Caste System in India
The mention of different groups of people with specific jobs to do and
defined occupations to pursue in the society is to be found in the
ancient texts of India. Although the term “caste” came from Portugal,
the socioeconomic stratification of the society along the lines of birth
groups (jaati ) in ancient India slowly turned over thousands of
years into a rigid system of strictly defined social groups that each
came to be associated with specific traits. But this caste system in
modern times is not just confined to the division of a society along the
lines of occupation and birth groups like in ancient India. India is the
one of the countries having caste-based reservation rather than class.
Division also occurs on the basis of socioeconomic determinants-
religion, power, technical knowledge, access to information and
political experience.
Thus, the term “caste” should not only represent a “form of social
stratification characterized by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a
lifestyle which often includes an occupation, status in a hierarchy,
customary social interaction, and exclusion” (Scott & Marshall 2005,
Winthrop 1991). A broader definition of caste to include the groups of
modern society- which include individuals from entirely different
economic, political and lately religious groups who are clubbed together
(rather smoothly) through the information that they are fed and the
representations that the media portrays of them, is needed.
India is considered to be one of the most diverse nations in the world.
It’s a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic and multi-religious
caste-oriented society. Caste system is a system of social
stratification and social restriction in India in which communities are
defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups called jatis(Bayly, 2001).
Social, economic and political inequality creates different ‘classes’ of
people. Caste is the major determinant of the social status.
Economically & politically powerful person from a low caste still may
be considered socially trivial.
This new form of stratification exists in every society and it is also
reinforced through media, particularly films. But there is always a
consistent pattern of the way the strata are separated from each other
and there are common identifiers for the groups in this system- the
lower a group lies in this stratification, the more it is identified by
and with a pre-defined set of faults and foibles. These flaws are
inseparable from the “caste” they have come to be attached to, and
each of these is played out and played around with in a systematic way
in the representations of the caste in media. Keeping in mind the above
mentioned facts, ‘caste’ - which is one of the major sources of social
identity in India - plays a significant role in understanding the power
structure as whole.