Page 126 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 7: Class

simply a ritualistic arrangement, it would have crumbled down long ago due to its very cumbersome Notes
nature. The social formation of Indian society comprises class, ethnicity, power, religion and
economy along with caste. All these aspects of the social formation are incorporated into each
other. They provide an understanding of the historicity of Indian society including that of caste
and class. Indigenization of the concepts of caste and class must come from the realization of such
a formation and the totality of its historicity.

The main classes today in India are : (i) agrarian, (ii) industrial, (iii) business and
mercantile, and (iv) professional.

The approaches such as the functional, dialectical, psychological and structuralist are inadequate
for explaining the historicity of the Indian situation as they are rooted in the experience of the
situations that are unfamiliar with India’s historicity. Issues relating to caste and class were raised
and debated elsewhere and subsequently passed on to Indian scholars through the mechanism of
the academic hegemony of western scholars. Whether caste is a cultural phenomenon or a structural
aspect, whether it should be studied by participant observation or by using survey method, whether
it should be treated as the sole representative institution or class, power and religion should also
be studied, whether ‘caste alone’ should be studied—have been raised by western scholars and
later on taken up by their Indian counterparts with the tacit understanding of promoting certain
ideas upheld by them. We must examine carefully why structural-functionalism has become so
popular, why participant observation is regarded as a sacrosanct technique of research, why
Redfield’ notions of ‘little community’ and ‘peasant society’ or Marriott’s notions of Little and
Great Traditions and parochialization and Universalization have gained currency. One view is
that the Brahminocentric sociology produced by Srinivas is due to such indoctrination by these
academic forces.
In an earlier study, Singh (1974) provides a paradigm of social stratification in the light of cultural
versus structural and particular versus universal characteristics. The types that emerge from these
criteria are : (i) cultural-universalistic; (ii) cultural-particularistic; (iii) structural-universalistic;
and (iv) structural-particularistic. This paradigm is based on Parson’s analysis of social structure.
Singh’s analysis shows relevance of the structural-particularistic type for analyzing social
stratification in India. However, Singh does not provide reasons for the suitability of such a
classification. Nomology is the obvious reason for Singh’s scientism. However, in a recent study,
Singh (1981) provides another classification of the studies on social stratification carried out in the
1970s. The main theoretic concerns are : (i) structural-functional; (ii) structuralist; (iii) structural-
historical; and (iv) historical-materialist or Marxist. I have already referred to some of the studies
which have been analyzed under the rubric of these approaches. Caste is the central concern of all
the researchers including the Marxists.
Caste is an all-inclusive institution and it subsumes class relations. Any departure from caste is
treated as incongruence between caste, status, wealth and power, hence the emergence of class
relations. Such a view is known as the structural-functional. Change within the caste
(sanskritization), resilience and consensus are the hallmarks of structural-functionalism. Dumont
is the most well known proponent of structuralism. The pivotal notions of this approach are
reflected in Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus ( 1970). Singh (1981) points out ideology, dialectics,
transformational relationship and comparison as the salient features of Dumont’s study of caste.
For Dumont, hierarchy is ideology, and hierarchy implies ranking based on the notion of purity-
impurity. The opposition between pure and impure refers to binary tension or dialectics. Pure and
impure imply exclusion as well as inclusion in regard to caste hierarchy. Hierarchy also refers to

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