Social mobility is any transition of an individual or social object or value– anything that has been created or modified by human activity–from one social position to another. There are two principal types of social mobility, horizontal and vertical.
By horizontal social mobility or shifting, is meant the transition of an individual or social object from one social group to another situated on the same level. Transitions of individuals, as from the Baptist to the Methodist religious group, from one citizenship to another, from one family (as a husband or wife) to another by divorce and remarriage, from one factory to another in the same occupational status, are all instances of social mobility. So too are transitions of social objects, the radio, automobile, fashion, Communism, Darwin’s theory, within the same social stratum, or from any one place to another. In all these cases, “shifting” may take place without any noticeable change of the social position of an individual or social object in the vertical direction.
By vertical social mobility is meant the relations involved in a transition of an individual (or a social object) from one social stratum to another. According to the direction of the transition there are two types of vertical social mobility: ascending and descending, or social climbing and social sinking. According to the nature of the stratification, there are ascending and descending currents of economic, political, and occupational mobility, not to mention other less important types. The ascending currents exist in two principal forms: as an infiltration of the individuals of a lower stratum into an existing higher one; and as a creation of a newgroup by such individuals, and the insertion of such a group into a higher stratum instead of, or side by side with, the existing groups of this stratum. Correspondingly, the descending current has also two principal forms: the first consists in a dropping of individuals from a higher social position into an existing lower one, without a degradation or disintegration of the higher group to which they belonged; the second is manifested in a degradation of asocial group as a whole, in an abasement of its rank among other groups, or in its disintegration as a social unit. The first case of “sinking” reminds one of an individual falling from a ship; the second of the sinking of the ship itself with all on board, or of the ship as a wreck breaking itself to pieces.
Caste and Social change in India:
Theoretical approaches
Sociological studies in India since the earliest times were primarily concerned with the phenomenon of change in relation to the different social forces operative in society. They focused attention on different stages through which institutions like, caste, family and village community have evolved through a period of time. So, in the tradition of biological sciences, the evolutionists analysed the social changes taking place in these institutions on the basis of their origin and growth from simple to complex, from homogeneous and undifferentiated social relationship to complex, heterogeneous and differentiated relationship.
(a) Cultural approach
During Post independence period, a fresh approach to study caste and social change developed. The concepts of Sanskritisation and Westernisation were the first systematic attempts to analyse the process of change in the Indian culture and its traditions. The concept of Sanskritisation was formulated by M.N. Srinivas to explain social mobility within the traditional caste structure of India. It was based on his study of the Coorgs in Mysore. He defined Sanskritisation as” a process where a low Hindu caste changes its customs, rites, rituals, ideology and way of life in the direction of a high and frequently twiceborne castes”. This process has the effect of generally improving the position of the caste group within the local caste hierarchy. It is, hence, a positional change rather than a structural change. It normally presupposes the economic and political improvement of the concerned caste group or a higher group selfconsciousness due to contact with a source of the “great tradition” of Hinduism, like a pilgrimage center or monastery or proselytizing sect. The other concept formulated by Srinivas is that of Westernisation. He defines Westernisation as” the changes brought about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British rule, the term subsuming changes occurring at different levels of technology, institutions, ideology and values”
Both the concepts of sanskritisation and westernisation explain the process of social and cultural mobility in society and as such concentrates on cultural and positional aspects of social change rather than structural form of social change. But Srinivas has added another dimension to the understanding of the process of sanskritisation, which is the dimension of power, where he explains the notion of dominant caste. Here he has indirectly covered the structural aspect of social change, however, its nitty gritty has not been clearly stated by him. Thus, he has been accused for neglecting the structural aspects of social change in India. There are other theories of social change which pertain to the cultural mobility within society. One is the analysis of social change given by Robert Redfield. He propounded the concept of “little” and “great” tradition. The main ideas in this approach towards the understanding of social change are civilisational and social organisation of traditions. According to Redfield each civilisation consists of Great and Little traditions in which there is a constant interaction between the two levels. The great tradition belongs to the elites in society or the reflective few and the little tradition belongs to the folk or the unlettered peasants. This theory is based on evolutionary view that civilisation or the structure of tradition, which encompasses both the cultural aspects as well as the structural aspects; develops in two stages: first, through orthogenetic or indigenous evolution, and second, through heterogenetic encounters or contacts with other cultures or civilisations. The social structure of these civilisations operates at two levels, first, that of folks or unlettered peasants, and second, that of the elite or the reflective few intellectual traditions. The cultural processes in the former comprise the little tradition and those in latter constitutes the great tradition.
