Inter Caste Relations
INTER CASTE RELATIONS *Ms. Shailja Saxena **Abhishek Kumar
According to Oxford dictionary, Caste means “any class or group of people who inherit exclusive privileges or are perceived as socially distinct “or” each of the hereditary classes of Hindu society, distinguished by relative degrees of ritual purity or pollution and of social status”
Inter caste relations have always been an area of interest for an intellectually able society and these relations have undergone a sea change post independence. With liberalization and globalization as the current trends, talking about caste differences appears to be a mockery in the name of modernization. But the fact of the matter is that caste differences still exist and caste consciousness still remains.
Caste has permeated every segment of the society and it is not now that caste has gained importance; it had become an integral part of our social structure even before independence, particularly in peninsular India. Economic interdependence of the caste system has weakened post independence. But it is still evident that members of different castes traditionally perform tasks for one another in Nevertheless, it is clear that members of different castes customarily perform a number of functions for one another in bucolic India that stresses on cooperation rather than competition.
There has been a ritual opposition of sanctity and pollution which since times immemorial has been a cornerstone of the hierarchical framework of caste. The norms of sanctity and pollution worked to point out the difference and categorizations of castes and sub castes. Prominent amongst them were those concerned with mingling between different castes. They determined who could dine together at a mean
According to Oxford dictionary, Caste means “any class or group of people who inherit exclusive privileges or are perceived as socially distinct “or” each of the hereditary classes of Hindu society, distinguished by relative degrees of ritual purity or pollution and of social status”
Inter caste relations have always been an area of interest for an intellectually able society and these relations have undergone a sea change post independence. With liberalization and globalization as the current trends, talking about caste differences appears to be a mockery in the name of modernization. But the fact of the matter is that caste differences still exist and caste consciousness still remains.
Caste has permeated every segment of the society and it is not now that caste has gained importance; it had become an integral part of our social structure even before independence, particularly in peninsular India. Economic interdependence of the caste system has weakened post independence. But it is still evident that members of different castes traditionally perform tasks for one another in Nevertheless, it is clear that members of different castes customarily perform a number of functions for one another in bucolic India that stresses on cooperation rather than competition.
There has been a ritual opposition of sanctity and pollution which since times immemorial has been a cornerstone of the hierarchical framework of caste. The norms of sanctity and pollution worked to point out the difference and categorizations of castes and sub castes. Prominent amongst them were those concerned with mingling between different castes. They determined who could dine together at a mean