ADVERTISEMENTS:
Fundamental points of difference between class and caste are: (i) open us closed, (ii) divine us. secular, (iii) endogamuus, (iv) class consciousness and (v) prestige.
Above we have described the features of caste system which are generally absent from class. On the distinction between caste and class; MacIver observes, “Whereas in eastern civilizations, the chief determinant of a class and status was birth, in the western civilization of today wealth is a class determinant of equal or perhaps greater importance, and wealth is a less rigid determinant than birth; it is more concrete, and thus its claims are more easily challenged; itself a matter of degree, it is less apt to create distinctions of kind, alienable, acquirable and transferable, it draws no such permanent lines of cleavage as does birth”.
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While distinguishing class from caste, Ogburn and Nimkoff observe as follows:
“In some societies, it is not uncommon for individuals to move up or down the social ladder. Where this is the case the society is said to have “open” classes. Elsewhere there are little shifting, individuals remaining through a life-time in the class into which “they chance to be born.” Such classes are “closed”, and if, extremely differentiated, constitute a caste system.” “When a class is somewhat strictly hereditary,” states Cooley, “we may call it a caste.”
Briefly caste may be defined in the words of Warner and Davis as a rank order of superior super-ordinate orders and inferior subordinate orders which practise endogamy, prevent vertical mobility, and unequally distribute the desirable and undesirable social symbols.
Class may be defined as a rank order of superior and inferior orders which allows both exogamy and endogamy, permits movement either up or down the system, or allows an individual to remain in the status to which he was born; it also unequally distributes the lower and higher evaluated symbols.”
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The fundamental points of difference between class and caste are the following:
(i) Open us closed:
Class is more open than caste. Hiller writes, “A class system is an open system of rating levels. If a hierarchy becomes closed against vertical mobility, it ceases to be a class system and becomes a caste system.” Since class is open and elastic social mobility becomes easier. A man can by his enterprise and initiative changes his class and thereby rises in social status.
If a man is born in a labour class, it is not necessary for him to live in the class for life and die in it. He can strive for money and success in life and with wealth he can change his social status implied in the class distinction. In case of caste system it is impossible to change one’s caste status. Once a man is born in a caste he remains in it for his life-time and makes his children suffer the same fate.
A caste is thus a closed class. The individual’s status is determined by the caste status of his parents, so that what an individual does has little bearing upon his status. On the other hand the membership of a class does not depend upon hereditary basis, it rather depends on the worldly achievements of an individual. Thus class system is an open and flexible system while caste system is a closed and rigid system.
(ii) Divine us. Secular:
Secondly the caste system is believed to have been divinely ordained. MacIver writes, “the rigid demarcation of caste could scarcely be maintained were it not for strong religious persuasions. The hold of religious belief, with its supernatural explanations of caste itself is essential to the continuance of the system”.
The Hindu caste structure may have arisen out of the subjection or enslavement incidental to conquest and perhaps also out of the subordination of one endogamous community to another. But the power, prestige and pride of race thus engendered could rise to a caste system, with it social separation of groups that are not in fact set apart by any clear social signs, only as the resulting situation was rationalised and made “eternal by religious myths.” It is everybody’s religious duty to fulfill his caste duties in accordance with his ‘dharma’. In the Bhagavadgita the Creator is said to have apportioned the duties a functions of the four castes.
An individual must do the duty proper to his caste. Failure to act according to one’s caste duties meant birth in a lower caste and finally spiritual annihilation. Men of the lower castes are reborn in higher castes if they have fulfilled their duties.” Caste system in India would not have survived for so many centuries if the religious system had not made it sacred- and inviolable. On the contrary,’ there is nothing sacred or of divine origin in the class stratification of society. Classes are secular in origin. They are not founded on religious dogmas.
(iii) Endogamous:
Thirdly, the choice of mates in caste system is generally endogamous. Members have to marry within their own castes. A member marrying outside his caste is treated as outcaste. No such restrictions exist in class system. A wealthy man may marry a poor girl without being outcaste. An educated girl may marry an uneducated partner without being thrown out from the class of teachers.
(iv) Class Consciousness:
Fourthly, the feeling of class consciousness is necessary to constitute a class but there is no need for any subjective consciousness in the members of caste.
(v) Prestige:
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Fifthly, the relative prestige of the different castes is well established but in class system there is no rigidly fixed order of prestige. Recently, the Hon’ble Supreme Court while adjudging the constitutionality of job reservation for the backward classes (OBCS) as provided under Article 16(4) of the Indian Constitution has by a majority opinion upheld the criterion of caste as the determinant of a backward class. In its judgment, it has excluded all members of the so-called forward classes howsoever economically and educationally backward from the definition of backward classes. It has thus equated class with caste.