Salient Features of Indian Society

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Questions asked from this topic:

• “Caste system is assuming new identities and associational forms. Hence, caste system cannot be eradicated in India.” Comment. [UPSC-2018]
• The spirit tolerance and love is not only an interesting feature of Indian society from very early times, but it is also playing an important part at the present. Elaborate. [UPSC-2017]
• What are the two major legal initiatives by the State since Independence, addressing discrimination against Scheduled Tribes (STs)? [UPSC-2017]
• Why are the tribals in India referred to as the Scheduled Tribes? Indicate the major provisions enshrined in the Constitution of India for their upliftment. [UPSC-2016]
• Debate the issue of whether and how contemporary movements for assertion of Dalit identity work towards annihilation of caste. [UPSC-2015]

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What is society?

• “Society is an organised, interacting aggregate of individuals who follow a given way of life.”
• Society is composed of people. Man studies himself as a member of this aggregate of people that we call society.
• Characteristics of society are population, territorial base, mutual awareness, shared culture and psychic unity.

Features of Indian society:

India is one of the oldest civilisation in the world. Further, it is a continuous flowing civilisation making it difficult to demarcate India’s past into time boundary.
Some examples for continuity of Indian civilisation are: Shiva worship during Indus Valley Civilisation reflected in Pashupati seals, Varna system, Village as local governance unit etc.

The sense of of continuity need not be equated with rigid unchangeability rather it is India’s ability to adsorband assimilate new ideas and practices which makes this continuity possible.

Indian civilisation during its long journey evolves various practices, customs etc later become its salient features:

• Hierarchy: Placing people/things in vertical strata.
  • Louis Dumont, a French sociologist said:
    • Indian society is driven by the values of Hierarchy.
    • European society is driven by the value of equality.
  • Hierarchy is manifested in:
    • language: e.g. Aap (with respect), Tu/Tum (no respect)
      • Aap jaa sakte hain (with respect), chal nikal le (without respect)
    • food behaviour: Different food behavious for Brahmana and Shudra.
    • dressing pattern: Poor: no cloth above waist, topless.
    • Age: eldest person being head of the family
    • Gender: male pre-dominance in the family
    • Social order: e.g. Varna system.
      • Brahmana: from mouth of Brahma
      • Kshatriya: from shoulder of Brahma
      • Vaishya: from thigh of Brahma
      • Shudra: from feet of Brahma
• Notion of Purity and pollution:
  • Even during Indus Valley Civilization: too much emphasis of cleanliness e.g. Great bath and Mohenjodaro, sanitation, separate water arrangement for bathing in houses.
  • Higher status is associated with purity and lower status with pollution. This led to emergence of untouchability.
    • This practice is not mentioned in any religious text but emerged with time.
  • Two types of untouchability:
    • Temporary untouchability: e.g. Surgeon doctor avoiding being touched by any one. Corona pandemic avoid coming physical contact with anyone to avoid infection.
      • generally related to health issue.
    • Permanent untouchability:
      • Rooted in stigma on community. e.g. Dalit in India.
      • A heinous practice in Indian society.
      • Fa-hein (a Chinese traveller) has mentioned such practice during Gupta period. e.g. Chandalas beating drum before entering the town area. So that people can avoid coming in contact with them.
• Marriage:
  • In Hinduism: It is sacrament→ unbreakable bond. No terms of divorce in Hinduism.
  • In other Religion: It is contract → can be broken anytime, divorce facility allowed.
  • Rate of divorce in Christian and Islam in India is less compared to west. It is due to influence of Hinduism.
  • Forms of marriage:
    • Polygamy: It is a gender neutral term.
      • Have more than one spouse.
      • Can be Polygyny and Polyandry
        • Polygyny: One male having many wives.
        • Polyandry: one Wife having many husband. e.g. Draupadi, Toda tribes in Nilgiri, Jaunsari tribe in Himachal and Uttrakhand.
    • Monogamy:
      • Serial: one spouse at a time. i.e. remarriage allowed in case of death or divorce.
      • Straight: One for lifetime i.e. no remarry.
  • Rules of marriage:
    • Endogamy: Marriage within the group. e.g. marriage within caste, religion etc.
    • Exogamy: Marriage outside the group. e.g. marriage outside family, clan, gotra etc.
      • However, Hindu marriage act allows clan exogamy i.e. doesn’t recognise clan.
      • Village exogamy is also practiced in certain part of India.
• Varna system: It is a four-fold division of society into brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra, though this excludes a significant section of the population composed of the ‘outcastes’, sometimes refered to as the panchamas or fifth category.
• Caste system:
  • Caste is an institution uniquely associated with the Indian sub-continent.
  • It is derived from varna system. Each Varna is further segmented into hierarchy of caste or Jati.
  • Each caste originated on different basis that is occupation, race, performance of rituals etc.
  • Primarily it is occupation from where caste derived its identity. Often it is fixed and rigid.
  • Although it is an institution characteristic of Hindu society, caste has spread to the major non-Hindu communities of the Indian sub-continent. This is specially true of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.
  • Jati is the word most commonly used to refer to the institution of caste in Indian languages.
• Village republic:
  • Sir Charles Metcalfe, a British Scholar, said that Indian villages are self sufficient and autonomous unit and independent.
  • Mainly agrarian society where sustenance agriculture is followed.
  • Justice delivery method at panchayat level.
  • Every village had one head.
• Tribes:
  • Resides in secluded area.
  • Practice primitive mode of production.
  • In other countries tribes are monoracial (e.g. mongoloid tribe in China, Proto austroloid in Australia), but Indian tribes are multi-racial:
    • In North-East: Naga, Garo, Khasi, Jaintia, Mizo etc.
      • All belong to Mongloid race.
    • Central India (M.P., Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West bengal etc): Bhils, Santhal, Munda, Ho etc
    • Andaman& Nicobar: the Jarawa, the Onge, the Shompen, the Sentinelese etc.
  • Indian tribes are also multi-lingual:
    • e.g. Mundas in Jharkhand speaks Chaste Hindi, in Orissa speaks Oriyya, and Bengali in Bengal.
• Family and Kinship:
  • Family, across the globe, seen as universal primary group. It is cornerstone of every society.
    • Considered as microcosm of society.
  • 3 types of family:
    • Nuclear family:
      • Husband, wife and unmarried children.
    • Joint family:
      • Joint families are composed of sets of siblings, theirs spouses, and their dependent children
      • It has five features:
        • Members belongs to more than 2 generation
        • Joint ownership of property (no private property). It is recognised in Indian Income taxt act-1961.
        • All member of family reside under common roof.
        • All member of family eat from common kitchen.
        • All member of family have common place of worship..
    • Extended family or household:
      • It consist of parents like father, mother, and their children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, all living in the same household.
      • It has elements of both nuclear and joint family without any structure.
      • It is one type of family observed in India only.
• Co-existence of traditionalism and modernity– Traditionalism is upholding or maintenance of core values. Whereas modernity refers to questioning the tradition and moving towards rational thinking, social, scientific and technological progress.
• Balance between spiritualism and materialism– Spiritualism’s main focus is to promote an individual’s experience with God. Whereas materialism is a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.

