Household, Caste, Class and Gender across Time

Detailed chapter description

Chapter 145 synthesises one of the central arguments of this volume: household, caste, class and gender are not separate topics that can be stacked beside one another. They are overlapping institutions through which land, labour, marriage, care, education, mobility, status and political claims are organised. Yet none of them is timeless. The form of the household changes with mortality, migration and property; caste categories are historically produced and administratively reworked; class relations change with landholding, markets and salaried employment; and gendered authority shifts with law, schooling, work and residence. A longue durée account must therefore track relationships without assuming that later labels existed unchanged in earlier periods. The chapter also resists two opposite simplifications. The first is to imagine a static “traditional society” suddenly transformed by modernity. The second is to assume that legal reform, urbanisation or education automatically dissolves older inequalities. In Mithila, Vajji and Anga, continuity and change coexist. Kin networks can facilitate migration while also regulating marriage; women may manage farms during male absence without gaining title to land; reservation can enlarge educational and occupational opportunity while wealth differences persist inside the same broad category. The historical task is to identify mechanisms, evidence and bargaining power at each period rather than convert social categories into essences.