Emergence of caste mobility detail
Answers
Caste mobility as a process of social and cultural change has been explained by Srinivas in his concept of sankritisation. Sanskritisation is a process whereby low Hindu caste changes its customs, rites, rituals, ideology and way of life in the direction of high and frequently twice-born castes.The social historical theory explains the creation of the Varnas, Jats and of the untouchables. According to this theory, the caste system began with the arrival of the Aryans in India. The Aryans arrived in India around 1500 BC. The fair skinned Aryans arrived in India from south Europe and north Asia. in Indian society. As Susan Bayly (1999) aptly remarks that perhaps of all the
topics that have fascinated scholars of South Asia , Caste is probably the most
contentious one. It has achieved much the same significance in social , political and
academic debate as race in the United States, class in Britain and faction in Italy.
Bayly(l999) says that " it has been common since the days of the British rule for both
historians and anthropologists to refer to India as a 'caste' society, and to treat the values
of so-called caste Hindus as an all pervading presence in Indian life.
Since the 1970s, however, there have been scholars, both within India and abroad
who have critiqued these earlier scholars and their formulations of massively overstating
the importance of caste. Some have gone so far as to question the very existence of an
ancient pan-Indian caste system , dismissing the idea of caste society as a fabrication of
colonial data collectors and their office holding Indian informants"(p.2).
Declan Quigley(l993) , however maintains that the debate about nature of caste
has generally led to a division between two main sets of protagonists whose only shared
conviction is that members of the other group are utterly misguided. These two groups,
respectively endorse a materialist and an idealist conception of history. He says that" the
materialists interpret caste in terms of "simple rationalisation and obfuscation of more
base inequalities. High castes, they believe, are generally wealthier than the low castes,
therefore the idiom of purity and impurity through which caste differences are expressed
must be 'simply' a means of legitimating and obscuring the 'true' nature of social
divisions.