Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. What is varna?
Answer: Varna is the four-fold, all-India division of society into brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra.
Q. What is jati?
Answer: Jati is a generic word for ‘species’ or ‘kind’ of anything, and the most common word for caste in Indian languages. Scholars most commonly take jati to be a regional or local sub-classification, made up of hundreds or even thousands of castes and sub-castes.
Q. What is endogamy?
Answer: Endogamy is the rule that marriage is restricted to members of one’s own caste group.
Q. Who coined the terms ‘sanskritisation’ and ‘dominant caste’?
Answer: Both terms were coined by the sociologist M.N. Srinivas.
Q. Which Act created the terms ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Scheduled Tribes’?
Answer: The Government of India Act, 1935.
Q. What is a nuclear family?
Answer: A nuclear family consists of only one set of parents and their children.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Distinguish between varna and jati.
Answer: Varna is an all-India, four-fold classification (brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya, shudra), the same across the whole country. Jati is a regional or local sub-classification, made up of hundreds or thousands of castes and sub-castes that vary from region to region.
Q. What is meant by the ‘segmental organisation’ of caste?
Answer: It means that castes almost always have sub-castes within them, and sometimes those sub-castes have further sub-castes of their own, so the caste system is organised as divisions within divisions.
Q. Name any two dominant castes named in the chapter, with their states.
Answer: Any two, for example: the Yadavs of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and the Vokkaligas of Karnataka. (Other valid answers: Reddys/Khammas of Andhra Pradesh, Marathas of Maharashtra, Jats of Punjab/Haryana/Western UP, Patidars of Gujarat.)
Q. What is meant by a tribe’s ‘permanent’ and ‘acquired’ traits?
Answer: Permanent traits are region, language, physical characteristics and ecological habitat. Acquired traits are based on mode of livelihood and the extent of a tribe’s assimilation into Hindu society.
Q. Give two pieces of evidence against the idea that tribes are primitive communities untouched by civilisation.
Answer: Any two: (1) Tribes like Santhal, Gonds and Bhils are very large and spread over extensive territory, not small isolated bands. (2) Tribes like Munda and Hos turned to settled agriculture long ago. (3) Even the hunting-gathering Birhors of Bihar run specialised craft households. (4) There were historical Gond kingdoms such as Garha Mandla and Chanda.
Q. Distinguish between matrilocal and patrilocal residence.
Answer: In a matrilocal marriage custom, the newly married couple lives with the wife’s parents. In a patrilocal marriage custom, the couple lives with the husband’s parents.
Q. Why is the 1901 Census considered significant in the history of caste?
Answer: The 1901 Census, conducted under Herbert Risley, specifically tried to rank castes in a social hierarchy. This led representatives of different castes to send hundreds of petitions to the Census Commissioner claiming a higher rank, and scholars believe this direct attempt to count and record caste changed the institution itself, making caste identities more rigid than before.
Q. What was the Satyashodhak Samaj?
Answer: The Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth Seekers’ Society) was founded by Jotirao Govindrao Phule in 1873, devoted to securing human rights and social justice for low-caste people.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Explain any four of the six features that the chapter uses to define caste.
Answer: Any four of: (1) Caste is determined by birth; it is never a matter of choice, although there are instances where a person may be expelled from their caste. (2) Caste groups are endogamous; marriage is restricted to members of the same group. (3) Caste involves rules about food and food-sharing: what may be eaten, and with whom. (4) Caste involves a system of many castes arranged in a hierarchy of rank and status. (5) Castes have a segmental organisation, sub-castes within castes. (6) Castes were traditionally linked to hereditary occupation, passed from generation to generation.
Q. Explain the theory that caste combines two organising principles.
Answer: The caste system combines difference and separation with wholism and hierarchy. Under difference and separation, every caste is meant to be strictly separated from every other caste, and many of the scriptural rules, from marriage, food-sharing and social interaction to occupation, are designed to prevent castes from mixing. Under wholism and hierarchy, no single caste exists independently; each caste only exists as part of the total system of all castes, and that total system is organised as a hierarchy, not as equals, with a fixed ordered rank running from highest to lowest.
Q. Distinguish between sanskritisation and dominant caste, with an example of each.
Answer: Sanskritisation is a cultural process: members of a middle or lower caste raise their social status by adopting the ritual, domestic and social practices of a higher caste. Dominant caste is a term for castes that had a large population and were granted landrights by the partial land reforms after Independence; with these they gained real economic and political power in the countryside. Example of sanskritisation (illustrative, outside the book): a lower caste adopting vegetarianism and upper-caste rituals to raise its status. Example of dominant caste: the Jats of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh.