In this way salient features of Indian society not only provide exclusiveness to it but also enrich Indian society with various forms of diversities.

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Features of caste system:

• Caste is determined by birth – a child is “born into” the caste of its parents. Caste is never a matter of choice. One can never change one’s caste, leave it, or choose not to join it, although there are instances where a person may be expelled from their caste.
• Membership in a caste involves strict rules about marriage. Caste groups are “endogamous”, i.e. marriage is restricted to members of the group.
• Caste membership also involves rules about food and food-sharing. What kinds of food may or may not be eaten is prescribed and who one may share food with is also specified.
• Caste involves a system consisting of many castes arranged in a hierarchy of rank and status. In theory, every person has a caste, and every caste has a specified place in the hierarchy of all castes. While the hierarchical position of many castes, particularly in the middle ranks, may vary from region to region, there is always a hierarchy.
• Castes also involve sub-divisions within themselves, i.e., castes almost always have sub-castes and sometimes sub-castes may also have subsub-castes. This is referred to as a segmental organisation.
• Castes were traditionally linked to occupations. A person born into a caste could only practice the occupation associated with that caste, so that occupations were hereditary, i.e. passed on from generation to generation.
  • On the other hand, a particular occupation could only be pursued by the caste associated with it – members of other castes could not enter the occupation.
• These features are the prescribed rules found in ancient scriptural texts. Since these prescriptions were not always practiced, we cannot say to what extent these rules actually determined the empirical reality of caste – its concrete meaning for the people living at that time.
• It is also clear from the historical evidence that caste was a very unequal institution – some castes benefitted greatly from the system, while others were condemned to a life of endless labour and subordination.
• Finally, castes are not only unequal to each other in ritual terms, they are also supposed to be complementary and non-competing groups.
• In other words, each caste has its own place in the system which cannot be taken by any other caste.
• Since caste is also linked with occupation, the system functions as the social division of labour, except that, in principle, it allows no mobility.

The relationship between varna and Jati:

• The precise relationship between varna and jati has been the subject of much speculation and debate among scholars.
• The four varna classification is common to all of India, the jati hierarchy has more local classifications that vary from region to region.
• that the four varna classification is roughly three thousand years old. However, the ‘caste system’ stood for different things in different time periods, so that it is misleading to think of the same system continuing for three thousand years.
  • In its earliest phase, in the late Vedic period roughly between 900 — 500 BC, the caste system was really a varna system and consisted of only four major divisions. These divisions were not very elaborate or very rigid, and they were not determined by birth. Movement across the categories seems to have been not only possible but quite common.
  • It is only in the post-Vedic period that caste became the rigid institution that is familiar to us from well known definitions.
• Varna provides set of occupation, while caste has only one occupation associated with it.
• Change in occupation is allowed in Varna system but not in Caste system.
  • e.g. Valmiki was born as shudra but became a teacher i.e. Brahman.
  • Parshuram was born as Brahman but later became a warrior i.e. Kshatriya.
• Varna system is more theoretical in nature, while Caste reflect the actual status.
• Caste system emerges out of Varna system.