Historical Formation of Caste Relations

Detailed chapter description

Caste relations in Mithila, Vajji and Anga were neither an unchanged survival from an ancient textual order nor a purely modern political invention. They were historical institutions repeatedly remade through marriage rules, genealogy, settlement, landholding, tenancy, labour, religious service, literacy, state employment, colonial enumeration, law, education and electoral representation. The same caste name could therefore occupy different economic positions in different districts or even in neighbouring villages, while families within a single caste could diverge sharply in property, education and political influence. A history of caste must reconstruct these changing relations instead of treating ranked labels as sufficient explanation. This chapter provides that longue-durée framework for PART X. It does not replace the focused histories that follow: Dalit experience is treated in Chapter 88; Adivasi and forest-connected populations in Chapter 89; Muslims in Chapter 90; gendered household relations in Chapters 91–93; education and mobility in Chapter 94; reservation and new middle classes in Chapter 95; and rural elites and changing landed power in Chapter 96. Here the task is narrower but foundational: to show how caste became attached to kinship, work, land and state categories, how those attachments changed, and why modern democratic caste identities cannot simply be projected backward into medieval society.