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Social Structure and Social Change

Notes caste system. Some sort of class consciousness has crept into different castes. Electrified by the in
group feeling, they want to hold the caste system all the more tenaciously. Nowadays, a caste tries to
organize itself for social, economic, and political purposes. Elections are being fought on caste basis.
There are caste organizations like All India Kshatriya Mahasabha, All India Mathur Sangh, All India
Bhargava Organization, etc.
The progressive Hindus take three distinct stands about the future of the caste system:
1. There are people ho consider caste as something evil and want that it should be abolished.
2. There are others who think that the caste system has degenerated and efforts should be made to
reinstate the traditional four orders. The greatest exponent of this thought was Mahatma Gandhi
(Young India, 1919: 479-88).
3. There are also people who want to continue the caste system but to reinstate it under totally
different conditions. These people want to amalgamate various sub-castes having cultured unity
and economic similarity. Gradually, the castes which will approximately be on a footing of equality
will consolidate and ultimately a casteless society will be established. These people want the
process to be slow because it would afford sufficient time for education and the formation of
informed opinion with the requisite mental adjustment of those castes/classes which are not yet
prepared for a wholesale change in their age-old customs (see Ghurye, 1961: 305-307).
Scholars like A.J. Toynbee, T.H. Marshall, P. Kodanda Rao, etc. have evaluated all these three schools
of thought. Discussing first school led by Gandhi, they contend that it is impracticable because the
only basis of assigning a particular order (out of four orders) to the persons is occupation they follow.
In the present society, the occupations are so specialized and varied and the people of the same
family are engaged in so many different occupations that it would be impossible to assign them a
membership of one or the other order. Secondly, even if this settlement (of including castes in one or
the other of the first three orders) was possible, what about the untouchable castes? Gandhiji being
against untouchability naturally proposed some respectable status for these castes. But where are
they to be provided for? In whatever order they may be included, there is bound to be tremendous
protest from that order. Thirdly, assuming that the classification of castes in four orders would be
possible, are we going to permit or prohibit marriages between these four orders? Are we going to
continue restrictions in the matter of food, etc? Both would create their own problems. It may, therefore,
be concluded that a return to the four-fold division of society is impractical and even if accomplished,
it would serve no useful purpose.
Taking the other point of view that castes should be slowly abolished by consolidation of the sub-
castes into larger castes, scholars have said that to propose this point is to miss the real problem. This
method, they claim, was tried in Bombay for a number of decades but the results were disastrous.
The sub-castes that joined together to create a big group retained their internal feelings of exclusiveness
with undiminishing vigour. The new group took up rather a militant attitude against other castes,
specially those which were popularly regarded as immediately higher or lower than the caste which
it represented. Thus, scholars claimed that the spirit of caste patriotism or casteism is created and if
we followed the second viewpoint, diminishing of casteism would be very difficult and it would
create an unhealthy atmosphere for the full growth of national consciousness.
Some scholars have supported the third view that the caste system should be immediately abolished.
They are of the opinion that we have to fight against and totally uproot casteism. Ghurye was one
scholar who favoured this viewpoint. But he had expressed this opinion in about 1931. Since then
more than six decades years have passed and lot of changes have taken place in Indian society,
including independence of the country and the promalgamation of many laws against the caste system.
For example, the Constitution of India (implemented from January 26,1950) says that: (i) the State
shall not discriminate against any citizen on the ground of caste (equal opportunity to all castes), (ii)
no citizen shall, on the ground of caste, be subject to restriction regarding access to or use of shops,
restaurants and public wells and tanks (removal of civil disabilities), and (iii) the practice of
untouchability is forbidden. Similarly, there are no restrictions on the following of any occupation.
Feelings of equality, liberty and fraternity have been promoted which have cut the very roots of
caste. A special officer (Commissioner) was appointed in 1951 for looking after the scheduled castes

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