Q. Explain why caste has become ‘invisible’ for the urban upper-caste middle and upper classes.
Answer: This group benefited most from post-colonial development: subsidised public education, including professional education in science, technology, medicine and management, and the expansion of public-sector jobs in the early decades after Independence. Their early lead in education meant they did not face any serious competition. As their privileged status got consolidated in the second and third generations, these groups came to believe their advancement had little to do with caste; for the third generation, economic and educational capital alone is quite sufficient to secure the best life chances. For them, caste now feels confined to the private sphere of religion, marriage and kinship. However, not every upper-caste person is privileged; some are poor.
Q. Explain the classification of tribes on the basis of permanent traits.
Answer: Permanent traits include region, language, physical characteristics and ecological habitat. By region, about 85% of tribals live in ‘middle India’ (Gujarat/Rajasthan to West Bengal/Odisha), with over 11% in the North-East and a little over 3% in the rest of India. By language, tribes are divided into four groups: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian (shared with the rest of the population) and Austric and Tibeto-Burman (spoken mainly by tribals). By physical characteristics, tribes are classified as Negrito, Australoid, Mongoloid, Dravidian or Aryan. Ecological habitats range from hills and forests to rural plains and urban industrial areas.
Q. Explain how national development has cost tribal communities disproportionately.
Answer: Because tribal areas were located in the mineral-rich and forest-covered parts of the country, tribals paid a disproportionate price for Nehruvian-era development (large dams, factories and mines). Mineral exploitation and hydroelectric projects, many of them at sites in tribal areas, dispossessed tribals of their land. Systematic exploitation of forests, begun in British times and continued after Independence, hurt tribal communities that depended on forests for their livelihood. Introducing private property in land disadvantaged tribal communities that traditionally held land collectively. Development pressure also drew heavy in-migration of non-tribals into tribal areas, for example diluting Jharkhand’s tribal population share and halving Tripura’s tribal share within a single decade.
Q. Distinguish between matriliny and matriarchy.
Answer: Matriliny is a rule of inheritance found in real societies: in matrilineal societies, property passes from mother to daughter. However, women in these societies inherit property from their mothers but do not exercise control over it, nor are they the decision makers in public affairs. Matriarchy would mean women hold dominant authority the way men do in a patriarchy, but the chapter states plainly that matriarchy is a theoretical concept only; there is no historical or anthropological evidence of any society where women actually exercise this kind of dominance.
Q. Explain the diverse forms that a family can take.
Answer: A family can be nuclear (one set of parents and their children) or extended/joint (more than one couple, often more than two generations, living together). It can be male-headed or female-headed. Its rule of residence can be matrilocal (couple lives with the wife’s parents) or patrilocal (with the husband’s parents). Its rule of inheritance can be matrilineal (property to daughters) or patrilineal (property to sons). Its authority structure can be patriarchal (men dominant) or, theoretically, matriarchal, though the book notes there is no historical or anthropological evidence of matriarchy.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. ‘Caste was a very unequal institution.’ Discuss this statement with reference to its historical features and colonial and contemporary changes.
Answer: Historical features: Caste’s six defining features (birth, endogamy, food rules, hierarchy, segmental organisation, hereditary occupation) meant that a person’s life chances were fixed at birth: once caste became rigidly determined by birth, it was in principle impossible to change one’s life circumstances; the hierarchy was based on purity and pollution, so some castes always had high status and others always low, regardless of merit. Colonial changes: British surveys and the decennial census (especially the 1901 Census under Herbert Risley) hardened caste identities that had once been more fluid, as castes petitioned for higher rank. As part of the administration’s efforts for the welfare of the downtrodden ‘depressed classes’, the Government of India Act, 1935 gave legal recognition to the schedules of castes and tribes, which created the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories. Contemporary changes: the post-Independence state committed to abolishing caste constitutionally and introduced reservation for SC/ST, but caste inequality persists strongly in the cultural and domestic sphere (endogamy remains largely unaffected, although there are more inter-caste marriages) and even shapes electoral politics through caste-based parties. Conclusion: while some sanskritisation and dominant-caste mobility has occurred, caste’s basic inequality, especially the invisible privilege of the upper castes versus the inescapable visibility of caste for SC/ST/backward castes, continues today.
