Complete solutions to all ten questions printed at the end of NCERT Class 12 Sociology, Indian Society, Chapter 3 Social Institutions: Continuity and Change. The questions are reproduced in the book’s own wording, and each answer is written the way it should be written in the exam.
1 Question 1
Q. What is the role of the ideas of separation and hierarchy in the caste system?
Answer:
The caste system can be understood as a combination of two sets of principles: difference and separation, and wholism and hierarchy.
Separation. Each caste is supposed to be different from, and is therefore strictly separated from, every other caste. Many of the scriptural rules of caste, on marriage, food-sharing, social interaction and occupation, are designed to prevent the mixing of castes. A person cannot marry outside their caste, cannot always share food with another caste, and cannot take up another caste’s occupation.
Hierarchy. These separated castes do not exist independently; they only exist as part of a larger whole, the total system of all castes. This system is hierarchical rather than equal: every caste occupies not just a distinct place but an ordered rank, in a ladder-like arrangement running from highest to lowest. This hierarchy is based on the distinction between purity and pollution: castes considered ritually pure have high status, and castes considered impure or polluting have low status.
So separation keeps castes apart, and hierarchy ranks them once they are apart. Together, the two principles explain why caste is both a system of many distinct groups and, at the same time, a single unequal structure that all of those groups belong to.
2 Question 2
Q. What are some of the rules that the caste system imposes?
Answer:
The caste system prescribes six main rules, found in ancient scriptural texts:
1. Birth. Caste is determined by birth. A child is “born into” the caste of its parents, and caste is never a matter of choice; a person cannot change, leave or refuse a caste, although there are instances where a person may be expelled from their caste.
2. Endogamy. Marriage is restricted to members of one’s own caste group.
3. Food rules. Rules govern what kind of food may or may not be eaten, and who one may share food with.
4. Hierarchy. Every caste has a specified place in a hierarchy of rank and status, running from highest to lowest, though the exact position of middle-ranking castes can vary by region.
5. Segmental organisation. Castes almost always have sub-castes, and sometimes those sub-castes have further sub-castes of their own.
6. Hereditary occupation. A person born into a caste could traditionally only follow that caste’s own occupation, and that occupation could only be followed by that caste; occupation passed from generation to generation.
These are the prescribed rules of ancient texts; the chapter is careful to note that we cannot know for certain how strictly they were followed in everyday life.
3 Question 3
Q. What changes did colonialism bring about in the caste system?
Answer:
Colonialism brought about major changes in the institution of caste; the book says it may be more accurate to call them fundamental changes. Not all of these changes were intended or deliberate.
1. Surveys and study. British administrators, initially trying to understand caste in order to govern efficiently, conducted methodical surveys and reports on the “customs and manners” of India’s tribes and castes. Many British officials were also amateur ethnologists interested in these studies.
2. The census. The most important official effort to collect information on caste was through the census: begun in the 1860s, made a regular ten-yearly exercise from 1881. The 1901 Census under Herbert Risley specifically tried to record the social hierarchy of caste, ranking each caste’s position. This prompted hundreds of petitions to the Census Commissioner from representatives of different castes claiming a higher rank, with historical or scriptural evidence offered in support.
3. Caste identity hardened. Before this kind of intervention, caste identities were much more fluid and less rigid. Once castes began to be counted and officially recorded, caste “began to take on a new life”: the very act of counting and recording changed the institution.
4. Legal categories created. The administration also took an interest in the welfare of downtrodden castes, then called the “depressed classes”. The Government of India Act, 1935 gave legal recognition to official lists (“schedules”) of castes and tribes marked for special treatment, this is how the terms “Scheduled Castes” and “Scheduled Tribes” came into being. Castes suffering the most severe discrimination, including all “untouchable” castes, were placed among the Scheduled Castes.
5. A world of rapid change. Not just India but the whole world was changing rapidly in this period, due to the spread of capitalism and modernity.
Overall, colonialism did not simply record caste as it already was, it actively reshaped the institution, making it more rigid, more officially documented, and, through the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories, more directly tied to state policy than before.
4 Question 4
Q. In what sense has caste become relatively ‘invisible’ for the urban upper castes?
Answer:
Caste has become almost invisible for the upper-caste, urban middle and upper classes, precisely because it did its job so well for them in the past.
1. Why it worked so well. Their caste status was crucial in giving these groups the economic and educational resources needed to take full advantage of rapid post-Independence development: subsidised public education, especially professional education in science, technology, medicine and management, and the expansion of public-sector jobs in the early decades after Independence.
