities and caste identity among the Dalits, reinforcing a sense of being
different and unequal (Hoff and Pandey, 2004; Iyer et al., 2013; Jodhka, 2010).
We see this script repeated in the available evidence on corporate hiring. Based on
interviews with hiring managers in big private companies in Delhi, Jodhka and Newman
(2007) have, for example, shown that even when they actively deny any consideration of
caste and community in the process of recruitment, the respondents clearly show
Jodhka 9

preference for candidates with specific social and cultural skills. Given that the candi-
dates they interview for these relatively high-end jobs are mostly screened, internally or
by the hiring agencies, and they are all educated and qualified to be called for the inter-
view, the interviews are meant to judge more than their technical skills and the quality of
their formal education. They look for ‘suitability’ of the candidate, the social and cultural
aspects of their personality. Who is a suitable candidate and how do they judge the merit
of those who are selected for the upper-end jobs in the private sector?
Almost every respondent hiring manager interviewed agreed that one of the most
important questions they ask the prospective candidates during the interviews is about
their ‘family background’. Family background, for them, was important to assess the
suitability of the candidate to the culture of the company. An equally important factor for
hiring at the senior level is the linguistic skills of the candidate, their ability to speak and
communicate in English fluently. In other words, the critical qualification was the ‘soft
skills’, the nature and quality of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986) acquired through
one’s caste and class habitus, which even according to the hiring managers was largely a
determinant of one’s social background and place of residence (rural/urban).
The question about family background may appear to be an innocuous one for
those candidates whose social background is similar to those who are interviewing
them. However, for the first generation of educated candidates from a less privileged
background, such questions serve to make them feel uncomfortable and awkward.
The findings of another study, also part of the same research programme, by
Deshpande and Newman, reported that it was only the students from ex-untouchable
communities who were made to carry the burden of their caste background even
when they were well-educated and looking for jobs in the urban sector (Deshpande
and Newman, 2007).
Jodhka and Newman show that almost every hiring manager admitted to the fact
that the response to the question about family background also gave them an idea
about candidates’ ‘social origin’. The caste background of the candidates was not dif-
ficult to guess, most of them admitted. Some of these respondents told in a matter of
fact manner that when they visited the educational institutes for ‘campus recruit-
ments’ some of the colleges even provided them two separate lists, one listing all the
graduating candidates from the ‘general’ category and the second listing those from
the ‘reserved’ categories.
A recent study based on a sample of 1000 companies reported that as many as 92.6%
of Indian corporate board members are from two broad clusters of the ‘upper castes’
(44.6% Brahmins and 46.0% from various Vaishya castes – the two caste categories
together would perhaps make for less than 15% of the Indian population). In contrast, the
Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) together accounted for only 3.5% of
these highly valued positions. Even the proportion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs),
who make for more than half of India’s total population, was quite negligible (3.8%)
(Daljit et al., 2012).

… it is a small and closed world. In the corporate world, social networking plays an important
role. Still, Indian corporate boards belong to the ‘old boys club’ based on caste affiliation rather
than on other considerations (like merit or experience). (2012: 42)
10 Current Sociology 

Caste matters even more in India’s vast informal economy. Based on her study of a South
Indian town Barbara Harriss-White concludes:

Caste … provides networks necessary for contracts, for subcontracting and for labour
recruitment within the informal economy … liberalisation makes these caste-based relationships
more important because it places a new premium on the advancement of interests … caste is
ultimately connected with all the other organizations of civil society that comprehensively
regulate economic and social life. (2003: 178–179)

