Though the basic features of caste are well protected through the organic tradition protecting mechanisms that are common to all societies, it should be noted that this did not lead to a frozen or static situation among the members of the caste. Mobility in the form of occupational shift or change in the financial or social status of caste members or innovations in the means of caste activities etc. have always been there in the Indian society.
In the fields of Sociology and Anthropology, two kinds of social mobility are identified: horizontal and vertical mobilities. Movement of people from one place to the other or joining of people into larger groups across the places, going beyond their traditional localizations is called horizontal mobility. Change in the financial or social status of members of a social group is called vertical mobility.
Usually, Indian castes are imagined to be extremely localized to a hamlet or a village or at the most to a small group of 5 to 10 hamlets or villages. This means that the members of a caste while looking for their endogamous marital relationships do not go beyond their village or at the most go up to a group of 5 to 10 neighboring villages. This was true to a large extent in ancient and medieval India but it was also true that members of certain castes migrated from their traditional settlement to places of a great distance for several reasons such as wars, drought, natural calamities, encouragement for their occupation or invitation for their services. Some of the castes had seasonal itinerant travel to far off places as part of their lifestyle. For example, Shepherds used to travel to far off places taking their herds of Sheep for grazing, climbing up and down the grassy hills. There were castes which had sold through travelling as their caste occupation. Artisan communities traveled to far off places to work as sculptors of stone, gold, copper, brass, bronze, wood, iron etc. depending on the availability of opportunities, incentives and encouragement. There were occasions when members of a caste went in search of marital relationships to far off places when they failed to get matches within their traditionally localized area. However, this was not a norm but a deviation resorted to out of necessity.
Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph in their book, “The Modernity of Tradition” discussed a contemporary form of horizontal mobility among castes as part of modern developments. As part of responding to electoral democracy, members of caste started forming associations at the state and national levels such as All Karnataka Kuruba association or All India Yadava Association etc.
Rudolph and Rudolph argue in this book that such broader caste associations play a positive role as democratic pressure groups or as constituencies beyond the upper house, lower house constituencies that are used for representation through general elections. The authors particularly highlight how the expectations that the caste system will get destroyed by the modern developments of industrialization and democracy got belied because of such developments. The main thesis is that the tradition within the caste system has a potential to respond to changing requirements of time and that potential got manifest through the modern developments of horizontal mobility through the formation of large associations of caste.
Coming to occupational shift, it may be noted that in spite of well protected principles that prevent or retard shift of a member of a caste from the traditional occupation of the caste, we do come across people born into a caste taking up another occupation than the traditional occupation of their caste in the representations in nearly realistic literary works such as the sanskrit play Mrutya Kathikam of 1st century A.D. The hero of the play Charu Datta, a brahmin lives on trading. Towards the end of the play, a pastoral caste person becomes the king. The king declares a sex worker caste woman to be treated as a family woman. We have many such things in the play.
Most of the kings in India hailed from different castes such as agricultural castes or sometimes even from tribes. This is certainly an example of occupational shift.
Some Brahmin families shifted from their traditional occupation of ritual officiation to royal assistants in the form of ministers, advisers etc.
We can talk about a few more such occupational shifts that occurred in pre-modern India.
In modern India, occupational shift of members of a caste is more a norm than an exception. Very few castes whose caste occupation has opportunities for survival and prosperity due to modern lifestyle continued their traditional caste occupations. Liquor making castes, Barber caste, Cloth Washing caste, Leather worker caste etc. are examples for this.
Vertical mobility of castes in premodern India have been discussed by Anthropologists like M.N. Srinivas uses concepts such as Sanskritization. He talks about Artisan caste people wearing the insignia of Brahmins such as sacred thread as expressions of aspiration to get the higher social status enjoyed by Brahmins and calls this phenomenon as Sanskritization. What M.N. Srinivas failed to recognize is that:
- Artisan communities had to get involved in Vedic, Agamic activities of temple construction, idol sculpting etc. and that is what led to their adoption of Vedic cultural features such as learning Vedas, wearing sacred thread etc.
- Artisans are not the only such community. Many other communities due to their involvement in Vedic culture got such changes.
This is an example of an influence of the Varna system of the books on the case system on the ground. Some castes and tribes moved into the Kshatriya model and some others into the Vaishya model also. This has got more to do with historically necessitated occupational and cultural changes rather than aspirations to move into some imaginary higher social status.
In conclusion, those who think the caste system was rigid, open your eyes to the ground reality!
Bharat Mata ki Jai! Jai Hind!
– Sadyogi