2. No competition in the early period. Their early lead in education meant they faced no serious competition from other groups at that stage.
3. Advantage consolidated across generations. As their privileged status got consolidated in the second and third generations, these groups began to believe that their advancement had little to do with caste. For the third generation, their economic and educational capital alone is quite sufficient to ensure that they continue to get the best life chances.
4. Caste retreats to the private sphere. For this group, caste now seems to play no part in public life; it is limited to the personal sphere of religious practice, marriage and kinship, which is why caste feels “invisible” to them.
5. A necessary qualification. This privileged group is not perfectly uniform: while the privileged as a group are overwhelmingly upper caste, not all upper-caste people are privileged, some are poor.
5 Question 5
Q. How have tribes been classified in India?
Answer:
Tribes are classified in India according to two kinds of characteristics: “permanent” and “acquired” traits.
Permanent traits.
Region. About 85% of the tribal population lives in “middle India”, a band from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to West Bengal and Odisha in the east, with Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh at its heart. Of the remaining 15%, over 11% live in the North-Eastern states and about 3% in the rest of the country. By share of state population, all North-Eastern states except Assam have more than 30% tribal population, some (Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland) more than 60% up to 95%, while in the rest of the country (outside the North-East) the tribal share is less than 12% in all states except Odisha and Madhya Pradesh.
Language. Tribes are grouped into four language categories. Indo-Aryan and Dravidian are shared with the rest of the population (tribes are only about 1% of Indo-Aryan speakers and about 3% of Dravidian speakers). Austric and Tibeto-Burman are spoken mainly by tribals (tribes account for all Austric speakers and over 80% of Tibeto-Burman speakers).
Physical characteristics. Tribes are classified as Negrito, Australoid, Mongoloid, Dravidian or Aryan (the last two shared with the rest of India’s population).
Ecological habitat. Hills, forests, rural plains and urban industrial areas.
Acquired traits.
Mode of livelihood. Fishermen, food gatherers and hunters, shifting cultivators, peasants, and plantation and industrial workers.
Assimilation into Hindu society. This is the dominant classification in academic sociology as well as in politics and public affairs. It can be viewed from the tribes’ own point of view (how far they have assimilated, and their attitude to Hinduism, positive or resistant) or from the Hindu mainstream’s point of view (the status accorded to them, ranging from high to generally low).
6 Question 6
Q. What evidence would you offer against the view that ‘tribes are primitive communities living isolated lives untouched by civilisation’?
Answer:
By the 1970s, all the major definitions of “tribe” were shown to be faulty; the tribe-peasantry distinction did not hold up against any of the commonly advanced criteria: size, isolation, religion, or means of livelihood. The book’s own evidence against the “primitive, untouched” view includes:
1. Size and spread. Tribes like Santhal, Gonds and Bhils are very large and spread over extensive territory, not small, isolated bands.
2. Settled agriculture. Tribes like Munda and Hos have long since turned to settled agriculture, showing they are not fixed at a “primitive” hunting-gathering stage.
3. Division of labour among hunter-gatherers themselves. Even the hunting-gathering Birhors of Bihar employ specialised households to make baskets, press oil and do other specialised work, a form of economic organisation, not simple primitiveness.
4. Non-tribals also hunt and gather. In the absence of other alternatives, “castes” (non-tribals) have themselves turned to hunting and gathering, so this livelihood alone cannot mark out a separate, “primitive” category of people.
5. A history of political power. Adivasis were not always the oppressed groups they are today. Central India had several Gond kingdoms, such as Garha Mandla and Chanda, and many so-called “Rajput” kingdoms of central and western India actually emerged through stratification within adivasi communities themselves. Adivasis often dominated plains people through raiding and by serving as local militias, and had a special trading niche in forest produce, salt and elephants.
6. Long contact with the mainstream. The capitalist economy’s drive to exploit forest resources and minerals, and to recruit cheap labour, brought tribal societies into contact with mainstream society a long time ago, so the idea of an “untouched” tribal world has not been true for a long time.
7. Tribes as “secondary” phenomena. Some scholars argue there is no coherent basis for treating tribes as “pristine” societies. They see tribes as “secondary” phenomena, arising out of exploitative and colonialist contact between pre-existing states and non-state groups; this contact itself creates an ideology of “tribalism”.
7 Question 7
Q. What are the factors behind the assertion of tribal identities today?
Answer:
1. Interaction, not “primordial” traits. Tribal identities today are shaped by an ongoing interactional process with the mainstream, not by any original or ancient (“primordial”) tribal characteristic.