The limited volume of empirical literature currently available on social mobility in India
reinforces the point that caste indeed works to block those located at the lower end of caste
hierarchy (Kumar, et al., 2002; Thorat and Attewell, 2007; Thorat and Newman, 2010; Vaid
and Heath, 2010). Even when the cultural or ideological hold of caste disappears, the real
possibility of vertical social and economic mobility remains rather limited. Much of the
mobility appears to be merely horizontal, from traditional caste occupations or agricultural
labour in the village to insecure jobs at the lower end of India’s vast informal economy. In
the dynamic of change, ‘the upper castes’ are no longer ‘cushioned from the forces of down-
ward mobility’, but more importantly, it is hard for those located at the lower end of ‘tradi-
tional’ hierarchy to move up (Vaid, 2012: 420). In other words, the social mobility scenario
in India presents a case of ‘continuity rather than change’ (Kumar et al., 2002: 4096).
Caste continues to shape urban residential patterns and tends to reflect segregation on
caste lines. The macro-level data on population distribution in urban India suggests that
Scheduled Castes tend to be concentrated in certain parts of the city (Dupont, 2004;
Vithayathil and Singh, 2012: 64). Analysing the 2001 Census on residential patterns
across caste and socioeconomic categories for the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata,
Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, Vithayathil and Singh find a rather
depressing scenario:

At the start of the 21st century, we find that caste still remains a real axis of urban residential
segregation in India’s seven largest metro cites. In each of these cities, our analysis finds
residential segregation by caste to be sizably larger than the level of segregation by socio-
economic status. Caste has historically shaped the organisation of residential space, especially
at the village level, and it appears to continue to do so in contemporary urban India. (Vithayathil
and Singh, 2012: 64)

Social change and reproduction of caste

How do we reconcile these two sets of realities: change and persistence? What could
explain the persistence of caste-related violence where the victims are almost always
from the caste communities who have historically been at the receiving end of the social
order of caste? How do we account for the experiences of urban Dalits who insist on
articulating their everyday experience as an one of humiliation, denial and discrimina-
tion and not simply a matter of cultural difference or social diversity?
Wide-ranging empirical studies clearly show that caste continues to be a critical
source of qualitative inequality. In other words, the caste question today is not exhausted
either by economics and the Gini-coefficient or by analysis of electoral politics.
Jodhka 11

There is indeed plenty of evidence to show that the ‘old’ structure of caste-based hier-
archies and economies of dependency has significantly weakened over the years. As a
part and parcel of this process, the ideological hold of caste has also loosened. Whatever
might have been the case in the past, there would be very few among the ex-untouchables
today who would regard themselves as impure or justify their low status on grounds of
their misconduct in some past life, a fact of nature (Charsley and Karanth, 1998). Like
anyone else, they too aspire to material comforts and dignity (Deliège, 1999).
However, despite this ‘secularization’ of caste or its desacralization (Sheth, 1999), it
continues to structure social inequality. The available evidence on poverty and produc-
tive assets indeed shows significant correlation between caste and economic privileges/
deprivations. Those located at the lower end of the traditional caste hierarchy tend to be
significantly over-represented among the poor and the marginal and the positive correla-
tion at the other end is equally strong. Those at the upper end of the caste hierarchy are
far less likely to be present among the economically depressed categories. However, the
category of class, as conceptualized in the Marxian or Weberian tradition, still does not
capture the emerging realities of caste today.
The hypothesis or assumption that economic development would inevitably convert
caste-based inequalities across groups or communities into class-based differences
among individuals, was fundamentally wrong. To view caste as a religious and purely
ideological institution of the Hindus (Dumont, 1998 [1971]) is even more erroneous. The
ideological or even institutional decline of caste did not produce any kind of levelling
effect by itself. Even as the old ideologies and traditional structures disintegrate, the
social and cultural prejudice associated with caste-based inequalities survives. The mate-
rial disparities inherited from the past aid in the reproduction of inequalities through
widespread social prejudice and other social mechanisms, such as the differentials of
social and cultural capital.
Differences produce prejudice and stereotypes more actively when social interaction
intensifies and competition in the economic and political fields becomes possible. With
growing participation of Dalits and OBC communities, competition in the domain of
democratic politics has indeed become a reality for the erstwhile dominant groups. They
had taken their power for granted and feel extremely resentful about the change and
democratization. With support of the state policy of reservation, the SCs and OBCs have
also entered the administrative systems and are aspiring to increased participation in the
urban economy.
We ought to move toward a perspective that would open up the caste question and
reframe it in a language that does not reduce it to a religious phenomenon or a peculiar
fact of the Hindu mind and ideas derived from the classic religious texts. Even though the
idea of varna draws its sanction from the Manusmriti, the reality of caste is far more
complex and widespread, across different religious communities of the subcontinent and
beyond. As Max Weber would argue, caste is a good example an ideal type of social
inequality, status, an aspect of power found across societies and histories. Caste is thus
comparable to a wide range of similar structures of social inequality.
As in the Weberian frame, status is an aspect of social inequality, but it is different
from class. But at the same time it does not reduce status to an evolutionary phenomenon
or belong to past tradition, or is uniquely specific to any religion or region of the world.
12 Current Sociology 

