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Closed and open social stratification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

André Béteille
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Extract

It is generally held that traditional Indian society was based on the regime of caste and was to that extent a peculiarly closed system. Much of the contemporary discussion of Indian society, including the analysis of social change, uses the caste system as the basic frame of reference (1). I shall try to argue that this is inadequate and that, in order to gain a realistic picture of what is happening in India today, other factors such as class and power have to be considered as independent variables.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 1966 , pp. 224 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1966

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References

(1) The most forthright expression of this point of view is to be found in Dumont, L. and Pocock, D. F. (eds.), Contributions to Indian Sociology, particularly in no. 1 (1957)Google Scholar; see also Marriott, M. (ed.), Village India (Chicago 1955)Google Scholar, and Srinivas, M. N. (ed.), India's Villages (Bombay 1960).Google Scholar

(2) In an unpublished paper “Mobility in the Caste System”; see also his Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley 1966).Google Scholar

(3) For a fuller description of this village see my Caste, Class, and Power (Berkeley 1965).Google Scholar

(4) This is only a metaphorical way of speaking; to take the metaphor literally may be misleading, a point which I discuss later.

(5) See, for instance, Marriott, op. cit.; Srinivas, (1960), op. cit.Google Scholar

(6) Bailey, F. G., Caste and the Economic Frontier (Manchester 1957), p. 49.Google Scholar

(7) E. K. Gough in Marriott, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Sivertsen, D., When Caste Barriers Fall (New York 1963)Google Scholar; and Béteille, A. (1965), op. cit.Google Scholar

(8) Epstein, T. S., Economic Development and Social Change in South India (Manchester 1962), pp. 24, 197.Google Scholar

(9) Srinivas in Marriott, , op. citGoogle Scholar; Rampura which is in some ways different from both Dalena and Wangala provides an even more striking confirmation of my point. There has been no significant change in patterns of landownership there in recent years when change has been most conspicuous in the three Tanjore villages. The changes in Rampura took place earlier when Brahmins sold their land to the Okkaligas and moved out of the village.

(10) A Brahmin street in a Tamil village.

(11) Shils, E. A., The Intellectual between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation (The Hague 1961), p. 21.Google Scholar

(12) Misra, B. B., The Indian Middle Class (London 1961), pp. 302, 304.Google Scholar

(13) These figures, collected from Statistical Abstract, India, 1951–1952Google Scholar and Statistical Abstract of the Indian Union, 1963Google Scholarand 1964 (both Government of India publications) I owe to the courtesy of Miss M. N. Chitra.

(14) Nadel, S. F., “Dual Descent in the Nuba Hills” in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, C. D. (eds.), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (London 1950), p. 337.Google Scholar

(15) Béteille, A., A Note on the Referents of Caste, Archiv. europ. sociol., V (1964), pp. 130–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(16) I am indebted for these figures to N. K. Bose.

(17) Available in an English translation by Kripalani, K., Farewell, My Friend (London 1946).Google Scholar

(18) Harrison, S. S., Caste and the Andhra Communists, American Political Science Review, L (1956) 318–404.Google Scholar

(19) Srinivas, M. N., Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay 1962), p. 32.Google Scholar

(20) Lipset, S. M., Political Man (London 1963), p. 31.Google Scholar

(21) Béteille, A., “The Future of the Backward Classes”, Supplement to the Indian Journal of Public Administration, XI (1965), 1–39.Google Scholar

(22) South Avenue and North Avenue are the streets in New Delhi where members of Parliament have their quarters.

(23) Pradesh (State) Congress Committee.

(24) Ossowski, S., Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (London 1963), p. 184.Google Scholar

(25) Worsley, P.M., The Third World (London 1964), pp. 192–193.Google Scholar

(26) Nadel, S.F., The Theory of Social Structure (London 1957), p. 153.Google Scholar

* This paper was completed while I was a Simon Fellow at the University of Manchester. I am grateful to the authorities of the University for having awarded me the Fellowship and to Paul Baxter and Peter Worsley for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper.

(27) Birnbaum, N., “The Idea of Industrial Society”, in Halmos, P. (ed.), The Development of Industrial Societies (Klee 1964).Google Scholar