Q. Discuss the debate on whether tribes are part of a continuum with caste society or an altogether different kind of community. What did the 1970s critique establish?
Answer: In the 1960s, one group of scholars argued tribes were one end of a continuum with caste-based (Hindu) peasant society: not fundamentally different, just less stratified (fewer levels of hierarchy) and more community-based than individual in resource ownership. The opposing view held that tribes were wholly different from castes because they lacked the notion of purity and pollution central to caste society, and were seen as more egalitarian and kinship-based (‘animist’). By the 1970s, however, all the major definitions of ‘tribe’ were shown to be faulty: the tribe-peasantry distinction failed against every commonly used criterion, size, isolation, religion and livelihood. The book’s own counter-evidence: Santhal, Gonds and Bhils are large and widely spread (not small and isolated); Munda and Hos practise settled agriculture (not purely ‘tribal’ livelihoods); even the hunting-gathering Birhors of Bihar run specialised craft households; and in the absence of alternatives, some non-tribal ‘castes’ have themselves taken up hunting and gathering. In short, the argument for a tribe-caste distinction had been founded on an assumed cultural difference between purity-conscious, hierarchical Hindu castes and more egalitarian, kinship-based ‘animist’ tribals, and by the 1970s the commonly advanced criteria no longer supported it.
Q. Discuss the impact of national development policies on tribal communities in India, with examples.
Answer: ‘Development’, especially in the Nehruvian era, meant large dams, factories and mines. Because tribal areas were located in the mineral-rich and forest-covered parts of the country, tribals paid a disproportionate price for the development of the rest of society. Tribals were dispossessed of their land as a necessary byproduct of mineral exploitation and of hydroelectric plants, many of which were sited in tribal areas, and mainstream society benefited at the tribals’ expense. The systematic exploitation of forests, beginning in British times and continuing after Independence, deprived most tribal communities of a resource they depended on. The introduction of private property in land disadvantaged tribal communities whose ownership was traditionally community-based and collective. Development pressure also caused heavy in-migration of non-tribals into tribal-concentration areas: the industrial areas of Jharkhand saw a decline in the tribal share of the population, in Tripura (the most dramatic cases are probably in the North-East) the tribal share of the population was halved within a single decade (turning tribals into a minority there), and Arunachal Pradesh faces similar pressure today. Conclusion: national development has consistently imposed a disproportionate cost on tribal communities relative to the benefit the rest of society received.
Q. ‘Caste is invisible for some and inescapable for others.’ Explain this statement.
Answer: For the upper-caste, urban middle and upper classes, caste has become almost invisible precisely because it worked so well for them: their caste status gave them access to subsidised professional education and the early expansion of public-sector jobs after Independence. By the second and third generation, these groups came to believe their advancement had little to do with caste, and caste now feels confined to the private sphere of religion, marriage and kinship. This group, however, is not uniform: not every upper-caste person is privileged, and some are poor. For Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and backward castes, the opposite is true: caste has become MORE visible, often eclipsing every other dimension of their identity. Because they lack inherited educational and social capital, and must compete with an already-entrenched upper-caste group, they cannot afford to abandon their caste identity, it is one of their few collective assets. Reservation and other protective-discrimination policies act as their lifeline, but using this lifeline tends to make their caste the all-important and often the only aspect of their identity that the world recognises.
Q. Discuss the different forms family can take, and explain why family structure is linked to changes in the wider society.
Answer: A family can be nuclear or extended/joint; male-headed or female-headed; matrilocal or patrilocal in residence; matrilineal or patrilineal in inheritance; and patriarchal (though matriarchy remains only a theoretical, undocumented concept). India’s family discussions have mostly centred on the nuclear-versus-extended distinction, though the extended (‘joint’) family, despite popular belief, has never been India’s dominant family form; it was confined to certain sections and certain regions, and the very term ‘joint family’ is a translated English import, not a native Indian concept (I.P. Desai). Family structure is linked to wider society because the family is the private sphere, connected to the public spheres: economic, political, cultural and educational. For example, male migration from Himalayan-region villages for work can lead to an unusual proportion of women-headed households, and demanding work schedules in India’s software industry lead more grandparents to move in as caregivers. Change in family structure can be accidental (war, migration) or deliberate (young people choosing their own spouses, or same-sex love expressed openly), and such change is often resisted violently, showing how closely family norms are tied to the rest of society’s values.
