Page 179 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes (iii) Tick the right answer to the following question.
Which of the following characterised the traditional jajmani system?
(a) Reciprocity and dominance (b) Only receiprocity
(c) Exchange of gifts
(iv) Tick mark the correct answer
Which of the following governmental programme is meant for the generation of gainful
employment for the rural poor.
(a) Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (b) Sampoorn Grameen Rozgar Yojana
(c) Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (d) All of the above.
7.9 Summary

• The term jajman originally referred to the client for whom a Brahmin priest performed rituals,
but later on it came to be referred to the patron or recipient of specialized services.
• Jajmani system is a system of traditional occupational obligations. Castes in early India were
economically interdependent on one another. The traditional specialized occupation of a villager
followed the specialization assigned to his caste.
• This system in which the durable relation between a landowning family and the landless families
that supply them with goods and services is called the jajmani system.
• The jajmani relations entail ritual matters and social support as well as economic exchanges.
The servicing castes perform the ritual and ceremonial duties at the jajman’s houses on occasions
like birth, marriage and death.
• The kamins (lower castes) who provide specialized skills and services to their jajmans (higher
castes) themselves need the goods and services of others.
• Referring to the jajmani system, Kolenda (1963: 11-31) has said: “Hindu jajmani system may be
approached as an institution or social system within Indian villages made up of a network of
roles and of norms integrated into the roles and into the system as a whole and legitimized and
supported by general cultural values.”
• The roles involved in the jajmani system are those of jajmans and kamins. The kamin castes render
certain occupational, economic and social services to the jajman castes for which the latter pay
them at fixed intervals or on special occasions.
• Kamin may sell his rights to a client to another kamin. The important thing in the role-relationship
of jajman-kamin is giving of various concessions, for example, free food, free clothes, free residence,
rent-free land, casual aid, aid in litigation, etc. and protection of kamins by jajmans during various
exigencies of life.
• The traditional method of payment, almost in all regions in the country, is that it is made at
harvest time when each landowning farmer family hands over some newly produced foodgrains
to various kamins.
• During a lean year, the farmer jajman does not give much foodgrain to his kamins but when he
gets a good produce, he does not mind in giving some extra foodgrains to those kamins who
have rendered good service to him.
• In the allocation of power between the jajmans and kamins, according to Beidelman (1959), ritual
purity and pollution are not significant. Low caste person, even if he is a jajman is considered
sub-ordinate to kamin of higher status caste.
• The cultural value in the jajmani system is that generosity and charity are religious obligations
and inequality is God-given. The sacred, semi-sacred and the secular Hindu literature and oral
tradition authorizes and justifies the jajman-kamin relationship.
• The jajman is not primarily an economically and politically homogeneous class but a religio-
economic category uniquely adopted to Indian civilization.

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