Caste system in India: myth and reality

Because of its specificity the caste-system of India has provoked lively debate in various schools of thought. Largely owing to the researcher's grounding in a single discipline, academic studies of this complex subject, though some of them have thrown much light, seem nevertheless. to be more involved in isolated aspects such as the economic determinism that lay behind it, its ethnocentricity, occupational stratification and religious sanctification.

R. Sangeetha Rao's Caste System in India: Myth and Reality cuts across these narrow frontiers, and displaying a strong historical sense seeks to map out the hitherto uncharted transformation of a given class-structure into the caste-system of Brahminical sanction.

Against a comprehensive backdrop the volume examines in some depth several theories which traditionally explained the genesis and tenacity of the caste-system, the resources include not only ancient Sanskrit texts but also Dravidian literature. The approach has been empirical as well historical seeking to find out why the caste-system did not find uniform acceptance all over the country at the same time.

The volume makes a neat appraisal of all familiar theories such as the Aryan invasion of India and explores all other traditions like charaka, Buddhism, Mauryan world-view. The findings are that the caste-system was not monolithic as it is generally claimed to be. Depending on one's clout one would often wrest a superior status in the caste-hierarchy.

The volume explores the extra-ordinary tenacity of this system during the Moghul Rule, Bhakti Movement, Sikhism, Vaishnava. Shaiva syndrome, and also against the Dravidian value-system.

The study is not merely academic research. Comine Jecade long activism the author's as it does as a sequel of in the field the volume also charts a whole vision to restore the system to the dignity of class-struggle where man does not find himself accursed congenitally.