Description
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd Recasting Caste: From The Sacred To The Profane by Hira Singh
Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane examines the intersection of economic, political and ideological components of the caste system through a historical perspective. It shows that the caste system is actually grounded in a hierarchy of land rights and political power supported by religious and secular ideology. While the mainstream sociologists focus on ritual homogeneity and draw attention away from intra-caste inequality, thus portraying castes as internally undifferentiated, the author illuminates intra-caste differentiation by locating the roots of caste in economic and political hierarchy. Based on historical–ethnographic evidence, he argues that the caste is not a creation of Hinduism and that Hinduism without caste is not utopia.
A significant finding of this book is that members of a caste fail to unite for collective mobilization if their class interests diverge, while members of different castes or sub-caste groups unite politically if their class interests converge. Such patterns of action dispel the misconception that, in India, caste consciousness trumps class consciousness.