Is caste disappearing in urban India? Illustrate your answer with examples.

Question

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Caste is not disappearing in urban India but changing form: city anonymity and new jobs erode ritual untouchability, while caste persists in marriage, housing, hiring and campuses. Thorat's Delhi NCR audit (2015) found landlords turning away Dalit tenants, and only about 5% of marriages were inter-caste (IHDS-II).

**Introduction**

Ambedkar hoped the city would free Dalits from the village, "a sink of localism". Urban India has dissolved many visible markers of caste, but caste is not disappearing: it is changing form from ritual hierarchy to identity and quiet exclusion.

**Where Urban Life Is Eroding Caste**

1. **Anonymity and commensality**: Metros, restaurants and hostels make purity and pollution rules unworkable, so open untouchability rarely survives in city streets.
2. **Occupational mobility**: Skill-based jobs in IT and services, and Dalit entrepreneurs in the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, show mobility beyond hereditary work.
3. **New middle class**: Reservation has built an urban Dalit middle class, and Srinivas noted caste weakening in its ritual aspect.

**How Caste Reinvents Itself in Cities**

SKETCH: iceberg | Caste in Urban India
visible: Public untouchability, ritual purity, hereditary jobs
hidden: Endogamy, housing segregation, hiring networks, campus bias

1. **Segregation and housing**: A Delhi NCR audit by Sukhadeo Thorat and colleagues (2015) found landlords turning away Dalit and Muslim tenants.
2. **Hiring and campuses**: Thorat and Attewell (2007) found Dalit names drew fewer interview calls, and the deaths of Rohith Vemula (2016) and Dr Payal Tadvi (2019) exposed campus bias.
3. **Endogamy and dirty work**: Only about 5% of marriages were inter-caste (IHDS-II, 2011-12), and sewer deaths still fall on Dalit workers.

**Way Forward**

1. **Law and mechanisation**: A civil anti-discrimination law should cover housing and hiring, and the NAMASTE scheme should move sewer cleaning to machines.
2. **Campus and data**: Equity cells under UGC rules must actually function, and Census 2027 caste data can help target policy.

**Conclusion**

Caste is not disappearing in urban India; it is retreating from public ritual into marriage, housing and networks. Ambedkar's hope will be fulfilled only when constitutional morality, not mere anonymity, governs city life.

Is caste disappearing in urban India? Illustrate your answer with examples.

Model answer

Practise this question

Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India23 questions

Ghissu