DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY,

LUCKNOW

SOCIOLOGY
FINAL DRAFT
ON
CASTE IN THE VEINS OF SOCIETY

SUBMITTED TO :

Dr. SANJAY SINGH

ASSOCIATE PROF. (SOCIOLOGY)

SUBMITTED BY:

SUSHANT TOMAR
ROLL NO. 140
B.A.L.L.B (HONS.)
SEMESTER III

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The success and final outcome of this project required a lot of guidance
and assistance from many people and I am extremely fortunate to have
got this all along the completion of my project work. Whatever I have done
is only due to such guidance and assistance and I would not forget to
thank them.
I respect and thank Dr. Sanjay Singh, for giving me an opportunity to
do the project work on this project and providing us all support and
guidance which made me complete the project on time. I am extremely
grateful to her for providing such a nice support and guidance.

INTRODUCTION
Is wealth a good thing or a bad thing? Are people born equal or of different status? What
forms do the social institutions of justice take? Do those who enjoy relative prosperity have a
duty to attend to the welfare of the least well-off? The leaders of independent India decided
that India will be democratic, socialist and secular country. According to this policy there is a
separation between religion and state. Practicing untouchability or discriminating a person
based on his caste is legally forbidden. Along with this law the government allows positive
discrimination of the depressed classes of India.
The Indians have also become more flexible in their caste system customs. In general the
urban people in India are less strict about the caste system than the rural. In cities one can see
different caste people mingling with each other, while in some rural areas there is still
discrimination based on castes and sometimes also on untouchability. Sometimes in villages
or in the cities there are violent clashes which, are connected to caste tensions. Sometimes the
high castes strike the lower castes who dare to uplift their status.

The Caste system in India

Castes represent the socio-economic background of the character. This represents the family
that they were born into, their upbringing and their lifestyle prior to becoming an adventurer.
Castes offer bonuses to wealth, social affluency, and languages. The caste system in India is a
social system where people are ranked into groups based on heredity within rigid systems of
social stratification. The caste is a group whose members are restricted in their choice of
occupation and degree of social participation. Marriage outside the caste is prohibited. Social
status is determined by the caste of one's birth.

CASTE AND EDUCATION PERFORMANCE:

Uttar Pradesh, where only 56 percent of the population is literate has long been considered a
puzzling case of lagging development. The author focuses their research on cultural and
institutional influences on the responses of villagers to incentives. Two experiments were
conducted that required Grade Six and Seven boys to solve as many mazes as they could out
of a given packet, with monetary incentives. Boys were recruited from the lowest caste,
Chamar, historically 'untouchables' in Hindu society, and the three highest castes, Thakur,
Brahmin and Vaishya. 321 high-caste and 321 low-caste boys from junior high school
participated in the first experiment. When caste was not publicly announced, there were no
caste differences in performance. However, when caste was publicly announced, the number
of mazes solved by low caste boys dropped by a dramatic 25%. When caste was announced
but a random draw of a name determined who in a session of six would be paid for the mazes
he solved, the caste gap in performance disappeared.
Effect of announcing caste on proportion of low caste in each learning decile, the way the
experiment was designed allowed the researchers to exclude Socio-economic differences
between low and high caste boys as explanations of the caste gap in performance. Their
results therefore suggest that when caste identity is salient, low-caste subjects either expect
that others will judge them prejudicially, or have greater anxiety or lower self-confidence, or
all three of these. The experiment with mazes was conducted in January and March 2003. The
weather was extremely cold in January, classrooms were unheated, and many children did not
have warm clothing. Yet the children's performance in the experiment in these two months
was similar. This suggests the remarkable resilience of the children. Aware of the horrifying
truth and despite the heavy odds still strive to put an end to their suffering.

Belief System(Caste) shape responses to opportunities:

"We carry around a portfolio of social identities to which we refer, depending on the context,
and making one or another of our social identities salient changes our behavior," says Hoff,
with particular reference to the ideologies representing certain social groups as intrinsically
inferior.

The authors see the value of the experiment as suggesting a more general dynamic underlying
the perpetuation of inequality in many societies than has been broadly recognized in the
economics literature. When social identity is salient, social groups will differ in the way they
view and respond to economic opportunity. These differences in behavior are a legacy of the
historical processes that categorized people and shaped their beliefs and expectations.
"Long after the legal barriers to economic and social advancement by oppressed groups have
been abolished--or the conditions that gave rise to those barriers gave changed--the
expectations that historical conditions created may remain and may give rise to behaviors that
reproduce the effects of those historical barriers." To the extent that the findings can be
generalized to economic performance in north India, where caste distinctions remain marked,
the authors say that their findings suggest that the aggregate economic effect on society of
expectations associated with caste are unambiguously negative.

