INDIAN SOCIOLOGY CIA 2

is it difficult to find out what your  caste  is? Why/why not? Are your parents/relatives
comfortable talking about their  caste? How does examining your own  caste  make
you feel? What is the general data available about your  caste, and does it match
what you have found out personally?" 
When I read this topic for the assignment I already had my answer in my head that I don’t
have a caste . Growing up, caste as a topic had been touched in subjects like history and I
never gave it much thought nor did I think about what my caste could be. I am a protestant
Christian and in our faith we do not have the concept of caste and neither is it given
importance to around me atleast. I went on google to search sometimes but was still left with
nothing much to exactly know what my caste could be . So yes finding my caste for sure was
a task and took me really really long. I talked to my parents about this and asked if they knew
what our caste was but again even their response was that we don’t have one, but said that I
should ask my grandparents as they might know . And from my grandparents I did get my
answer, my ancestors were in trade business, they didn’t really know exactly what trade they
did but our ancestors had been traders. All the years whenever it was asked in forms, about
what caste I am of, I always put none as my answer as I didn’t know I had one . Definitely
knowing my caste has intrigued me to want to know more about my ancestors and their life
and all but caste to me is not something that has a lot of importance in my life . It doesn’t
change the way I will treat people but definitely is a knowledge I’ll have . I went over online
to read more about what caste did people of trading business belong to and got to know that
the answer is pretty much ‘Vaishya’ .
In school through the subject of history, my knowledge about the caste system and the
Vaishya caste was pretty basic, that it was the third caste above the Shudra caste and that
basically the ones who belonged to the Vaishya caste were kind of the common people .
When I got to know that our caste was Vaishya too, I wanted to know more about Vaishya
caste and its people . So I went on to read about Vaishya caste through articles and books,
“The Indian social structure is marked by the caste system and, extended family system.
Caste is defined by Weber as "a purely social and possibly occupational association.". In
Indian society, it is an ancient historical legacy, linked closely with Hinduism that remains
dominant. Indeed, the caste system is one of India's most discussed features. It is believed "to
have been first enunciated by ancient law-giver Manu some time in Vedic period (1500 BC-
1000 BC)." It consists of four varnas or social groups, namely, the Brahmin, Kshatriya,
Vaishya, and Shudra. The hierarchy is clearly established with Brahmins at the top, followed
by Kshatriyas and Vaishyas in descending order, and Shudras at the lowest place in the
social order. In this 'varna model', the first three groups are regarded as "twice-born" or
dwija .The castes and subcastes relate to each other through a permanent hierarchical
structure, with each caste having its own name, traditional occupation, rank, and distinctive
subculture .”
Cheema, I. K. (2011)
The Vaishyas were assigned traditional roles like being a part of cattle rearing, agriculture
and later on with time they became landowners, money lenders and traders, these roles were
assigned to them by the Hindu texts, with this it was their responsibility to serve the upper
caste people and provide sustenance to them because they were of lower caste but with time
the Vaishyas did take up different roles than the traditional ones.
Honestly when I got to know my caste, it did feel like as if I got to know about a part of me
that I never knew existed. I knew that my ancestors were converted Christians and I always
did think about what I feel with regard to how Vaishyas were back then known as the
common people too and they were neither of high caste but also not of low caste like Shudra,
I feel like somewhere my family today too is of somewhere same level but now it is more of
the talk about class and not caste. We consider ourselves middle class people and I think that
knowing that we were Vaishyas somewhere makes me feel not very surprised about it . One
thing I did wondered about was that did caste play a very important role in the life of my
ancestors and did they face any oppression because of their caste or did they hold their caste
high and look down on lower caste people.
Due to the caste system in our country, the citizens of our country suffered from and still
suffer from social discrimination. As Srinivas opines that caste in our country is so accepted
by all even the ones who condemn it, that it still continues to be a part of social action. Even
if caste in today’s world especially in cities is losing its importance, it still is very much a
reality we still live in. especially people who supposedly belong to the lower caste and