In India, Milton Singer and McKim Marriott have studied social change using Redfield’s frame of analysis. Singer has used the same dichotomy of Little and Great tradition to study cultural change in India. Marriott, on the other hand, has characterised the relationship between the little and great traditions found in India using the concepts of parochialisation and universalisation. In all the above formulations of social change and mobility in Indian society, one finds certain lacunae. Like the concepts of sanskritisation and westernisation, the concepts of little tradition and great tradition too suffers from the culturological bias. They too neglect the structural aspects of social change and thereby have limited scope.
(b) Structural approach
The structural approach to the theories of social change is basically concerned with the analysis of the process of structural differentiations within the society which occur due tosocial and institutional reforms or alterations in society. Y. Singh says that “the units of observation in a structural study are not ideas, sentiments and values, but the order of roles and statuses which form the basis of social relationships and are schematised into groups and categories. A major principle which governs the form of ordering of social structure is asymmetry of power in relation to command over resources or values. Structural changes may primarily be located by identifying the emerging principles that they lay down new rules about the asymmetry and consequent differentiation and transformation in the institutionalised forms of social relationships and their ordering in society. For instance, the abolition of Zamindari and intermediary rights in land were intended to alter the pre-existing modes of power asymmetry in the Indian society; now the extent to which the asymmetry has been removed may be an instance of structural change in the social system, a transition from the feudal primordial to egalitarian liberal social order.
Another feature of the structural approach in the understanding of social change through the observation of differentiation of roles and statuses taking place in the social structure as a result of social pressures caused by population and industrial growth, emergence of new cities and urban centres and the rise in the economic and technical bases of the society. Singh(l985) says that the main areas of inquiry in the study of social change, taking into consideration structural differentiation, was to demonstrate the qualitative nature of new adoptions in terms of its structure and function. He says that by and large, in these studies the differentiation of roles and functions of family, the changing position of caste and tribe in the power structure and social hierarchy, emergence of new functions and castes in the villages and changes in leadership and elite formation have been covered.
(c) Dialectical approach
Besides the structural approach to the study of social change, we find the dialectical approach which is primarily concerned with the latent and manifest areas of social conflict in the society. It postulates change as a process of transformation through conflict which is treated as the basic process of social change. This approach is influenced by the Marxian notion of dialectical historical evolution of societies, based on the changes in the mode of production during different periods of time. Studies of social change based on Marxian perspective, i.e. dialectical model, cover many areas of Indian social life, such as, caste and social policy, stages of social evolution corresponding to different modes of production, nationalism, historical developments, social stratification and social institutions and emergence of new class structure.
(d) Cognitive Historical and Institutional approach
We find assimilation of both cultural and structural aspects in the cognitive historical and institutional approaches to social change as propounded by Louis Dumont and Gunar Myrdal. Dumont, in his approach, is basically interested in the analysis of the cognitive or ideational structural nature of the Indian social system. He is a structuralist, who conceives of Indian society not in terms of systems of relationships but as systems of ideational or value patterns or cognitive structures”. Dumont believes that essentially, change consists in the adoptive or transformative processes within the traditional Indian cognitive system. Thus, cultural change is the precursor for individuality and of the social change.
