Has caste lost its relevance in understanding the multi-cultural Indian Society ? Elaborate your answer…

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Has caste lost its relevance in understanding the multi-cultural Indian Society ? Elaborate your answer with illustrations.

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Caste has not lost its relevance in understanding Indian society but has changed form, from a ritual hierarchy to competing political and social identities. Only about 5% of marriages were inter-caste in the India Human Development Survey (2011-12), showing endogamy persists.

**Introduction**

Urbanisation, education and Articles 15 and 17 were expected to dissolve caste. Yet the Bihar caste survey (2023) and caste enumeration planned for the Census due in 2027 show it back at the centre of public debate.

**Where Caste Has Lost Explanatory Power**

1. **Weakening ritual hierarchy**: Andre Beteille showed caste receding from the economy and education, and shared offices, metros and restaurants have eroded pollution rules in urban life.
2. **Mobility and other identities**: Service-sector jobs reward skill over birth, and Dalit entrepreneurs organised in the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry break the old jati-work link. Language, region, class and gender often explain more than caste, as the Assam movement and the Telangana struggle showed.

**Why Caste Still Explains Indian Society**

SKETCH: comparison | How caste has changed form
a: Traditional caste
b: Contemporary caste
- Ritual purity :: Political identity
- Hereditary occupation :: Reservation claims
- Village jajmani ties :: Urban caste networks
- Fixed hierarchy :: Competing equals
- Endogamy :: Endogamy persists

1. **Marriage**: About 5% of marriages were inter-caste in IHDS (2011-12), and honour killings such as Udumalpet (2016) punish defiance.
2. **Politics and policy**: Srinivas's dominant caste is visible in the Maratha and Jat quota agitations, and Davinder Singh (2024) allowed sub-classification of Scheduled Castes.
3. **Across religions and borders**: Pasmanda Muslims and Dalit Christians carry caste into other faiths, campus deaths such as Rohith Vemula (2016) show it in universities, and Seattle's 2023 ban on caste discrimination shows it travelling with the diaspora.

**Conclusion**

Caste has not lost its relevance but changed form, from ritual hierarchy to competing identities, as Dipankar Gupta argues. Read alongside class, gender and region, it still explains much of India, and Ambedkar's fraternity remains the goal.

Has caste lost its relevance in understanding the multi-cultural Indian Society ? Elaborate your answer with illustrations.

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