SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

• The caste system in India is the ethnographic
example of caste.
• It has origins in ancient India, and was
transformed by various ruling elites in
medieval, early-modern, and modern India,
especially the Mughal Empire and the British
Raj
• It is today the basis of educational and job
reservations .
• The caste system divides Hindus into four
main categories - Brahmins, Kshatriyas,
Vaishyas and the Shudras. ...
• The main castes were further divided into
about 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes,
each based on their specific occupation.
Outside of this Hindu caste system were the
achhoots - the Dalits or the untouchables.
 Main features
• It is determined by birth ‘born into’. One can
never change one’s caste, or choose into to join
it.
• Members in a caste involves strict rules about
marriage. it is endogamous.
• Rules are followed about food and food sharing.
• Every caste has a specified place in the hierarchy
of all castes. The hierarchical position of many
castes may vary from region to region, there is
always a hierarchy.
• Caste has sub divisions within it. Every caste has a
sub castes and sometimes sub caste may also
have sub castes. This is called as segmental
organization.
• castes were traditionally linked to occupations.
• A person born into a caste could only practice the
occupation associated with that caste not to do
anything else. it is done hierarchical wise.
• These features are the prescribed rules found
in ancient scriptural texts. They were not
always practiced.
• Most of the prescriptions involved
prohibitions or restrictions of various sorts.
• caste was so right and impossible for a person
to ever change their life circumstances.
 Jyotirao Govindarao Phule
• He was totally against the injustice of the
caste system and the followings of purity and
pollution.
• In 1873 he founded the Sattyashodhak Samaj
which was devoted to securing human rights
and social justice for low caste people.
• Once caste became rigidly based on birth, it
was impossible for a person to ever change
their life circumstances.
• Whether they deserved it or not, an upper
caste person would always have high status,
while a lower caste person would always be of
low status.
 Purity and Pollution
• A society which has seen stratification done
on each and every level has also seen the
notion of purity and pollution by distance
respective of their castes. The ideation
of purity and pollution is the major aspect in
understanding the hierarchy process of the
caste system
• A Dalit was not allowed to use
the public streets as his shadow
over some upper caste human
being is considered as an impure
touch. Also, an upper caste
person never had the food made
by a lower caste claiming it to be
a threat to their purity.
• Another example in which marriages
are always said to be called as a
social institution which clearly means
people can have their partner of
their own choice, but the concept of
purity and pollution restricted them
to choose anybody out of their caste.
• Each caste has its own place in the system
which cannot be taken by any other caste.
• Caste is also linked with occupation, the
system functions as the social division of
labour, except that, in principle, it allows no
mobility.
• Along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, she
played an important role in improving
women's rights in India during British rule.
• Phule and her husband founded the first
Indian run girls' school in Pune, in 1848.
• She worked to abolish the discrimination and
unfair treatment of people based on caste and
gender.
• She is regarded as an important figure of the
social reform movement in Maharashtra.
• She died while serving plague patients.
 Colonialism and Caste
• Ancient past – 1800 – 1947
• Post colonial period – six decades from 1947
to the present day.
• The present form of caste as a social
institution has been shaped very strongly by
both the colonial period as well as the rapid
changes after independence.
• The most basic division of the Indian society is
of Aryans and Dravidians. North Indians are
Aryans and south Indians are Dravidians.
• Nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28%
are Dravidians.
• The north Indians are the descendants of
Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians.
5 south Indian states speaks Aryan language
and the rest of north India speaks Dravidian
language.
• General script is different form each other..
 Ancient caste system
• Major changes were taken place during colonial
period.
• The British administrators began by trying to
understand the complexities of caste in an effort
to learn how to govern the country efficiently.
• Some of these efforts took the shape of very
methodical and intensive surveys and reports on
the ‘customs and manners’ of various tribes and
castes all over the country.
• manners, the prevailing customs, ways of
living, and habits of a people, class, period,
etc.;
• mores: The novels of Jane Austen are
concerned with the manners of her time.
ways of behaving with reference to polite
standards; social comportment: That child has
good manners.
• The First census taken by British in India was
in the 1860s. The census became a regular ten
yearly exercise conducted by the British from
1881 onwards.
