“”Vertical mobility brings structural change even in a closed social system.” Comment.” (2016)
The statement claims that movement up and down a rigid hierarchy eventually changes the hierarchy itself. Judging it depends on a distinction drawn by M. N. Srinivas: positional change, where a group changes rank within an unaltered order, versus structural change, where the principles of ranking or the relations between strata change.
Arguments for the statement
- Power moves: Srinivas’s dominant castes, such as Okkaligas and Lingayats in Mysore, used land, numbers and franchise to take village and state power from Brahmins. Who commands the village changed, not just who ranks where.
- Village-level restructuring: F. G. Bailey found that the land bought by the Distillers of Bisipara changed inter-caste political relations, not just their own standing.
- Disjunction of caste, class and power: André Béteille (Caste, Class and Power, 1965) showed that in Sripuram, non-Brahmin mobility and land transfers broke the old overlap of ritual, economic and political rank.
- Change of ideology: Owen M. Lynch’s Jatavs moved from Kshatriya claims to Ambedkarite rejection of hierarchy. Once mobile groups deny the legitimacy of ranking, the structure itself is under challenge.
- Cumulative effect: Christophe Jaffrelot (India’s Silent Revolution, 2003) traced how lower-caste mobility turned into political power in North India. Dipankar Gupta (Interrogating Caste, 2000) argues that caste now works more as competing identities than as a single agreed hierarchy.
Arguments against
- Srinivas himself held that Sanskritisation yields positional change only. The upwardly mobile group adopts Brahmanical values and so reaffirms the ladder it climbs.
- Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966): the purity–pollution principle survives any reshuffling of ranks.
- Individual or small-group mobility often provokes backlash that restores boundaries, as with violence over Dalit weddings, land or inter-caste marriage.
- Where structural change has come, the drivers were often external: colonial markets, the Constitution, adult franchise and reservation. Mobility carried these forces rather than creating them.
Current illustration
The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, founded in 2005, shows entrepreneurial mobility that departs from the traditional link between caste and occupation. Yet the association itself is organised around caste identity, which shows structural change and persistent hierarchy side by side.
Conclusion
The statement holds only under conditions. Vertical mobility that is individual or imitative leaves a closed structure intact. Mobility that is collective, sustained and linked to external change in the economy and politics can alter the structure, as India’s move from ritual hierarchy to competitive caste politics shows.