While caste as a conceptual category is indeed different from class, its reproduction does
not imply a ‘hangover’ of a past tradition. It articulates and reproduces itself in many
complex ways in the bourgeois capitalist markets and in the emerging economies and
cultures of neoliberal globalization.

Conclusions
As is apparent from the brief discussion of some available literature, quite like race at the
time when Oliver Cox wrote his book, caste too reproduces itself in contemporary India
through active processes of ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’. Even the phenomenon of
caste atrocities today is hardly any different from Black lynching that was common until
around the middle of the last century in the United States in terms of its function, namely,
to produce the sociopsychological matrix of power relations. It is in this context that I
propose to initiate a conceptualization of caste within the framework of prejudice and
discrimination as a sociological process, which enables and sustains reproduction of
caste in contemporary times. Such a framework of discrimination has to be comparative
in nature that approaches caste as a category of ‘status’ and ‘power’, quite like ‘race’, or
in some other contexts, ethnicity. A comparative understanding of caste in the framework
of status, power and discrimination would thus enable us to comprehend the complex
processes of the reproduction of caste and not be trapped in, what is sometimes described
as, the Indian exceptionalism.
At a more practical level, such a perspective on caste would underline the critical need
for interventions, if we wish to create a level playing field in India and to deal with the
question of social inequality by finding ways of blocking its reproduction. These inter-
ventions could be from above, in the form of state policies of affirmative action, some of
which are already in place in India. They could also be from below, as social movements
for change. To assume and expect that caste inequalities will disappear on their own with
the decline of traditional social orders, such as the idea of ritual hierarchy or the Hindu
jajmani system, under the pressure of capitalist development and neoliberal economic
reforms would be quite misleading. Individualization of labour markets only makes
structures like caste ‘invisible’ (Rehbein, 2013). It does not make it irrelevant, particu-
larly where it matters, namely, the distribution of the valued goods in society.
This, however, is in no way to suggest that the social and economic change experi-
enced in India over the last century or so has only been superficial. On the contrary, as I
have tried to argue, the change has been quite significant, and in some cases even radical.
However, despite the success and spread of democracy and the disintegration of old
hierarchies, opportunity structures and social values have not become significantly
‘open’. Caste continues to be an important, even critical, variable in the manner in which
inequalities are structured and reproduced. The pervasive and persistent inequalities
have also not become individualized or purely economic in nature. They continue to be
social and cultural.
The old local-level systems of hierarchy have indeed disintegrated but a new hierar-
chy of networks based on the institutions of caste and kinship appears to be thriving.
These hierarchies work through ‘monopolies’ over social and cultural capital and enable
the reproduction of caste. Prejudice and discrimination become significant and more
active when old hierarchies disintegrate and social groups begin to compete for scarce
Jodhka 13

resources in domains of economy, politics and culture/social- status. Neoliberal capital-