• The 1901 census under the head of Herbert
Risely was particularly important as it sought
to collect information on the social hierarchy
of caste, in particular regions, caste in the rank
order.
• Because of this 100s of petitions
were addressed to the census
commissioner by representatives of
different casers claiming a higher
position in the social scale and
offering historical and scriptural
evidence for their claims.
• Land Revenue Systems in British India -
Zamindari, Ryotwari and Mahalwari ... System
was introduced by Cornwallis in 1793 through
Permanent Settlement Act.
• It gave legal recognition to the customary
(caste based) rights of the upper castes.
• These castes now became land owners in the
modern sense rather than feudal classes with
claims on the produce of the land.
• Towards the end of the colonial period, the
administration also took an interest in the
welfare of downtrodden castes, refered to as
the ‘depressed classes’ at that time.
• It was as part of these efforts that the
government of India Act of 1935 was passed
which gave legal recognition to the lists or
‘schedules’ of castes and tribes marked out for
special treatment by the state.
• The Scheduled Castes (SCs)
and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially
designated groups of historically
disadvantaged people in India. The terms are
recognized in the Constitution of India and the
groups are designated in one or other of the
categories.
• Castes at the bottom of the hierarchy that
suffered severe discrimination, including all
the so called ‘untouchable’ castes were
included among the Scheduled Castes.
• Colonialism brought about major changes in
the institution of caste.
 Periyar E.V. Ramasami Naickar
• Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy Naicker commonly
known as Periyar was a social reformer.
• He is known as the 'Father of modern Tamilnadu'.
He has done exemplary works against
Brahminical dominance, caste prevalence and
women oppression in Tamilnadu. E.V. Ramasamy
joined the Indian National Congress in 1919, but
resigned in 1925 when he felt that the party was
only serving the interests of Brahmins.
 Caste in the Present
• Caste considerations had inevitably played a
role in the mass mobilizations of the
nationalist movement.
 Social reformers who worked for the
upliftment of Depressed classes
• Jyotiba Phule
• Ambedkar
• Ayyankali, Sri Narayana Guru and Periyar in
the south
• Gandhiji and Ambedkar began organising
protests against untouchability from the 1920s
onwards.
• A number of specific provisions have also
been incorporated in the Constitution,
safeguarding specifically the social economic,
educational and political rights of the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and
for safe guarding various socio-economic
interests give that remained backward,
exploited, under developed
• Protective arrangements:
• The Untouchability Practices Act, 1955
• Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989
• The Employment of Manual Scavengers and
Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act,
1993, etc.
• Allotment of jobs and access to higher
education
• Affirmative action is popularly known as
reservation.
• Development: Provide resources and benefits
to bridge the socioeconomic gap between the
SCs and STs and other communities.
• Indian industries started recruiting SC and ST.
like textile mills of Mumbai and the jute mills
of Kolkata.
• Prejudice against the untouchables remained
quite strong and was not absent from the city,
though not as extreme as it could be in the
village.
 Marriage
• The practice of marrying within the caste ,
remained largely unaffected by modernisation
and change.
• Even today, most marriages take place within
caste boundaries, although there are more
intercaste marriages.
• but marriage between an upper caste and
backward or scheduled caste person remain
rare even today.
 Politics
• Caste plays a very important role in elections
and voting. Political parties select their
candidates on the basis of caste composition
in the constituency.
• The voting in elections and mobilization
of political support from top to bottom moves
on the caste lines. ... Political bargaining is
also done on the caste lines.
• By 1980s caste based political parties were
emerged.
• Sanskritization is a particular form of social
change found in India.
• It denotes the process by which caste or
tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek
upward mobility by emulating the rituals and
practices of the upper or dominant castes.
• Yadavas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
• Vokkaligas of Karnataka
• Patidars of Gujarats
• The upper caste elites were able to benefit
from subsidised public education, professional
education in science, technology , medicine
and management.
• Able to get state sector jobs in the early
decades after independence.
• Definition. M.N. Srinivas defined
sanskritisation as a process by which "a low or
middle Hindu caste, or tribal or other group,
changes its customs, ritual ideology, and way
of life in the direction of a high and frequently
twice-born caste. ... For example, the
sociologist M. N.
