Page 125 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes existed with a sort of congruity, and class transformation had been a vital fact in the form of new
kingdoms, settled agriculture, trade, cities and banking and guild organizations.
The non-Marxist scholars in general have relied on analytical abstractions in the form of statistical-
mathematical indicators or analytical topologies D’Souza (1975) treats class as a conceptually
abstracted category. Class does not exist as a community like caste. Class is defined operationally
in terms of certain indices. D’Souza applies the attributional approach to class purely in terms of
constructing an ‘order’ comprising upper, middle and lower class categories. The following points
have been made about classes in India :
(1) Classes are not found as a system of stratification in the same way as castes are rooted in the
Indian society.
(2) Class is not a universalistic phenomenon of social stratification.
(3) There are no objective criteria of class identification.
(4) It is not clear whether class is a category or a concrete unit of interaction with other units.
One could affirm that these points have been put forth in order to prevent a class analysis of
Indian society. Caste has created numerous problems of a class nature related to economic
domination and subjugation, privileges and deprivations, ‘conspicuous waste’ and bare survival.
However, these problems have not been taken up as central concerns of social research. Pollution-
purity and the encompassing power of caste have been taken up as a positive dimension of the
caste system. The usual pretension is that class antagonism, class consciousness and class unity
are not found as Karl Marx had seen, hence no class analysis. However, this is not true. Caste is
a system of harmonic relations from a particular perspective only, it is also a system of opposition
and antagonism from another perspective, and the latter has not been taken up seriously.
The mode of production and class contradictions are essential features of the Marxian approach to
social stratification. Gough (1980) considers the mode of production as a social formation in which
she finds interconnections of caste, kinship, family, marriage and even rituals with the forces of
production and production relations. Gough’s study of Thanjavur explains the emergence of a
new bourgeoisie, the polarization of the peasantry, and the pauperization of the working class
due to historical transformations in the mode of production. The totality of contradictions in social
stratification can be seen through the contradictions in the mode of production. Marxist ideologists
like Namboodiripad (1979) and Ranadive (1979) consider class relationships as a domain assumption
in the treatment of caste and kinship in India. Even varna and the jajmani system can be explained
in terms of class relations as they are embedded in the mode of production (Meillassoux, 1973).
Others who have used the mode of production as the framework for analysis of class relations in
village India are : Djurfeldt and Lind-berg (1975), Heera Singh (1979), Thorner (1969), Saith and
Tanakha (1972), and Bhardwaj and Das (1975).
Contradictions can be found between various classes in terms of continuance of the old classes
and the emergence of new ones at the same time. Industrial, business and professional classes
characterize urban India, and landowners, tenants, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers are
found in the countryside. These classifications have ideological overtones. The classification
comprising landowners, moneylenders and labourers does not refer necessarily to class antagonism.
But the other classification comprising the bourgeoisie, capitalist-type landowners, rich peasants,
landless peasantry and agricultural labourers necessarily refers to class interaction, dependence-
independence and conflict as the basic elements of class structure.
Approaches to the concepts of caste and class bear ideological contents. The methodology and
data used in the studies of caste and class provided legitimacy to these approaches. Caste was
treated not as a ‘social formation’, but as an encompassing institution which encompassed all
other aspects of Hindu society. However, caste, in fact, was more than a ‘ritualistic’ mechanism,
and it could face a variety of forces and constraints due to its all-inclusive character. If it were

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