Critically examine the concept of Sanskritization with suitable illustrations. (2023)
M. N. Srinivas coined Sanskritisation in Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (1952) and reworked it in Social Change in Modern India (1966). Its strength and its weakness are one fact: it finds real mobility inside caste, and concedes that the hierarchy survives it.
The concept
- A low caste, tribe or other group changes its customs, ritual, ideology and way of life towards those of a high and frequently twice-born caste, and so improves its local standing.
- Srinivas first called this Brahminisation, widening it when field data showed groups copying Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra styles and locally dominant non-Brahmin castes.
- It is group mobility over one or two generations that follows secular gain in land, numbers or office: ritual claims ratify power already won. In Robert K. Merton’s terms, anticipatory socialisation to a reference group.
Illustrations
- The Coorgs took over Brahmanical ritual; in Rampura (The Remembered Village, 1976) the dominant Okkaligas, not Brahmins, supplied the model.
- The Nadars of Tamil Nadu moved from toddy-tapping into trade and pressed a Kshatriya claim — documented by Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. (The Nadars of Tamilnad, 1969). The Noniyas of eastern Uttar Pradesh recast themselves as “Chauhans”; Yadav and Koeri cultivators claimed Kshatriya ancestry through caste associations.
- Among Bhils, Gonds and Oraons it is better read as Hinduisation; and it can reverse, the Smiths of Mysore losing standing despite Brahmanical claims.
The critique
- Positional, not structural. Srinivas himself held that the caste climbs while the ladder stands.
- Descriptive rather than explanatory, said Yogendra Singh; and loose, since J. F. Staal found “Sanskritic” too heterogeneous for one model. Harold Gould read it as protest against low rank, not admiration of the Brahmin.
- Brahmanical bias. Nicholas Dirks (Castes of Mind, 2001) traces the single upper-caste scale to colonial sociology; McKim Marriott found Sanskritic rites merely added to local ones. Uma Chakravarti shows emulation imports Brahmanical patriarchy — seclusion, dowry displacing bride-price.
- Rejection, not imitation. B. R. Ambedkar in Annihilation of Caste (1936) sought to abolish the scale, not climb it; Dipankar Gupta (Interrogating Caste, 2000) finds castes asserting difference, not conceding hierarchy.
- The direction has reversed. Maharashtra’s reservation Act of February 2024 gave Marathas a 10 per cent quota, and the Kunbi-certificate agitation has a dominant peasant caste claiming backward status. Rank is now sought from the state, not from ritual.
Conclusion
Sanskritisation remains indispensable for mobility in an order that offered no other avenue, and it disproved the textual picture of a static caste. As an account of present change it is largely spent: reservation, schooling and numbers decide standing now.