‘Casteism is the modern edition of the caste system.’ Do you agree with this statement? Discuss with arguments. (2011)
Casteism is not caste. It is the partisan use of caste loyalty for secular advantage in a society that formally denies caste any standing. Casteism is an overriding, blind and supreme group loyalty that ignores the healthy social standards of justice, fair play, equity and universal brotherhood — Kaka Kalelkar, who chaired the first Backward Classes Commission (1953). Whether that is caste’s “modern edition” depends on how much of the old system survives inside it.
The two distinguished
| Caste system | Casteism | |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Ritual ideology of purity and pollution | Group loyalty as a resource |
| Form | Ranked, interdependent, hereditary groups | Competing blocs of equal standing |
| Sanction | Scripture, dharma, local dominance | Numbers, votes, networks |
The case for the statement
- Caste survives by modernising. Yogendra Singh found in Modernisation of Indian Tradition (1973) that Indian tradition did not retreat before modernity but absorbed modern functions. Casteism is that absorption: the caste association, the vote bank — M. N. Srinivas‘s term, coined in 1955 — and the quota agitation are old solidarities doing modern work.
- Srinivas’s judgement on its reach stands: caste is so tacitly and so completely accepted by all, including those most vocal in condemning it, that it is everywhere the unit of social action.
- It operates where modern institutions claim to be impersonal. The Delhi résumé audit by Abhijit Banerjee, Marianne Bertrand, Saugato Datta and Sendhil Mullainathan (2009) sent thousands of otherwise identical applications carrying caste-marked surnames, and found upper-caste applicants called back appreciably more often for call-centre work, though not for software — discrimination surfacing where judgements of ‘fit’ operate.
- Endogamy continues without belief. The urban, educated and irreligious still marry within caste — the old structure under a new vocabulary of family preference.
The case against
- It is a transformation, not a reissue. The ideological content has been repudiated, the sanction has shifted from scripture to numbers, and the direction from vertical ranking to horizontal competition. A system whose organising value has been publicly abandoned is not the same system republished.
- Politicisation cuts both ways. Rajni Kothari, in Caste in Indian Politics (1970), argued that it is not politics that is caste-ridden but caste that is politicised, and that entry into politics secularises caste by making it associational and negotiable. On this reading casteism is caste’s dilution as much as its survival.
- The agents are not equivalent. Assertion by the excluded is a claim to inclusion; casteism by the privileged defends advantage. Satish Deshpande‘s argument about upper-caste castelessness shows where the asymmetry hides: the privileged present themselves as having no caste, so only the reserved categories appear casteist.
- The old system has not been wholly replaced. The 55,698 crimes against Scheduled Castes registered in 2024 are no modern edition of anything; they are the original sanction, still working.
Conclusion
I agree, with a qualification that changes the statement’s meaning. Casteism is caste’s modern mode of operation — secularised, competitive, instrumental — but an edition with the preface torn out: the ritual justification is gone while the boundary and the violence remain. Caste has not been reprinted so much as rewritten for a democratic market, and what resisted rewriting is what still hurts.