Social Institutions: Continuity and Change

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Sociology Class XII (Indian Society), Chapter 3.

Is the caste in the textbook the same as the caste in the news?

Every Indian knows that caste is an ancient institution, and every Indian also knows it is part of society today. Are they the same thing? That is the question this chapter keeps asking. The answer is "partly, but not quite". Institutions change in what they stand for, even when they keep the same name, and a good sociology answer always says when and for whom an institution is being described.

A population is not a pile of separate individuals. It is a society made of linked classes and communities, held together and regulated by social institutions and social relationships. This chapter looks at three: caste, tribe and family.

Caste in the past

Caste is an institution uniquely associated with the Indian subcontinent. Similar arrangements exist elsewhere, but the exact form has not been found in other places. Although it is characteristic of Hindu society, caste has also spread to the major non Hindu communities of the subcontinent.

The English word "caste" comes from the Portuguese casta, meaning pure breed. In Indian languages, beginning with Sanskrit, the institution is described by two terms.

The most common interpretation treats varna as an all India aggregative scheme and jati as its regional, far more complex counterpart. Scholars still debate the exact relationship. While the four varna scheme is common to all of India, the jati hierarchy varies from region to region.

Cause → effect: in the late Vedic period (roughly 900–500 BC) the system was really a varna system of four divisions, not very elaborate or rigid, and not determined by birth → movement between categories seems to have been possible and quite common → in the post Vedic period caste became the rigid, birth based institution familiar from well known definitions.

The four varna scheme is roughly three thousand years old, but it is misleading to think the "same" system ran for three thousand years, because it stood for different things at different times.

The six defining features of caste

These are the prescribed rules found in scriptural texts. They were not always practised, so we cannot say how far they determined real life. Most of them are prohibitions, and the system was very unequal. Once caste became rigidly fixed by birth, a person's life circumstances could in principle never change.

Two principles behind the system. Theoretically, caste combines two sets of principles. The first is difference and separation: each caste is supposed to be different from, and strictly separated from, every other, so scriptural rules about marriage, food, contact and occupation prevent mixing. The second is wholism and hierarchy: separate castes exist only in relation to the whole society of all castes, and that whole is a ranked ladder, not an equal arrangement. The ranking rests on the distinction between purity (closer to the sacred) and pollution (distant from or opposed to the sacred). In practice, material power was associated with social status, and groups defeated in wars were often assigned low status. Castes were also meant to be complementary and non competing. Because caste was tied to occupation, the system worked as a division of labour that allowed in principle no mobility.

Pause and predict: a student says, "Caste has always been the same rigid system, because the four varnas are three thousand years old." What is the flaw?

Check your answer: the four varna classification may be about three thousand years old, but in its earliest phase the system was not rigid or birth based. It only hardened later, in the post Vedic period. The "caste system" meant different things in different periods.

Colonialism and caste

If modern history starts in the nineteenth century, Independence in 1947 is a natural dividing line between the colonial period (roughly 1800 to 1947) and the post colonial period. Caste today has been shaped strongly by both.

Cause → effect: British administrators wanted to govern efficiently → they surveyed the "customs and manners" of castes and tribes → they used the census to count caste and record rank → caste identities that had been fluid became fixed and official → caste took on a new life.

Castes at the bottom of the hierarchy that faced severe discrimination, including all the so called "untouchable" castes, were included among the Scheduled Castes.

Two views. For the exam: the institution of caste underwent fundamental changes in the colonial period, and some scholars argue that what we know as caste today is more a product of colonialism than of ancient tradition. Direct attempts to count caste and record caste status changed the institution itself. Another reading: other scholars stress that caste had older roots and that colonial rule transformed and hardened it rather than invented it. Both agree that the colonial census, surveys and legal schedules changed how caste worked. Not all changes were intended, and the world was changing through capitalism and modernity at the same time.

Caste in the present: who tried to change it, and how

Independence was a big but only partial break with the past. Efforts to organise the "depressed classes" began in the second half of the nineteenth century, started by reformers from both ends of the caste spectrum.

By the time Independence was near, there was broad agreement across the nationalist movement to abolish caste distinctions. The dominant view in the nationalist movement treated caste as a social evil and as a colonial ploy to divide Indians.

The state's contradiction. The post Independence state inherited these tensions. On one hand it was committed to the abolition of caste and wrote this into the Constitution. On the other, it was unable and unwilling to push through radical reforms that would have undermined the economic basis of caste inequality. It assumed that acting in a "caste blind" way would eventually undermine caste privilege: government jobs, for example, took no account of caste, so well educated and poorly educated candidates competed on "equal" terms. The only exception was reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

What changed and what stayed.

Sanskritisation and dominant caste

These two concepts, both contributed by M.N. Srinivas (1916–1999) but widely discussed and criticised by others, are among the most tested terms in the chapter.

