There is no trace of caste system losing its grip. The change is in the attitudes of different castes to rise above and gain social prestige. Changes in the caste scheme are continuous and regular but the caste system remains intact for all practical purposes. The change is not in the direction of dissolving the caste system. Some sort of class consciousness has crept into different castes. Electrified by the in group feeling, they want to hold the caste system all the more tenaciously. Nowadays, a caste tries to organize itself for social, economic, and political purposes. Elections are being fought on caste basis. There are caste organizations like All India Kshatriya Mahasabha, All India Mathur Sangh, All India Bhargava Organization, etc. The progressive Hindus take three distinct stands about the future of the caste system:
- There are others who think that the caste system has degenerated and efforts should be made to reinstate the traditional four orders. The greatest exponent of this thought was Mahatma Gandhi (Young India).
- There are also people who want to continue the caste system but to reinstate it under totally different conditions. These people want to amalgamate various sub-castes having cultured unity and economic similarity. Gradually, the castes which will approximately be on a footing of equality will consolidate and ultimately a casteless society will be established. These people want the process to be slow because it would afford sufficient time for education and the formation of informed opinion with the requisite mental adjustment of those castes/classes which are not yet prepared for a wholesale change in their age-old customs ( Ghurye).
- There are people who consider caste as something evil and want that it should be abolished.
Scholars like A.J. Toynbee, T.H. Marshall, P. Kodanda Rao, etc. have evaluated all these three schools of thought.
Discussing first school led by Gandhi, they contend that it is impracticable because the only basis of assigning a particular order (out of four orders) to the persons is occupation they follow. In the present society, the occupations are so specialized and varied and the people of the same family are engaged in so many different occupations that it would be impossible to assign them a membership of one or the other order. Secondly, even if this settlement (of including castes in one or the other of the first three orders) was possible, what about the untouchable castes? Gandhiji being against untouchability naturally proposed some respectable status for these castes. But where are they to be provided for? In whatever order they may be included, there is bound to be tremendous protest from that order. Thirdly, assuming that the classification of castes in four orders would be possible, are we going to permit or prohibit marriages between these four orders? Are we going to continue restrictions in the matter of food, etc? Both would create their own problems. It may, therefore, be concluded that a return to the four-fold division of society is impractical and even if accomplished, it would serve no useful purpose.
Taking the second view that castes should be slowly abolished by consolidation of the subcastes into larger castes, scholars have said that to propose this point is to miss the real problem. This method, they claim, was tried in Bombay for a number of decades but the results were disastrous. The sub-castes that joined together to create a big group retained their internal feelings of exclusiveness with undiminishing vigour. The new group took up rather a militant attitude against other castes, specially those which were popularly regarded as immediately higher or lower than the caste which it represented. Thus, scholars claimed that the spirit of caste patriotism or casteism is created and if we followed the second viewpoint, diminishing of casteism would be very difficult and it would create an unhealthy atmosphere for the full growth of national consciousness.
Some scholars have supported the third view that the caste system should be immediately abolished. They are of the opinion that we have to fight against and totally uproot casteism. Ghurye was one scholar who favoured this viewpoint. But he had expressed this opinion in about 1931. Since then more than six decades years have passed and lot of changes have taken place in Indian society, including independence of the country and the promalgamation of many laws against the caste system. For example, the Constitution of India (implemented from January 26,1950) says that:
- the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on the ground of caste (equal opportunity to all castes),
- no citizen shall, on the ground of caste, be subject to restriction regarding access to or use of shops, restaurants and public wells and tanks (removal of civil disabilities), and
- the practice of untouchability is forbidden. Similarly, there are no restrictions on the following of any occupation.
- Feelings of equality, liberty and fraternity have been promoted which have cut the very roots of caste.
- A special officer (Commissioner) was appointed in 1951 for looking after the scheduled castes and the back-ward classes.
- No more individual’s caste is recorded in census.
In spite of these changes in the last several decades, and particularly in the last two decades, casteism and the evils of caste have not been rooted out. Asirvatham (A New Social Order, 1957) was of the opinion that “whatever uses caste might have had in the past, it is a hinderance to progress today and therefore we should oppose it tooth and nail”. D.N. Majumdar had also maintained in 1950s and 1960s that just as the broken or the poisoned finger is amputated and not the whole hand, similarly untouchability, exploitation of one caste by another, and such other harmful concomitants of the caste system should be done away with and not the whole system.
