IndiaCaste and Class jointly determine the position of an individual in social strain. Particularly in rural communities where caste system has maintained its rigidity. It forms the basic for economic and special life. In a single village there may be as many as 24 castes and of these are interdependent. Even in the urban society a constant tendency to make caste distinction is observed in the upper and middle classes. Thus the castes have maintained their importance in class system of social stratification.

According to Weber, Caste and class are both status groups. A status group is a collection of persons who share a distinctive style of life and a certain consciousness of kind. While caste is perceived as a hereditary group with a fixed ritual status, a social class is a category of people who have a similar socio-economic status in relation to other segments of their community or society.

The individuals and families who compose a social class are relatively similar in educational, economic and prestige status. Those who are classified as part of the same social class have similar life chances. Some sociologists regard social classes as being primarily economic in nature whereas others tend to stress factors such as prestige, style of life, attitudes, etc.

Caste system is characterised by cumulative in-equality but class system is characterised by dispersed inequality. The members of a class have a similar socio-economic status in relation to other classes in the society, while the members of a caste have either a high or low ritual status in relation to other castes. Caste is a unique phenomenon found in India but class is a universal phenomenon found all over the world. Caste works as an active political force in a village but not the class. It is also true that castes depend on each other (jajmani system) but besides interdependence, castes also compete with each other for acquiring political and economic power and high ritual position.

Further, in the caste system, status of a caste is determined not by the economic and the political privileges but by the ritualistic legitimization of authority, i.e., in the caste system, ritual norms encompass the norms of power and wealth. For example, even though Brahmins have no economic and political power, yet they are placed at the top in the caste hierarchy. In the class system, ritual norms have no importance at all but power and wealth alone determine one’s status.

Maclver says, “When status is wholly predetermined, so that men are born to their lot without any hope of changing it, then class takes the extreme form of caste. According to Sangeetha Rao, if castes are detached from religion, class may run parallel to castes.

Hindu society was composed of classes such as (1) Brahmin or the priestly class, (2) Kshatriya or the military class and (3) Vaishya or the merchant class and (4) Sudra or the artisan. This was considered as a class system .according to B.R. Ambedkar. Among the Hindus the priestly class maintains social distance from others through a closed policy and becomes a caste by itself. The other classes undergo differentiation, some into large and some into very minute groups.

“Castes are the building blocks of the Hindu social structure. Caste is an important factor in the identification of other backward classes among the Hindu communities .Caste is also a class of citizens, as observed by Mandal Commission in its report.

Several Marxist writers have made castes synonymous with classes. Accordingly, castes are nothing but classes which in course of time have mingled into classes. The struggle of non-Brahmin classes for enhancement of their status began when Hindu society divided itself into various castes and classes. Marxists in India appear to have realised the significance of caste as a social reality. Marxist writers seem to realise that the members of lower classes also belong, by and large, to lower castes. Caste organisations are construed as class organisations which emerged when the rural poor went beyond symbolic reform to upgrade their caste status by raising economic issues. A peasant class is nothing more than a group of individuals belonging to various castes and possessing land to cultivate. Traditionally, the Zamindars were of the highest caste. The landless labourers were of the lower caste and in between were the members of the cultivating castes. The agrarian hierarchy has its root in the caste structure, in the traditional social system.

The relationship which is established between a Master and a Servant, land owner and tenant .creditor and debtor, all cut across the barriers. Nevertheless, looking at India’s history over the millennia, one reaches the unavoidable conclusion that the most important consideration while determining the constituents of the classes is the caste Ramakrishna Mukherjee found the inter-mixture of caste and class in East Bengal.

Today, we want to find about how class is considered as open and caste as close or it is really like that. Caste has inhered in class and class is also inhered in caste for centuries in the Indian context, and Indian society continues to have this inseparable mix even today .Role of caste and class in elections is an evidence of this mix. However, caste operating as a ‘marriage circle ‘ is a different way from the way it functions in other arenas. Class has been an in built mechanism within caste, and therefore, caste cannot be seen simply as a ‘ritualistic ‘system, and class cannot be seen as an open system as it has often been influenced by the institution of caste.

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