ism thus does not destroy caste. On the contrary, it indirectly helps reproduce it by
encouraging network-based economic formations. Even as the old ideology of hierarchy
gives way to the idea of citizenship and the latter becomes a part of the aspiration of all
those on the margins of Indian society and caste, the process of its institutionalization has
yet a long way to go, both as a value and as a practice.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. This article draws substantially from some of my earlier work on the subject (see Jodhka,
2012b, 2015).
2. For caste atrocities see Teltumbde (2007, 2010), Mohanty (2007) and Jaoul (2008).
3. As I have pointed out elsewhere, one the main reason for the lasting influence of Dumont’s
thesis is its appropriation by the dominant historiography of Indian nationalism that aspires to
construct India as a land of the Hindus and without any difference of social structure across
regions. The orientalist view of caste helps in making such a point (Jodhka, 2004).
4. Although these terms were popularized by Ferdinand Tönnies (see Tönnies, 1957 [1887]),
they have been reproduced by several other sociologists, such Emile Durkheim, Talcott
Parsons and many others through a variety of categories to explain the structural process of
social transformations experienced by the modern world, particularly the Western world.
5. At: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm (accessed 12 February 2013).

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Author biography
Surinder S Jodhka is Professor of Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Senior Affiliate
Fellow at the Centre for Social Science and Humanities (both in New Delhi). His research interests
include the study of rural society and dynamics of agrarian change; social inequalities – old and
new – and their reproduction; the dynamics of caste and the varied modes of its articulation with
the nature of social and economic change in contemporary India; and the political sociology of
16 Current Sociology 

community identities. His research publications include Caste in Contemporary India (Routledge,
2015), Interrogating India’s Modernity (ed., Oxford University Press, 2013), Caste: Oxford India
Short Introductions (Oxford University Press, 2012), Village Society (ed., Orient Blackswan,
2012) and Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India
(ed., Sage, 2001). He is among the first recipients of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award for
Distinguished Social Scientists, for the year 2012.

Résumé
En Science Sociale, la littérature sur le concept de caste a tendance à définir cette
dernière comme une institution singulière des Hindous d’où émane du passé, traditions,
croyances et écritures religieuses. Cette définition suppose également que les processus
d’urbanisation et d’industrialisation, d’où émane le processus de modernisation,
mettront un terme au concept de caste ; ce qui finalement produira le passage d’un
système de hiérarchie sociale fermé à un système de stratification sociale ouvert et basé
sur la réussite de l’individu, son mérite et son rapport au travail.
En m’appuyant sur une quantité importante d’articles récents, cet article me
permettra d’argumenter que cette approche cherchant à comprendre le concept de
caste est basée sur une supposition d’un exceptionnalisme indien. Cette vision de la
caste plutôt orientaliste rejette également la possibilité d’utiliser le cadre de la caste
pour comprendre des hiérarchies attributives ressemblant à la caste, et qui existent dans
beaucoup d’autres (si pas toutes) sociétés. Quelques-unes des récentes théorisations sur
la caste pourraient peut-être apporter de précieux outils conceptuels pour développer
une compréhension comparative des inégalités sociales.

Mots-clés
Caste, hiérarchie, inégalité, l’Inde, discrimination

Resumen
Los textos de las ciencias sociales sobre las castas tienden a presentarlas como una
institución particular de los hindúes que emana de sus pasadas tradiciones y de sus
creencias y escritos religiosos. Esta visión presupone que los procesos de urbanización
e industrialización que desatan el proceso de modernización serán el fin de la casta, y
que eventualmente producirán un cambio de un sistema cerrado de jerarquía social a
un sistema abierto de estratificación social fundamentado en los logros individuales, los
méritos y el trabajo arduo.
A partir de un gran volumen de escritos recientes, en este trabajo se intentará
demostrar que este intento de comprender la casta está basado en el supuesto del
excepcionalismo indio. Esta visión orientalista de la casta también descarta la posibilidad
de revelar su estructura para comprender las jerarquías adscriptivas de castas que existen
en muchas otras — si no en todas —, las sociedades. Algunas de las más recientes
teorizaciones sobre la casta podrían, quizás, proveer herramientas conceptuales que
sean útiles para desarrollar un estudio comparativo de las desigualdades sociales.

Palabras clave
Casta, jerarquía, desigualdad, India, discriminación