2. Unfavourable terms of interaction. Because interaction with the mainstream has generally happened on terms unfavourable to tribal communities, many tribal identities today are centred on resisting the “overwhelming force of the non-tribal world”.
3. An educated tribal middle class. A significant factor is the gradual emergence of an educated middle class among tribal communities, most visible in the North-Eastern states but now appearing elsewhere too, especially among larger tribal communities. This middle class is itself a product of modern education and modern occupations, helped by reservation policies.
4. Two sets of underlying issues. Tribal movements are driven by two broad kinds of issues: control over vital economic resources, especially land and forests, and issues of ethnic-cultural identity. The two can go together, but as tribal society becomes more internally differentiated (developing its own class divisions), they can also pull apart, the middle class’s reasons for asserting tribal identity can differ from why poor, uneducated tribals join a tribal movement.
As Virginius Xaxa puts it (Box 3.1), issues of culture, tradition, livelihood, control over land and resources, and demands for a share in the benefits of “modernity” have all become part of how tribal identity is asserted today, and this new consciousness comes especially from the tribal middle classes.
8 Question 8
Q. What are some of the different forms that the family can take?
Answer:
A family can be studied both as an institution in itself, and in how it relates to other institutions in society. In itself, a family can take several different forms:
1. Nuclear or extended. A nuclear family has only one set of parents and their children. An extended family, commonly called a “joint family”, has more than one couple, often more than two generations, living together: for example, several brothers with their own families, or an elderly couple with their sons, grandsons and their families. The extended family is popularly seen as typical of India, but the chapter is explicit that it is not the dominant family form, now or in the past; it was confined to certain sections and certain regions.
2. Male-headed or female-headed. A family can be headed by a man or by a woman.
3. Matrilineal or patrilineal. The line of descent, and the passing on of property, can run through the mother’s side (matrilineal) or the father’s side (patrilineal).
4. Matrilocal or patrilocal. The rule of residence after marriage can require the couple to live with the wife’s parents (matrilocal) or the husband’s parents (patrilocal).
5. Patriarchal or, theoretically, matriarchal. A patriarchal family gives men authority and dominance. A matriarchal family would give women a similarly dominant role, but the chapter notes that matriarchy is a theoretical, not an empirical, concept; there is no historical or anthropological evidence of any society where women actually hold this kind of dominance.
9 Question 9
Q. In what ways can changes in social structure lead to changes in the family structure?
Answer:
The internal structure of a family is usually connected to other structures of society, political, economic and cultural, so a change in the wider society tends to change family structure too.
Example 1: migration. The migration of men from villages of the Himalayan region for work can lead to an unusually high proportion of women-headed families in those villages.
Example 2: changing work patterns. The demanding work schedules of young parents in India’s software industry can lead to more grandparents moving in as caregivers for young grandchildren, changing the household’s composition.
Accidental change. Sometimes family change happens by accident, for example when a war takes place or people migrate in search of work.
Deliberate change. Sometimes change is deliberate, for example when young people choose their own spouses instead of letting elders decide, or when same-sex love is expressed openly in society.
Cultural change follows. These structural changes show that it is not only family structures that change, but also the cultural ideas, norms and values around them. However, such change is not easy to bring about: history and contemporary times both suggest that changes to family and marriage norms are often resisted violently.
In short, the family (the private sphere) is linked to the economic, political, cultural and educational (public) spheres, so changes in the wider society can often be traced in changes to family composition or structure.
10 Question 10
Q. Explain the difference between matriliny and matriarchy.
Answer:
Matriliny and matriarchy sound similar but describe two very different things, and this is one of the most commonly confused pairs of terms in the chapter.
Matriliny (matrilineal societies). This is a rule of inheritance: in a matrilineal society, property passes from mother to daughter. Matrilineal societies do exist. However, in these societies women inherit property from their mothers but do not exercise control over it, nor are they the decision makers in public affairs.
Matriarchy. This would mean a society where women exercise dominance, the way men do in a patriarchy. The chapter states plainly that matriarchy is a theoretical, not an empirical, concept: there is no historical or anthropological evidence of any society where women have actually held this kind of dominance.
The difference in one line. Matriliny is about who property is passed to (mother to daughter), an arrangement found in real societies. Matriarchy is about who holds power (a hypothetical female-dominant society), a concept with no historical or anthropological evidence behind it. So a society can be matrilineal without being matriarchal.