Gunar Myrdal, in his monumental work, “Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations” has analysed the problems of economic and social development. He focuses not only on the economic aspects but also on institutional aspects, political aspects and studied ideological trends as well. He believes that the social systems in the South Asian countries, especially India consist of a number of conditions that are causally interrelated. Among these conditions are: output and income, conditions of production, level of living, institutions and politics. The first three refers to economic factors while the next two refers to non-economic factors in the process of economic development. In most of these approaches to the study of social change, the primary focus has been on the basic themes of Indian cultural structure and not on the dynamics of social groups or structures. The structural approach on the other hand, limits the scope to the study of structures and neglects the cultural, civilisational aspects. Thus, a theoretical model which encompasses both the approaches and which does not have the ethnocentric bias of looking at Indian social reality from the Western eye is greatly required.
Means of social mobility
(a) Mobility through Warfare
M.N. Srinivas and Pauline Kolenda have referred to caste mobility through resort to warfare in Mughal period. Kolenda has said that until the British unification in the first half of the nineteenth century, the most effective way to rise in the caste system was by the acquisition of territory either through conquest or by peaceful occupancy of sparsely populated or empty land. K. M. Panikkar (the historian) has said that “since the fifth century B.C., every known royal family has come from a non-Kshatriya caste”. Kolenda has said that in ancient India, rulers were Kshatriyas. There were however, some rulers of peasant jati who after capturing territory had established a kingdom. The peasant conquerors af-ter becoming rulers made claims to being Kshatriyas. Thus, the peasant conquerors rose to Kshatriya rank.
M. N. Srinivas has given the example of Shivaji in Moghul period. Shivaji’s father was Jagirdar or vassal to the Muslim ruler of Bijapur (in present Maharashtra). Shivaji overthrew the Moghul rule and established his own empire from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. His caste, the Maratha, was considered to be of Sudra varna. So Shivaji went through a religious rite of transition into Kshatriya hood. Along with Shivaji’s rise in varna status, his caste, the Marathas, also came to have Kshatriya rank.
(b) Mobility through Serving Rulers
Jatis whose members served either Hindu or non-Hindu rulers attained higher varna rank. For example, the Pattidars of Gujarat, a peasant group of Sudra vama, supported the Maratha descendants of Shivaji, the Gaekwads, who ruled Central Gujarat. Gradually, claiming to be Kshatriyas, they established their own small regimes.
Another example of rise in caste through service to rulers is that of Kayasthas, a caste of scribes (who, before the invention of printing, were professional letterwriters, or who made copies of writing, or who kept records). The Kayasthas made themselves useful first to the Moghuls, then to the British rulers.
While they were a low caste in the twelfth century, by the nine-teenth century, the Kayasthas in Northern India had risen to the ‘twice-born’ category, although the Kayastha caste further to the East in Bengal remained Sudras. Burton Stein , a historian, has also said that in medieval South India, families rose through association with Muslim rulers. The unit of mobility was not the caste (jati) but the family or a group of families. Srinivas suggests that such familial upward mobility resulted in the formation of a new jati out of an established larger one.
(c) Assigning Higher Status (to Castes) by the Census Commissioners in the British Period
Recording jati identities in census enumerations from 1891 to 1931, many middle and low castes made efforts to get themselves registered as mem-bers of the twice-born varnas. These claims reached a peak in 1901 census when Herbert Risley, the Census Commissioner, tried to rank all castes. Hundreds of jatis tried to ensure a higher rank by claiming high varna ti-tles. For example, the Kurmi cultivators of Bengal wanted to be Kurmi Kshatriyas; the Teli (oilpressers) wanted to be called Vaishyas. Evidence was offered from myths and history for each claim. District committees were set up to evaluate the claims, some of which were sustained but most were rejected
(d) Caste Mobility through Social Processes of Sanskritisation and Westernisation
Caste system had become so rigid in Brahmanical, Muslim, and the Brit-ish periods that through several restrictions like hereditary membership, endogamy, denial of occupational mobility, and commensal and social re-strictions, etc. members enjoyed a fixed status for all times. However, from the third decade of the twentieth century onwards, caste system could not remain rigid because of the processes of industrialisation, ur-banisation, spread of education, enactment of some legislative measures, and social movements of several social reformers.
M.N. Srinivas explained status mobility in caste in 1952 through the process of sanskritisation and westernisation. He maintained that a low caste was able to rise in a gen-eration or two to a higher position in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism. It took over rituals, customs, rites and be-liefs of the Brahmins and gave up some of their own considered to be impure.
