(a) Contextualize Louis Dumont's concept of 'binary opposition' with reference to caste system in India. (20 marks) (b) Define…

(a) Dumont's binary opposition and the caste system

In Homo Hierarchicus (1966; English 1970) Louis Dumont argued that caste is a system of ideas and values organised around a single binary opposition, the pure and the impure. Castes are ranked by their relation to ritual purity, so the Brahmin, at the pure pole, stands above the Dalit, whose occupations are polluting. The key feature is that hierarchy works by "encompassment": the higher term includes and subordinates the lower, and status is separated from power and wealth, so the pure Brahmin encompasses the powerful Kshatriya king, who depends on the priest for legitimacy. This gives a holistic, religious and non-individualist order, which Dumont contrasted with Western homo aequalis, where equality and the individual are the values. The opposition explains untouchability, commensal and marriage restrictions, occupational specialisation and the segmentary division of castes.

The concept is powerful but contested. Srinivas and Marriott stressed transactions and dominance; Dipankar Gupta and Declan Quigley argued that the king and politics, not just Brahmins, organise rank; Gloria Raheja's work on Pahansu shows auspiciousness and centrality as well as purity; and Nicholas Dirks argued that colonial rule shaped the caste Dumont describes. Dumont nonetheless remains the main ideological account of caste.

(b) Descent and alliance; North and South Indian kinship

Descent theory (Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard) treats kinship as the transmission of group membership, property and status through lines of descent, patrilineal, matrilineal or bilateral, and studies lineage and clan. Alliance theory (Lévi-Strauss; Dumont for India) treats marriage as an exchange between groups, in which wife-givers and wife-takers form lasting relations, and the rules of marriage create kinship.

Irawati Karve (Kinship Organization in India, 1953) distinguished regional zones. In the North, kinship is patrilineal with strict exogamy: gotra, sapinda and often village exogamy, so brides come from distant villages. Marriage is hypergamous, wife-givers rank below wife-takers, relationships are asymmetrical, and kin terms are distinct for father's and mother's side. In the South, among Dravidian-speaking groups, preferential marriage with kin is common: cross-cousins (mother's brother's daughter or father's sister's daughter) and uncle-niece unions, as in many Tamil and Telugu non-Brahmin castes. The same persons are kin and affines, the terms follow the parallel-cross distinction (Dumont; Trautmann), and marriage is nearer, symmetrical and repeated between families. Exceptions exist: Nayars of Kerala were matrilineal, and Brahmins in the South follow the northern prohibitions on cross-cousin marriage.

(c) Sanskritisation: a critical examination

M.N. Srinivas (Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, 1952; Social Change in Modern India, 1966) defined Sanskritisation as the process by which a low caste or tribe adopts the customs, rituals, vegetarianism and ideology of a higher, usually twice-born, caste, hoping to raise its position in the local hierarchy. Examples include the Coorgs, Ahirs and Yadavs who claimed Kshatriya status, and Ezhavas and some tribal groups who adopted Brahmanical practice. Srinivas treated it as positional change, not structural change.

Strengths. It explains cultural mobility within caste and the reference role of the dominant caste.

Criticisms. It gives a Brahmin-centred, ritual model and ignores mobility through political power, wealth, education and reservation (Béteille, Yogendra Singh). It is of little use for Dalits, who face a backlash when they claim upper-caste symbols; many reject it and turn to Ambedkarite Buddhism or assertion of a separate identity. It tightens control of women through seclusion and dowry. It is also not a structural change, since hierarchy remains, and it ignores de-Sanskritisation and the processes of Westernisation and secularisation. It is best seen as one of several mobility routes.