• Upper castes are called as intermediate castes
in turn depend on the labour of the lower
castes including specially the ‘untouchable’
castes for tilling ad tending the land.
• So called scheduled castes and tribes and the
backward castes have suffered because they
have no inherited educational and social capital.
• They must compete with an already developed
upper caste.
• They continue to suffer form discrimination of
various kinds.
• The government policies provided by the state
serve as their lifelines.
Tribal Community
• They are the oldest inhabitants of the sub
continent.
• They don't follow any religion with a written
text.
• They were communities that did not have a
state or political form of the normal kind.
• They did not have caste and were neither
Hindus nor peasants.
• The term was introduced in the colonial era.
Classification of tribal society
• A substantial list of Scheduled Tribes in India
are recognised as tribal under the Constitution
of India.
• Tribal people constitute 8.6% of the nation's
total population, over 104 million people
according to the 2011 census.
• Around 85 % of population resides in ‘middle
India’.
• Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Odissa, MP,
Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, and AP
• Of the Remaining 15%, over 11% is in the
North Eastern states.
• 3% living in the rest of India.
 Share of tribes in the state population
Serial no. State Population in %

1 Assam 30%

2 Arunachal Pradesh, 60% - 95%

Meghalaya, Mizoram and
Nagaland

3 All other States except Less than 12%

Orissa and MP
 Tribe – The Career of a concept
• The argument for a tribe-caste distinction was
founded on an assumed cultural difference
between Hindu castes, with their beliefs in
purity and pollution and hierarchical
integration.
• By the 1970s all the major definitions of tribe
were shown to be faulty.
• Size, isolation, religion and means of
livelihood.
• Santhal, Gonds and Bhils are very large and
spread over extensive territory.
• Mundas and Hos were connected with
agriculture, hunting gathering etc.
• Some scholars have argued that there is no
logical basis for treating tribes as original or
pure societies.
• Tribalism – the tribal groups begin to define
themselves as tribals in order to distinguish
themselves form the newly encountered
others.
• Adivasis were not always oppressed groups.
• Several Rajput kingdoms are actually emerged
through the process of stratificiation among
adivasis communities themselves.
• The capitalist economy’s drive to exploit forest
resources and minerals and to recruit cheap
labour has brought tribal societies in contact
with mainstream society a long time ago.
 Mainstream attitudes towards Tribes
• Anthropological work of colonial era described
tribes as isolated communities.
• They have faced many problems due to
aggressive money lenders.
• They lost their ownership of land due to non-
tribal immigrant settlers and their access to
forests because of the government policy of
reservation and the introduction of mining.
• ‘excluded’ and ‘partially excluded’ areas emerged
because of tribal rebellion.
• The isolationist side argued that Tribals needed
protection from traders, moneylenders and
Hindu and Christian missionaries.
• The integrationists, argued that tribals were
merely backward Hindus, and their problems had
to be addressed within the same framework as
that of other backward classes.
• Results of constituent Assembly debates:
• Five year plans
• Tribal sub-plans
• Tribal welfare blocks
• Special multipurpose area schemes.
 National Development Vs. Tribal
Development
• During the period of Nehru large dams,
factories and mines were constructed.
• The tribal areas were located in mineral rich
and forest covered parts of the country,
• Tribes have paid disproportionate price for the
development of the rest of Indian society.
• This kind of development has benefited
mainstream at the expense of the tribes.
• Forests were over exploited by British and
being continued by Independent India.
• Construction of dams leads to movements.
E.g. Narmada.
• Tribal concentration regions have been
experiencing the problem of heavy in-
migration of non-tribals.
• The industrial area of Jharkhand had suffered
dilution of tribal share of population.
• In the state of Tripura tribal population was
halved within a single decade, reducing them
to a minority.
• Same was felt by Arunachal Pradesh.
Tribal identity today
• Nowadays most of the tribes have interaction
with the mainstream of the society.
• But it is probably unfavourable for them.
• Many tribal identities today are centred on
ideas of resistance and opposition to the
overwhelming force of the non-tribal world.
• Positive achievements – Statehood for
Jharkhand and Chattisgarh.
• States like Manipur or Nagaland don’t have
the same rights as other state citizens because
their states have been declared as ‘disturbed
areas’ due to special laws that limit the civil
liberties of citizens.