CASTE AND WOMEN:

In Ancient India (3200-2500 B.C.), the caste system was non-existent since even the most
learned men were good householders and had varied occupations. A Brahman, Kshatriya, or
Vaishya Man can sexually exploit any shudra woman. (Manusmitri IX.25)
Even the killing of a dalit woman is explicitly justified as a minor offence for the Brahmins:
equal to the killing of an animal (Manusmitri). If the killing of an untouchable was justified
as a minor offence, you can imagine the treatment they received throughout their lives.
Devadasi system was the result of a conspiracy between the feudal class and the priests
(Brahmins), who with their ideological and religious hold over the peasants and craftsmen
devised a practice, which acquired.

CASTE IN SOCIETY AND NOT IN RELIGION:

Though our castes and our institutions are apparently linked with our religion, they are not so.
These institutions have been necessary to protect us as a nation, and when this necessity for
self-preservation will no more exist, they will die a natural death. In religion there is no caste.

A man from the highest caste and a man from the lowest may become a monk in India and
the two castes become equal. The caste system is opposed to the religion of Vedanta.
Caste is a social custom, and all our great preachers have tried to break it down. From
Buddhism downwards, every sect has preached against caste, and every time it has only
riveted the chains. Beginning from Buddha to Rammohan Ray, everyone made the mistake of
holding caste to be a religious institution and tried to pull down religion and caste altogether,
and failed.
In spite of all the ravings of the priests, caste is simply a crystallized social institution, which
after doing its service is now filling the atmosphere of India with its stench, and it can only be
removed by giving back to people their lost social individuality. Caste is simply the
outgrowth of the political institutions of India; it is a hereditary trade guild. Trade
competition with Europe has broken caste more than any teaching. Caste is a very good thing.
Caste is the plan we want to follow. What caste really is, not one in a million understands.
There is no country in the world without caste. Caste is based throughout on that principle.
The plan in India is to make everybody Brahmana, the Brahmana being the ideal of humanity.
If you read the history of India you will find that attempts have always been made to raise the
lower classes. Many are the classes that have been raised. Many more will follow till the
whole will become Brahmana. That is the plan.
Our ideal is the Brahmana of spiritual culture and renunciation. By the Brahmana ideal what
do I mean? I mean the ideal Brahmana-ness in which worldliness is altogether absent and true
wisdom is abundantly present. That is the ideal of the Hindu race. Have you not heard how it
is declared he, the Brahmana, is not amenable to law, that he has no law, that he is not
governed by kings, and that his body cannot be hurt? That is perfectly true. Do not
understand it in the light thrown upon it by interested and ignorant fools, but understand it in
the light of the true and original Vedantic conception.. If the Brahmana is he who has killed
all selfishness and who lives to acquire and propagate wisdom and the power of love - if a
country is altogether inhabited by such Brahmanas, by men and women who are spiritual and
moral and good, is it strange to think of that country as being above and beyond all law?

SOLUTION OF THE CASTE PROBLEM:

Solution of the caste question is not degrading those who are already high up, is not running
amuck through food and drink, is not jumping out of our own limits in order to have more
enjoyment, but it comes by every one of us fulfilling the dictates of our Vedantic religion, by
our attaining spirituality and by our becoming ideal Brahmana. There is a law laid on each
one of you in this land by your ancestors, whether you are Aryans, or non-Aryans, rishis or
Brahmanas or the very lowest outcaste. The command is the same to you all, that you must
make progress without stopping, and that from the highest man to the lowest pariah, every
one in this country has to try and become the ideal Brahmana. This Vedantic idea is
applicable not only here but over the whole world.
The Brahmana-hood is the ideal of humanity in India as wonderfully put forward by
Shankaracharya at the beginning of his commentary on the Gita, where he speaks about the
reason for Krishna's coming as a preacher for the preservation of Brahmana- hood, of
Brahmana-ness. That was the great end. This Brahmana, the man of God, he who has known
Brahman, the ideal man, the perfect man, must remain, he must not go. And with all the
defects of the caste now, we know that we must all be ready to give to the Brahmanas this
credit, that from them have come more men with real Brahmana-ness in them than from all
the other castes. We must be bold enough, must be brave enough to speak their defects, but at
the same time we must give credit that is due to them.

Bibliography:

Rural Sociology - S.L. Doshi P.C. Jain

www.indianchild.com/caste_system_in_india.htm
www.erces.com/journal/articles/archives/volume3/v02/v03.htm
econ.worldbank.org/.../
news.boloji.com/200706/06755.htm
www.hinduism.co.