Caste-like formations are present in Non-Hindu religious communities as well. Discuss with examples. (2021)
If caste were only what Louis Dumont made of it — the purity–pollution ideology that encompasses Hindu society — conversion out of Hinduism should dissolve it. It does not. Ranked, endogamous, descent-based groups survive in every Indian religious community, and that survival is the strongest single argument for reading caste as a social structure rather than a religious idea.
Why the persistence is theoretically decisive
- Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus (1966) derives caste from the opposition of the pure and the impure; outside Hinduism caste can therefore only be a borrowed, attenuated residue.
- B. R. Ambedkar, in Annihilation of Caste (1936), located caste instead in endogamy — caste is a division of labourers, not of labour. Marriage circles, hereditary occupations and control over land are not doctrines; they survive a change of creed intact.
- Conversion was overwhelmingly group conversion: the group carried its boundary with it and entered a society that went on ranking it. André Béteille’s treatment of caste as a structure of inequality interlocked with class and power fits this evidence better.
The evidence across communities
- Muslims: the Ashraf–Ajlaf–Arzal ordering documented by Ghaus Ansari (Muslim Caste in Uttar Pradesh, 1960) and the volume edited by Imtiaz Ahmad on caste and stratification among Muslims (1973) — claimed foreign descent (Sayyid, Sheikh, Mughal, Pathan) above converted artisan biradaris, with sweeper groups treated as polluting.
- Christians: Kerala’s Syrian Christians claim Brahmin ancestry and do not marry Latin Catholic or Dalit Christian converts; Duncan Forrester (Caste and Christianity, 1980) recorded separate seating, cemeteries and processions in south Indian parishes.
- Sikhs: doctrinal rejection of caste coexists with Jat Sikh dominance, separate Mazhabi and Ramdasia congregations and Ravidassia deras. Punjab’s practice of reserving half its Scheduled Caste quota with first preference for Balmikis and Mazhabi Sikhs was vindicated when a seven-judge bench permitted sub-classification in State of Punjab v Davinder Singh (2024).
- Jains and neo-Buddhists: Jains marry within Agrawal, Oswal and similar groups; the Mahars who followed Ambedkar into Buddhism in 1956 remain endogamous, and are counted as Scheduled Castes precisely because their disabilities did not lapse.
Caste-like, with real differences
| Element | Hindu caste | Non-Hindu formations |
|---|---|---|
| Endogamy | Strong | Equally strong |
| Hierarchy | Graded ritual rank | Rank by descent claim and occupation |
| Doctrinal sanction | Varna theory | None; every doctrine is egalitarian |
| Purity–pollution idiom | Central | Residual, mostly at the bottom |
Conclusion
These are caste-like formations: the ritual idiom thins and no scripture legitimises them, yet endogamy, hierarchy and stigma persist. They shift Indian scholarship away from Dumont’s ideological caste towards Ambedkar’s and Béteille’s structural one — caste is an order that religion once justified and can now outlive.