• Educated middle class group started
increasing in the North-eastern states.
• Due to the policies of reservation, education is
creating an urbanised professional class.
• Two sets of issues important in giving in
giving rise to tribal movements are:
• Control over land specially forests.
• Issues relating to matters of ethnic-cultural
identity.
 Assertions of tribal identity
• Laid to the emergence of a middle class with
in the tribal society.
• Issues of culture, tradition, livelihood, control
over land and other resources, projects of
modernity etc..
• Middle class es are the consequences of
modern education and modern occupations
due to reservation policies.
Family and Kinship
• in sociology, kinship involves more
than family ties, according to
the Sociology Group: ... At its most
basic, kinship refers to "the bond (of)
marriage and reproduction," says
the Sociology Group, but kinship can also
involve any number of groups or individuals
based on their social relationships.
• We all are born into a family, and spend long
years within it. Sometimes wefeel very good
about our parents, elders, siblings , whereas at
others we don’t.
• Family is a space of great warmth and care.
• Sometimes we have bitter conflicts, injustice and
violence.
• Female infanticide, violent conflicts between
brothers over property and ugly legal disputes are
as much part of family.
• A family can be defined as nuclear or extended.
• It can be male-headed or female-headed.
• Lit an be matrilineal or partrilineal.
• Migration of men from the villages of himalayan
region can lead to an unusual proportion of
women-headed families in the village.
• Young parents in the software industry in India
lead to increasing number of grandparents
moving in as care-givers to young grandchildren.
• The family(the private sphere) is linked to the
economic, political, cultural and educational(the
public) spheres.
• Broadly, a family is a group of persons directly
linked by connections, the adult members of
which assume responsibility for caring for
children.
• Kinship ties are connections between individuals,
established either through marriage or through
the lines of descent that connect blood relatives
(mothers, fathers, siblings, offspring, etc.).
• Marriage may be defined as a socially
acknowledged and approved sexual union
between two adult individuals.
 Nuclear and Extended Family
• The difference between the nuclear
family and the extended family is that
a nuclear family refers to a single
basic family unit of parents and their children.
• whereas the extended family refers to their
relatives, as well – such as grandparents, in-
laws, aunts and uncles, etc.
• Nuclaer family have different disadvantages ...
• As I.P. Desai observes, “The expression ‘join
family’ is not the translation of any Indian
work like that.
• While I.P. Desai has given five types of
family—nuclear, functionally joint,
functionally and substantially (in terms of
property) joint, marginally joint, and
traditional joint.
• K.M. Kapadia has given five types of family:
nuclear (husband, wife and unmarried
children),
• nuclear with married sons (what I.P. Desai
calls Marginal Joint and Aileen Ross calls small
joint family),
• lineal joint, collateral joint, and nuclear family
with a dependent (widowed sister, etc.)
• Aileen Ross has given four types of families:
large joint, small joint, nuclear, and nuclear
with dependents.
 The Diverse forms of Family
• Matrilocal – newly married couple stays with the
women’s parents.
• Patrilocal – newly married coupe stays with the man’s
parents.
• matrilineal- pass on property from mother to daughter
• Patrilineal societies property pass on from father to
son.
• Patriarchal family – men exercise authority and
dominance
• Matriarchy where the women play a dominant role.
• Multiple tribes in the state of Meghalaya in northeast
India practise matrilineal descent.
• Often referred to as Khasi people and Garo people,
Among the Khasi people which is a term used as a
blanket term for various subgroups in Meghalaya who
have distinguishing languages, rites, ceremonies, and
habits, but share an ethnic identity as The Seven Huts
whereas the Garo people refers to the various groups
of Achik people.
• The Khasi, Garo, and other subgroups have a proud
heritage, including matrilineality, although it was
reported in 2004 that they were losing some of their
matrilineal traits. The tribes are said to belong to one
of the "largest surviving matrilineal culture[s]" in the
world.
• Men are the power holders in Khasi society,
the only difference is that a man’s relatives on
his mother’s side matter more than his
relatives on his father’s side.
• A woman inherits property from her mother
and passes it on to her daughter, while a man
controls his sister’s property and passes on
control to his sister’s son.