When caste barriers fall: a study of social and economic change in a south Indian village

In discussing symptoms of disintegration of caste E. R. Leach (1960:6) asks: 'If a caste group turns itself into a political faction does it then cease to be a caste?" This is a very direct and simple question and if it could be answered
as directly as it was put this study would have been provided with an easy and definite conclusion. People in the village where this study was made are intensely engaged in what they explicitly recognize as politi cal activity, with wealth and poverty in combination providing the main incentives and external ideologies lending direction and coher ence. Various incidents reported in this monograph will show that the people have come far in defying the principles of caste. But as regards the actual process it is not possible to distinguish absolutely between caste and not-caste. Caste barriers are broken and the conflicts are actions between party and counter-party, but caste still remains important as a form of social identity. A comparable situation is found, for example, in British Somaliland where, according to J. M. Lewis (1958), for the purposes of political grouping one has to take lineage group membership into account as much as modern political party membership.