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Resiliency and Change in the Indian Caste System: The Umar of U.P.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Richard G. Fox
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Extract

Lack of agreement on basic definitions has often bedeviled the anthropological study of Indian society. A case in point is “caste,” which has enjoyed almost as many definitions as there are students involved in its study. This multiplicity undoubtedly promotes a broadened investigation of caste phenomena, and thus ultimately increases our knowledge. But it also leads to the danger that competing definitions will masquerade as factual explanations, or that theoretically valid distinctions are lost in the rhetoric of definitional arguments. Especially in studies of the breakdown and reconstitution of caste institutions, the absence of a firm, explicit definitional base impedes evaluation of the nature, direction, and novelty of social structural change.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , August 1967 , pp. 575 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

2 Quoted in Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Suzanne Hoeber, “The Political Role of India's Caste Associations,” Pacific Affairs, XXXIII (1960), 15Google Scholar.

3 Ghurye, G. S., Caste, Class, and Occupation (Bombay, 1961), p. 208Google Scholar.

4 Nandi, Proshanta Kumar, “A Study of Caste Organization in Kanpur,” Man in India, 45 (1965), 96Google Scholar.

5 Srinivas, M. N., Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay, 1962), p. 16Google Scholar.

6 Srinivas (1962), p. 36.

7 Srinivas (1962), p. 65.

8 Srinivas (1962), p. 5. Several paragraphs below this statement Srinivas notes, “There is a wide gulf between caste as an endogamous and ritual unit, and the caste-like units which are so active in politics and administration in modern India” (my italics). The sudden switch in reference to “caste-like units” is confusing and contradictory. However, the subsequent discussion indicates that Srinivas refers to the spatial and numerical distinctions in the operations of these units, rather than a qualitatively different organizational pattern.

9 Leach, E. R., Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, and North West Pakistan (Cambridge, 1961), p. 7Google Scholar.

10 Srinivas, M. N., Review of “Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North West Pakistan,” Man, LXI, art. 21, 31.Google Scholar

11 Bailey has remarked that the dispute between Leach and Srinivas is one “over the use of words, and not about the reality underlying them.” Bailey, F. G., “Closed Social Stratification in India,” Archives Europeannes de Sociologie, IV (1963), 121Google Scholar. But this disagreement is not just semantic. The use of words by Leach and Srinivas involve the same reality, but stem from differing definitions of how that reality is to be analyzed.

12 Rudolph and Rudolph, pp. 21–22.

13 Rudolph and Rudolph, p. 8.

14 Bailey, p. 107.

15 This definition follows Srinivas' usage with reference to caste in its ritual and social aspects. Srinivas (1962), pp. 3–4.

16 Nandi also presents data on the “Omar” Sabha, although on many points his information is in disagreement with my own. Nandi, pp. 91–92.

17 For convenience, I shall hereafter refer to the association as the “Umar” Sabha.

18 Field work in India was done from November 1963 to October 1964 under a grant from the Foreign Area Training Program of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Tezibazar is a market town of about 7,200 people located in the Gangetic plain of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The town is primarily inhabited by traditional merchant castes, among whom the Umar are the largest single group.

19 Field notes.

20 Field notes.

21 Bailey generalizes this conclusion for the whole of India. Bailey, pp. 123–24.