How a dominant caste arises, step by step. Land reforms took rights away from absentee landlords who took rent but did not take part in agriculture. Rights then passed to the next layer of claimants, intermediate castes involved in managing agriculture but not themselves the cultivators. These groups depended on the labour of lower castes for tilling the land, but now had considerable economic power. Their large numbers also gave political power in an age of electoral democracy, so they became dominant in the countryside and in regional politics.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: Sanskritisation is the imitation of the practices of a higher caste by a lower or middle caste in order to rise in status. In reality: critics argue that it describes status mobility for a group inside the system, not a change of the system itself, and that some groups reject, rather than imitate, higher status practices. Give the exam definition first, but know that the idea has been widely discussed and criticised.

Visible and invisible caste

One of the paradoxes of the present is that caste has become relatively invisible for some groups and highly visible for others.

The chapter adds a caution: the privileged group is differentiated. Although it is overwhelmingly drawn from higher castes, not everyone in those castes is privileged, and some are poor.

Pause and predict: if caste seems invisible to someone, does that mean caste has disappeared from society?

Check your answer: no. The chapter argues that it has become invisible for those it benefited most, because their advantages are now carried by money and education. For groups still facing discrimination, caste is more visible than ever. What is "invisible" depends on where you stand.

Tribal communities

"Tribe" is a modern term for very old communities, among the oldest inhabitants of the subcontinent. In India tribes have generally been defined by what they were not: communities that did not practise a religion with a written text, did not have a state or political form of the usual kind, and did not have sharp class divisions. They are classified by "permanent" and "acquired" traits.

Two views. For the exam: tribes are often described as different from caste based peasant society. In the 1960s scholars debated whether tribes were one end of a continuum with caste based peasant society, only less stratified and more community oriented, or a wholly different kind of community because they have no notion of purity and pollution. Another reading: by the 1970s all the major definitions of tribe were shown to be faulty, because the tribe versus peasant difference did not hold on size, isolation, religion or livelihood. Some scholars even argue that tribes are "secondary" phenomena, shaped by contact with states and colonial powers, not "pristine" societies untouched by civilisation.

Evidence against the myth of isolated, stone age tribes. The popular picture of tribes as unchanging societies untouched by time does not hold up, and the chapter gives several kinds of evidence.

National development versus tribal development. Large dams, factories and mines were built where tribal areas had minerals and forests. Tribal communities paid a disproportionate price: loss of land, loss of forests, and the disadvantage of private property in land for communities whose ownership was collective. Heavy in-migration of non tribals into tribal regions added pressure. Tripura's tribal share of the population halved within a single decade, making them a minority.

Tribal identity today. Identities are shaped by interaction with the mainstream, not by an original ("primordial") character, and because that interaction has often been on unfavourable terms, many tribal identities are built on resistance. Achievements such as statehood for Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are moderated by continuing problems. A new tribal middle class is emerging, mainly through education and reservation, which creates new bases for asserting identity. Two sets of issues drive tribal movements: control over land and forests, and ethnic and cultural identity. These can go together or diverge as tribal society becomes more differentiated.

Family and kinship

The family is a space of warmth and care, but also of conflict and injustice. Its structure can be studied in itself (nuclear or extended, male headed or female headed, matrilineal or patrilineal) and in relation to other institutions, since the private sphere of the family is linked to the economic, political, cultural and educational public spheres.

Cause → effect examples from the chapter: men migrate from Himalayan villages → an unusual proportion of women headed families; young parents in the software industry work long schedules → grandparents move in as caregivers. Structure changes with society, sometimes by accident (war, migration) and sometimes on purpose (young people choosing their own spouses).

Matriliny is not matriarchy. Matriarchy, unlike patriarchy, has been a theoretical concept, not an empirical one: there is no historical or anthropological evidence of societies in which women dominate. Matrilineal societies do exist, but even there women inherit property from their mothers without exercising control over it or being decision makers in public affairs.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the extended family is often seen as typical of India, but it was never the dominant form, confined to certain sections and regions. In reality: the sociologist I.P. Desai pointed out that "joint family" is not a native category. The words for it in most Indian languages are translations of the English term. So when you use "joint family" in an answer, treat it as an analytical label, not a timeless Indian reality.

Changes in family norms are often resisted, sometimes violently, because they are changes in cultural ideas, norms and values, which are not easy to bring about.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: The Demographic Structure of the Indian Society gives the population picture inside which these institutions operate.
• Next: The Market as a Social Institution shows how trade, caste and kinship networks intersect.
• Later: Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclusion develops untouchability, reservation and tribal struggles in detail.
• Class XI link: Understanding Social Institutions explains family, marriage and kinship as institutions, and Indian Sociologists covers M.N. Srinivas and other thinkers named here.