Historical Formation of Caste Relations

Research record

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.

Section index

1. 87.1 Caste relations must be reconstructed historically, not assumed as a timeless social essence
2. 87.2 Varna and jati are related vocabularies but not interchangeable social maps
3. 87.3 Early and medieval evidence is uneven, so later caste maps cannot be projected backward without proof
4. 87.4 Settlement, specialised work and control over resources created local hierarchies long before modern administration
5. 87.5 Genealogy and marriage became unusually visible institutions in Mithila
6. 87.6 Panji prabandha helped consolidate corporate identities among Maithil Brahmins and Karna Kayasthas
7. 87.7 The later Śrotriya category must not be projected backward as a fixed medieval Maithil Brahmin sub-caste
8. 87.8 Scribal, clerical and courtly service complicated any simple ritual hierarchy
9. 87.9 Cultivating communities converted agrarian skill and demographic weight into changing forms of local power
10. 87.10 River, craft and service economies produced caste relations different from those of plough agriculture
11. 87.11 Land ownership and caste rank overlapped strongly in many places, but they were never identical
12. 87.12 The Permanent Settlement of 1793 reworked caste through a new property and rent regime
13. 87.13 Large estates such as Darbhanga Raj magnified the relationship between status, bureaucracy and agrarian dependence
14. 87.14 Vajji and the Tirhut market zone combined dense tenancy with commercial and political mobility
15. 87.15 Anga’s Gangetic corridor produced a distinct mixture of agrarian, artisanal and urban caste relations
16. 87.16 Labour obligations made caste hierarchy tangible in everyday time and bodily service
17. 87.17 Colonial censuses transformed caste by making names, numbers and ranked categories administratively comparable
18. 87.18 Caste associations converted local status disputes into province-wide programmes
19. 87.19 The Triveni Sangh marked a decisive transition from status reform to political representation
20. 87.20 Peasant movements show that caste and class overlapped without becoming the same thing
21. 87.21 Independence changed the legal constitution of caste more quickly than everyday relations
22. 87.22 Land reform weakened zamindari but produced uneven changes in caste power
23. 87.23 Education, migration and state employment multiplied routes of mobility after the 1950s
24. 87.24 Bihar’s 1978 reservation formula made internal differentiation within the backward classes a state principle
25. 87.25 The Mandal Commission shifted caste politics toward measured disadvantage and representation
26. 87.26 Lower-caste political ascendancy transformed public authority but did not make hierarchy disappear
27. 87.27 The rise of an Extremely Backward Class category made visible the limits of a single backward-caste narrative
28. 87.28 The 2022–23 Bihar caste-based survey shows how contemporary caste is also a data regime
29. 87.29 Nepal-side Mithila shares cross-border kinship but developed under a different state history of caste classification
30. 87.30 Caste history is the history of changing relationships among kinship, property, work and the state

Cite this record

Gajendra Thakur. “Historical Formation of Caste Relations.” Videha Digital Research Archive: Mithila–Vajji–Anga. Videha — https://www.videha.co.in/ · ISSN 2229-547X · GitHub mirror: https://videha-ejournal.github.io/videha/ · Digital Research Archives on GitHub: https://github.com/videha-ejournal. https://videha-ejournal.github.io/mithila-vajji-anga/records/history/social-87/