(a) Caste system studies in India have been dominated by the "book-view" initially. How did the entry of "field-view" bring about…

(a) Book-view and field-view in caste studies

The book-view studied caste through classical texts such as the Dharmashastras, as in Senart, Max Weber and Louis Dumont, and in India Ghurye drew heavily on texts. It presented caste as a pan-Indian, fourfold varna hierarchy of ritual purity and pollution, static and unchanging.

The field-view rests on village studies by M. N. Srinivas (Rampura), André Béteille (Sripuram) and others. They showed caste as lived jati groups tied to a locality, where land, numbers and political power matter as much as ritual rank. It brought concepts such as the dominant caste and Sanskritisation (mobility within a hierarchy), and the jajmani and patron-client ties.

Together they balance the picture: the book-view gives the ideological framework, the field-view shows actual practice, change and power. Neither alone explains caste.

(b) Ambedkar's "Annihilation of Caste"

In The Annihilation of Caste (1936, a speech prepared for the Jat-Pat Todak Mandal, Lahore), Ambedkar argued that caste is not merely a division of labour but a division of labourers, a hierarchy that fixes occupation by birth and blocks mobility.

He held that caste is sanctioned by the Shastras and Smritis, so it cannot be reformed while their authority is accepted; annihilation required rejecting that authority. Unlike Gandhi, who defended a purified varna order, he rejected it. He saw inter-dining as insufficient and inter-caste marriage as the real solvent of endogamy, which he took to be the essence of caste.

Annihilation means a society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. After failing to reform Hinduism, he embraced Buddhism in 1956.

(c) Forms of kinship in India

Irawati Karve's Kinship Organisation in India (1953) divided India into four kinship zones: northern, central, southern and eastern.

• North India: patrilineal and patrilocal, with clan (gotra) and village exogamy, and a taboo on cross-cousin marriage; marriage often joins unequal groups (hypergamy).
• South India (Dravidian): marriage with cross-cousins and sometimes the maternal uncle is permitted or preferred, which keeps property and alliance within known kin.
• Matrilineal groups: the Nayars of Kerala (tarawad) and the Khasi and Garo of Meghalaya trace descent and inheritance through the mother, though authority often rests with the maternal uncle.

Urbanisation, migration and law are pushing all these forms towards nuclear, bilateral households, though kin obligations persist.

(d) "Little Republics" and Indian villages

Charles Metcalfe's 1830 minute described Indian villages as little republics: self-sufficient, unchanging, independent of dynastic change. Marx's picture of the stagnant Asiatic village was similar.

Critique: villages were never isolated, being tied to the state through taxation, trade and caste networks. Srinivas (The Indian village: myth and reality) and Dumont showed an internally hierarchical society, not an egalitarian republic. Ambedkar, in the Constituent Assembly (1948), called the village "a sink of localism, a den of ignorance", where Dalits suffered. Later change through the Green Revolution, markets, land reform and the 73rd Amendment (Panchayati Raj) further breaks the image.

The phrase captures a colonial administrative fiction more than social reality.

(e) Caste-like formations among non-Hindu communities

Though their doctrines are egalitarian, non-Hindu communities in India show caste-like stratification, mainly because converts carried local hierarchies with them.

• Muslims: Ghaus Ansari and Imtiaz Ahmad documented a three-tier order: Ashraf (claiming foreign or noble descent, such as Sayyid and Sheikh), Ajlaf (occupational and convert groups, such as Ansari and Julaha) and Arzal (lowest, associated with polluting work), marked by endogamy.
• Christians: Syrian Christians in Kerala hold higher status than Latin and Dalit Christians; Dalit Christians in parts of Tamil Nadu face separate seating, churches or burial grounds.
• Sikhs: Jat Sikhs, Ramgarhias and Dalit groups such as Mazhabi and Ravidassia keep distinct, largely endogamous identities despite Sikh egalitarianism.

Hierarchy, endogamy and hereditary occupation persist without scriptural sanction.