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Unit 8: Changing Trends and Future of Caste System

government agencies and government controlled enterprises, over 10 percent were held by members Notes
of the Dalit community, a tenfold increase in 40 years but yet to fill up the 15 percent reserved quota
for them. In 1997, India democratically elected K.R. Narayanan, a Dalit, as the nation’s President. In
the last 15 years, Indians born in historically discriminated minority castes have been elected to its
highest judicial and political offices. While the quality of life of Dalit population in India, in terms of
metrics such as poverty, literacy rate, access to health care, life expectancy, education attainability,
access to drinking water, housing, etc. have seen faster growth amongst the Dalit population between
1986 and 2006, for some metrics, it remains lower than overall non-Dalit population, and for some it
is better than poor non-Dalit population. A 2003 report claims inter-caste marriage is on the rise in
urban India. Indian societal relationships are changing because of female literacy and education,
women at work, urbanization, need for two-income families, and influences from the media.
India’s overall economic growth has produced the fastest and most significant socio-economic changes
to the historical injustice to its minorities. Legal and social program initiatives are no longer India’s
primary constraint in further advancement of India’s historically discriminated sections of society
and the poor. Further advancements are likely to come from improvements in the supply of quality
schools in rural and urban India, along with India’s economic growth.
8.1 Changing Structure of Caste

The caste system, as it exists today, has grown and developed through many centuries. For discussing
the caste system, we may divide the Indian history into four periods: (1) ancient period, which includes
(a) Vedic period, (b) Brahmanical period, (c) Maurya period, (d) post-Maurya period (that is, Sanga,
Kushan and Gupta periods), and (e) Harsh Vardhna and other periods; (2) medieval period, which
includes (a) Rajput period, and (b) Muslim period; (3) British period, which includes (a) pre-industrial
period, and (b) pre-independence industrial period; and (4) post-independence period.
8.1.1 Vedic or Pre-Buddhist Period (4000–1000 B.C.)
The work on the history and philosophy of caste in the Vedic period is an outcome of an inquiry into
the Vedic literature which mainly includes the Vedas, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Indian history,
in a strictly historical sense, begins from the Rig Veda. The Vedic period is supposed to have started
from 400 B.C. and continued up to 1000 B.C. (according to P.V. Kane). But, for the purpose of analyzing
caste, we consider the Vedic period as lying between 1500 B.C. (approximate date of writing the Rig
Veda) to 322 B.C., when Chandragupta came to power and Maurya dynasty started in which the
fundamental tenets of the Upanishadic thought were formulated and preached.
There are two schools of thought regarding the caste system in the Vedic period. One school holds
that the broad frame of the caste system had existed even in the earliest portion of the Rig Veda and
the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas were the three caste divisions that the society of the Rig
Veda clearly recognized. (Sudra ‘caste’, however, according to this view did not exist. It was created
by the Aryans in the closing phase of the Rig Veda). The other school maintains that these three
were not castes but varnas which were not hereditary but flexible. Some exponents of this later view
are Muir Zimmer (Philosophies of India), Weber (The History of Indian Literature, 1882) and Ghurye
(Caste and Race in India: 1932, 143). On the other hand, those who rejected this view and supported
the first one were Haug (The Origin of Brahminism: 1863), Kern (quoted in Vedic Index, Vol. II, 250),
Dutt (Origin and Growth of Caste in India) and Apte (Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute,
Poona, November 1940). They held that the caste system did exist in the time of the Rig Veda,
though it was not found in a developed state and these barriers were surmountable. B.R. Kamble
(Caste and Philosophy in Pre-Buddhist-India, 1979: 16) has recently held that the caste system was
sufficiently developed in the Rig Veda time and this system was not flexible but had raised enough
barriers.
8.1.2 Brahmanical Period (1000–600 B.C.)
The end of the Rigvedic period marks the beginning of the later Vedic age, popularly known as the
Brahmanical age. The literature that represents this age includes the Brahmanas and older Upanishads.
This period approximately covers the span of about four hundred years beginning from 1000 B.C. In
this period, the hierarchical system of four varnas firmly established itself and remained enduring for

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