scheduled caste, still continue to be looked down upon and mistreated by the people of the
higher caste. Because of the structure that gets imposed by the caste, lower caste communities
have to face humiliation, mistreatment.
When I see the mistreatment the lower caste people go through on news or like
documentaries how in villages people from the higher caste restrict their child from playing
with someone from the lower caste and telling them not to let the person touch you as then
that would make them “impure”, it breaks my heart to see that and I cannot even imagine
how those people must be feeling and how emotionally wrecking it is and the fact that
children are told this and made to practice it is just so sad, this just always makes me hope
that my ancestors didn’t look down on people from lower caste and treat them differently just
because of their ‘caste’ .
Around me though, I have seen people (not from my family) for whom caste is really
important especially in terms of marriage, it is looked down upon in their community if a
person marries a lower caste person and that the lower caste individual have words thrown at
them for having married an upper caste person. When this had happened I remember asking
my mother why was caste so important and why was caste which was a concept probably
established by some person years ago still prevalent and causing rifts between people to
which even my mother did not have an answer. But then looking at all this and the
discrimination that lower caste go through it gave me relief in a way to that at least my past
family members were not oppressed and treated differently but definitely hoping that they did
not do the same to someone else. My family today, with few of my grandparents in this world
right now, all of them seemed to be comfortable talking on this topic and also mentioning that
even to them caste was not an important thing growing, they had friends of lower class but to
them what mattered was what type of person that individual was and not what caste or class
that person belonged too. For marriages in our family, caste is not even thought of as a factor
to oppose a wedding, even religion per se is not a factor.
While I was doing my research on my caste I went on to search about the link between
Marathi Christians and caste. So the information that I got about Marathi Christians was that
we are an ethno-religious community in Maharashtra and that we were evangelised
somewhere in the 18th and the 19th century during the East India company and afterwards
during British raj and that many of the people who were converted were vaishyas and
shudras. This conversion to protestanism was the result of Christian missions such as Church
Mission Society, Church of England’s United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and
American Marathi Mission. I believe that we used to practice Hinduism before getting
converted to Christianity and that the cultural influences and traditions somewhere still
remain, like the Hindu custom of wearing mangalsutra and green bangles after marriage and
wearing sarees, haldi ceremony, mehendi ceremony are still prevalent in our traditions, even
how our surname wasn’t changed to an English surname but still remained a Marathi surname
that is ‘Chavan’ .
Doing this assignment felt like the game connect the dots, I just had two three ideas about
what my caste was to like going and researching about the caste in detail and seeing how the
dots connected, really was something that I enjoyed doing. While researching about my caste
it also led me to go search about how conversions happened and how Protestantism was
brought over here. I definitely feel that now whenever I fill forms for anything that caste
section would not feel like a blank idea, I still would choose to put a ‘-‘ instead of my caste as
one is that I am sure that there is more to my caste than what I searched for and found and
that things might have been maybe different with my ancestors, but at least it does help me
for my own satisfaction too to know what my caste maybe is.
Kureel, P. (2021). Indian Media and Caste: of Politics, Portrayals and Beyond. CASTE: A
Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 2(1), 97–108. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48643387

Porter, J. H. (1895). Caste in India. American Anthropologist, 8(1), 23–30.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/658439

Menon, N. (2019). MARXISM, FEMINISM AND CASTE IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA.

In V. Satgar (Ed.), Racism After Apartheid: Challenges for Marxism and Anti-Racism (pp.
137–156). Wits University Press. https://doi.org/10.18772/22019033061.11

Cheema, I. K. (2011). Sociocultural Stratification of India. Policy Perspectives, 8(1), 49–63.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/42909266
Roy, I. (2021). A Critique of Sanskritization from Dalit/Caste-Subaltern Perspective. CASTE:
A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 2(2), 315–326. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48645684