It is true that the caste system is a stumbling block in attaining the material and spiritual prosperity or in the social and national development. So long this cankerous system holds sway, we cannot achieve our social ideals. Hence, sooner its death-knell is sounded, the higher our prospects of progress. Yet it is a fact that it is not easy to abolish this system. We can only adopt some remedies to mitigate its evils.
The question arises, how to uproot or weaken caste? Some measures suggested in this regard are:
- 1. Inter-caste marriages need to be encouraged. For this, what is required is freedom to individuals in mate-selection, and proper opportunities to young people to come in contact with opposite sex, for example, co-education and co-work.
- 2. Well-supervized and guided clubs and recreation centres in big towns and cities for the youth of both sexes along side of hostels for students should be established. In these centres, they will forget such extraneous considerations as caste and transcend caste bias in social interaction and social bonds.
- 3. The practice of recording caste and sub-caste as surname has antisocial potentialities and should be abolished. This will break the vitality of caste feeling.
- 4. Caste should not be exploited for political purposes (say for seeking votes or assigning political positions, etc.) Unholy alliance of caste and politics jeopardizes not only the (communal) peace but even the security of the country.
- 5. Brahmins cannot be permitted to act as monopolist of priestly services. As such, a central organization with provincial branches may be started to impart training in priesthood. Iyer Commission in 1950s on Religious Endowment also recommended the institution of such a centre.
Narmadeshwar Prasad in his study of three areas—industrial, non-industrial and rural—was given a few remedies by his respondents (1,225) to weaken the caste system. These were: education and proper opportunity to all (39.1%), inter-caste marriage (35.3%), removal of untouchability (12.2%), and treating people on the basis of equality (13.4%). But will these measures really help in abolishing or even weakening the caste system? Perhaps not. Even the Supreme Court on giving its verdict on the implementation of Mandal Commission’s report in November 1992 had virtually implied that caste alone would be the basis of reservation.
What are the properties and functions of caste which account for its continuance in the contemporary society? Two functions appear to be crucial today:
- (i) it provides opportunity for power, and
- (ii) it makes social mobility feasible (if we accept Srinivas’s view of the possibility of sanskritization of a caste). Mobility—occupational, economic and social—in modern societies depends on education, training, material resources, nepotic networks available, personal influence, social refinement, as well as caste rank.
According to Harold Gould (1988: 162-164) castes functioning as adaptive structures in a modernizing Indian society (which make their future stable and secure) can be examined at three levels—political, economic and social.
At the political level, both in cities and villages, caste, communalism and political factionalism are inextricably interwoven. Parliamentary democracy, linked to the secret ballot, has meant that the manipulation of numbers and the resources and favours which successful election to office confers, now occupies an important place. Since democratic politics is a competition among interest groups for the positions and spoils of power, it seems but natural that in India the formation of the interest groups would reflect the deepest lines of cleavage and solidarity in the society—those dividing castes and ethnic communities. Casteism affects political issues and political decisions. Caste appeals are followed by religious appeals. This is vindicated by both Hindu and Muslim political parties functioning in India. No wonder, caste will continue to be exploited at all political levels.
At the economic level though it is true that role recruitment, reward distribution, and economic mobility of workers and wage earners are determined on the basis of their performance qualities, and people of different castes take to modern occupations, but it is equally true that in villages particularly, their position depends on pervasive caste strictures and on inter-caste relations. In India today, the economic problem for individuals is scarcity—of wealth, jobs and opportunities—to participate in the new economic system that is slowly being built and is obviously the prime source of wealth and power. Thus, the aspects of caste that are most useful to the potential striver for position and power in the modern occupational order are nepotism and casteism.
At the social level, castes continue to be important in terms of determining the style of living as well as the rank positions of groups (castes) in which marriages are to be settled. Though the old ritual and occupational functions of castes are rapidly disappearing, yet caste endogamy is still preserved and the idea of the structure’s sanctity has been retained and adapted to the needs of modern social indexing. It is also to be noted that the elites of India are overwhelmingly of high caste origins whereas the lower and menial classes display a precisely opposite juxtaposition of castes. It may thus be concluded that the caste system will continue to be a reality in the years and decades to come.