Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The institution of caste has been historically quintessential to the organisation of Indian society and its system of social stratification. This paper is an attempt to put to critical scrutiny the modernist prophecy that ‘primordial’ institutions like caste will wither away in societies organised on capitalist principle of privileging individual merit and free competition. Rooted in Weberian binary categorisation of traditional/non-Western and modern/Western societies, the argument of modernisation theorists about the withering away of all forms of ‘primitive’ social organisation is challenged in this study. Projecting the endurance of caste as an institution amidst the rapidly urbanising Indian social space, this paper underlines how urban modernity has failed to be a harbinger of egalitarian forms of social organisation. Instead of rendering caste irrelevant that Weberian theorists saw as the inevitable corollary of modernisation, paradoxically, the urban space has witnessed reinvigorated assertions based on caste identity. Based on a comprehensive survey of literature, it is argued here that caste remains a decisive factor not just in determining marital choices but also in shaping the material outcomes, social status, and spatial segregation etc. in urbanising Indian society.