Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Land, Development and Politics in West Bengal
- 3 Changing Landscape of Two Villages in West Bengal
- 4 Seeing the State and Governance in the Grassroots
- 5 Party and Politics at the Margin
- 6 A Narrative of Peasant Resistance: Land, Party and the State
- 7 Caste and Power in Rural context
- 8 Women and Caste: In Struggle and in Governance
- 9 Conclusion: A New Kind of Peasant Mobilization?
- Glossary
- References
- Index
7 - Caste and Power in Rural context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Land, Development and Politics in West Bengal
- 3 Changing Landscape of Two Villages in West Bengal
- 4 Seeing the State and Governance in the Grassroots
- 5 Party and Politics at the Margin
- 6 A Narrative of Peasant Resistance: Land, Party and the State
- 7 Caste and Power in Rural context
- 8 Women and Caste: In Struggle and in Governance
- 9 Conclusion: A New Kind of Peasant Mobilization?
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
Of late, a number of scholars have attempted to argue that caste as a system is dying very fast and individual castes are flourishing (for example, Gupta, 2005b; Mayer, 1996; Searle–Chatterjee and Sharma, 1994; Srinivas, 2003). Their argument that ‘vertical social system’ defined by hierarchical relationships is decaying and castes are becoming like ‘horizontally disconnected ethnic groups’ draws on mainly two ongoing processes in contemporary India. One of these seems to be the breakdown of the closed village economy and decaying of caste-based division of labour. And the other process, according to them, is the significant spread of democratic politics in post-colonial India.
The present ethnographic research on Kalipur and Kadampur reveals clearly that ‘the localized traditional system of production of food grains and other necessities based on caste-wise division of labour’ (Srinivas, 2003: 455) has changed a lot in recent times. The hierarchy based on ritual purity and pollution that was an essential characteristic of the caste system has also undergone profound changes under the impact of modernization and other socio-economic factors. But does it mean that caste as a system has collapsed? How far do the people from subordinate caste groups in rural areas emerge as leaders in the positions of power? These questions seem to be important when the scholars argue that in India, ‘social and economic conditions have connived to limit the capacity of subordinate groups to effectively exercise their rights’ and ‘with ritualised exclusions and deeply embedded hierarchical relations, the caste system had reinforced political marginalization and socio-economic inequalities…’ (Jha and Pushpendra, 2012: 25).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rural Politics in IndiaPolitical Stratification and Governance in West Bengal, pp. 193 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013