Q. Trace the changes that colonialism and Independence brought to the institution of caste.
Answer: Colonial changes: British administrators initially surveyed caste customs to govern more efficiently. The decennial census, regular from 1881, and especially the 1901 Census under Herbert Risley, tried to officially rank castes, prompting hundreds of petitions for higher rank and making caste identity more rigid than before. The Government of India Act, 1935 created the legal categories of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Not all of these changes were intended, and the whole world was changing rapidly in this period due to the spread of capitalism and modernity. Pre-Independence reform: efforts to organise the ‘depressed classes’ and the untouchable castes began in the second half of the nineteenth century, from upper-caste reformers and from lower-caste leaders such as Jotirao Phule, Ayyankali, Sri Narayana Guru and Periyar; from the 1920s Gandhi and Ambedkar organised protests against untouchability. Anti-untouchability became a significant part of the Congress agenda, and by the time Independence was on the horizon there was broad agreement across the nationalist movement to abolish caste distinctions. Post-Independence changes: the Constitution committed the state to abolishing caste, and reservation was introduced for SC/ST, but the state avoided the radical economic reforms that would have undermined caste inequality at its root. Modern industry and urbanisation weakened some caste practices, but caste proved resilient in industrial recruitment, cultural/domestic life (endogamy), and especially in democratic politics, where caste-based political parties have existed since the 1980s. Conclusion: colonialism and Independence together transformed caste from a locally variable, somewhat fluid system into a more rigid, officially recorded, and politically active institution, rather than eliminating it.
5 Case Studies
One of the most significant yet paradoxical changes in the caste system in the contemporary period is that it has tended to become ‘invisible’ for the upper caste, urban middle and upper classes. For these groups, who have benefited the most from the developmental policies of the post-colonial era, caste has appeared to decline in significance precisely because it has done its job so well. Their caste status had been crucial in ensuring that these groups had the necessary economic and educational resources to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by rapid development. For the scheduled castes and tribes and the backward castes, the opposite has happened. For them, caste has become all too visible, indeed their caste has tended to eclipse the other dimensions of their identities.
(A) 1 mark For which group has caste become ‘invisible’, according to the passage?
Answer: The upper caste, urban middle and upper classes.
(B) 2 marks Why does the passage say caste has become invisible ‘precisely because it has done its job so well’ for this group?
Answer: Because their caste status had already secured them the economic and educational resources they needed to benefit fully from post-colonial development, so caste no longer needs to visibly act on their behalf; its advantage is already banked.
(C) 3 marks Contrast this with what has happened to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and backward castes, according to the passage and the chapter as a whole.
Answer: For these groups, the opposite has happened: caste has become MORE visible, often eclipsing every other part of their identity. Lacking inherited educational and social capital, and competing with an already-entrenched upper-caste group, they cannot afford to abandon their caste identity, for it is one of the few collective assets they have. Reservation and other protective discrimination serve as their lifelines, but using this lifeline tends to make their caste the all-important and often the only aspect of their identity that the world recognises.
The imperatives of ‘development’ have governed attitudes towards tribes and shaped the policies of the state. National development, particularly in the Nehruvian era, involved the building of large dams, factories and mines. Because the tribal areas were located in mineral rich and forest covered parts of the country, tribals have paid a disproportionate price for the development of the rest of Indian society. The loss of the forests on which most tribal communities depended has been a major blow. Many tribal concentration regions and states have also been experiencing the problem of heavy in-migration of non-tribals in response to the pressures of development.
(A) 1 mark What kind of infrastructure did ‘national development’ mainly involve in the Nehruvian era?
Answer: Large dams, factories and mines.
(B) 2 marks Why did tribal communities pay a ‘disproportionate price’ for this development, according to the passage?
Answer: Because the tribal areas were located in the mineral-rich and forest-covered parts of the country, tribals have paid a disproportionate price for the development of the rest of Indian society, including the loss of forests and land.
(C) 3 marks Explain, using the chapter’s own examples, how in-migration of non-tribals has affected specific tribal areas.
Answer: The industrial areas of Jharkhand saw the tribal share of the population decline due to in-migration. The most dramatic cases are probably in the North-East: in Tripura the tribal share of the state’s population was cut in half within a single decade, turning tribals into a minority in their own state. Arunachal Pradesh faces similar pressure today.