Caste, Community and Belonging: The Indian Case

The caste system is rooted in, and constitutes a further proliferation of, the four-varna system of ancient India comprising the brahmins (priestly class), the kshatriyas (warrior class), and the two classes of workers recruited largely from conquered tribes: the vaishyas (artisans and other producers), and the shudras (menial labourers). It is an arrangement of hierarchically organised endogamous groups, each consisting of persons belonging to a particular occupation that is carried on in a hereditary manner. It is also associated with abhorrent practices like ‘untouchability’ and ‘unseeability’, which presume that a person from the ‘upper castes’ gets ‘polluted’ just by touching or even setting eyes on someone from the ‘menial’ castes. People from these ‘menial’ castes were traditionally debarred from owning any land and even leaving the village. This was to ensure that an adequate supply of labour for the ‘upper caste’ landowners was always available, in a situation where cultivable land existed outside the village premises and would have otherwise pulled labourers away to cultivate on their own.