Initially, Srinivas talked of emulating the Brahmin style of life by the lower castes but later on he talked of emulation of life style of dominant castes of any high varna. Lynch has called this ‘elite emulation’. Barnett has referred to emulating the style of life of Brahmins and Kshatriyas as ‘kingly model’ of emulation. Thus, an upwardly mobile tried to improve its status through sanskritisation or ‘elite emulation’ or ‘kingly emulation’. However, M.N. Srinivas has claimed that untouchables are never able to cross the line of Sudra and move to ‘higher’ caste.
(e) Caste Mobility through Politicisation
Several castes have used politics in their attempt to better their condition or to achieve their goals. Use of politics, according to Eleanor Zelliot, covers securing governmental benefits and representation on legislative and political bodies. Some examples which may be given in this connec-tion are: Mahars of Maharashtra, Kshatriyas of Gujarat, Nadars of Tamil Nadu, and Reddys and Kammas of Andhra Pradesh.
The Mahars of Maharashtra, constituting about 10 per cent of the population of the state (out of the total 13 per cent scheduled caste popu-lation), initially operated under conditions of social degradation but ultimately used politics for ameliorating their social condition. Ambedkar organised them into a political force and formed a Scheduled Caste Fed-eration which was ultimately used as a political tool for achieving the goals of social equality and social mobility.
Mahars, who were regarded as untouchable, worked as watchmen, messengers, sweeping roads, carrying death notices to other villages and so forth. Temples, schools, and wells were all closed to them. Later on (from the 1860s onwards), they started working in factories, railways, docks, ammunition factories, etc. Even those who lived in villages discarded traditional low occupations. A good number joined the military too. The military service helped them not only to climb in the social hierarchy but also exposed them to western culture. In World War II, a Mahar regiment was also raised.
Some Mahars were converted to Christianity while some joined the Kabir and Ramadi panths (sects) which stressed equality. In 1936, under the leadership of Ambedkar, their temple-entry attempt turned into political movement, rejecting Hinduism altogether. In 1937, Ambedkar established Inde-pendent Labour Party which gave majority of tickets to Mahars. Since then, through the Republic Party as well as through Parliament and Vidhan Sabha elections of 1946, 1951 and 1956, the Mahars have established themselves as an important political force in Maharashtra politics.
Rajni Kothari and Rushikesh Maru have given examples of some middle and lower castes and economically depressed communities of cultivators in Gujarat who federated together into a com-mon organisation in the late 1940s and the 1950s for achieving political power. After winning elections against the Congress, they were ‘accepted’ into the Kshatriya fold. Thus, politics worked as a cementing force for them.
Robert Hardgrave Jr. examined the solidarity and co-hesion among Nadars in Tamil Nadu and its integrated political culture. The breakdown of economic dependence on other castes and the exten-sion of caste ties over a wide geographic area gave this caste (Nadars) a new solidarity, which uplifted them socially, economically and politi-cally. After improving their status economically, they claimed the Kshatriya status.
In 1921 census, all Nadars declared themselves as ‘Nadar Kshatriyas’. Today, the Nadars have become one of the most economi-cally and politically successful community in the south. All these examples show how lower castes used politics, achieved political power and caste solidarity, and ultimately high social position in society.
K.L. Sharma has pointed out three approaches to social mobility: structural-historical, Marxist, and culturological or indological. A.R. Kamat has used first approach in explaining caste mobility in Maharashtra by referring to the displacement of the old urban- dominated political leadership by a new set of leaders drawn from the ad-vanced rural elements, widespread political consciousness and democratisation of politics. The marxist approach has been used by Arvind Das and Pradhan H. Prasad in their analysis of class-caste situation of inter-caste conflicts in Bihar. Social mo-bility has also been explained in terms of decline of jajmani system, emergence of modern occupations (Sharma, 1974), decline of untouchability and the pollution-purity principle (Kolenda, 1986), and education, state policy of protective discrimination, and social movements.