SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN INDIA

The ethnic and linguistic diversity of India is proverbial and rivals the diversity of

continental Europe which is not a single nation-State like India. India contains a

large number of different regional, social, and economic groups, each with

distinctive or dissimilar customs and cultural practices. Region-wise, differences

between social structures of India’s north and south are marked, especially with

respect to kinship systems and family relationships. Religious differences are

pervasive through out the country. There is the Hindu majority and the large

Muslim minority or “second majority”. There are other Indian groups—Buddhists,

Christians, Jains, Jews, Parsis, Sikhs, and practitioners of tribal religions—and

hundreds of sub-religions or religious communities within larger communities like

the Arya Samajis, Sanatanis among the Hindus; Shias and Sunnis among the

Muslims; Monas and Keshdharis among Sikhs and hundreds of other castes, sub-

castes, communities, vegetarians and non-vegetarians from each religion. Each

group is proud of its faith and very sure of its superiority over other faiths.

A highly noticeable feature of India’s social structure is highly inequitable division

of the nation’s wealth. Access to wealth and power varies sharply. Extreme

differences in socio-economic status are glaringly visible among the smallest

village communities to metropolitan cities and mega-towns. The poor and the rich

live side by side in urban and rural areas. Prosperous, well-fed, perfumed men or

women in chauffeured luxury cars passing and even living in narrow streets with

poor, starving, ill-nourished, ill-clad or even half-naked men, women, children

dwelling on their pavements and bathing in dirty water of its flowing or even

clogged drains are common sights. Contrasting extreme poverty and enormous

wealth and obvious class distinctions are egregiously visible in almost every

settlement in India.

Urban-rural differences too are immense. Over 70 per cent of India’s population

lives in villages; agriculture still remains their mainstay. Mud houses, dusty lanes,

grazing cattle, chirping and crying of birds at sunset and rising smell of dung and

chulah-smoke are the usual settings for the social lives of most rural Indians. In

India’s enlarging cities, millions of people live among roaring vehicles, surging

crowds, overcrowded streets, busy commercial establishments, loudspeakers

blaring movie tunes or religious recitations, factories and trucks and buses

breathing poisonous pollution into unhealthy lungs.

Gender distinctions are highly pronounced. The behaviour norms of men and

women are very different, more so in villages. Prescribed ideal gender roles are

fast losing to new patterns of behaviour among both sexes. Individually, both men

and women behave in one way and collectively in quite another way. Public

behaviour of both men and women is rude and unhelpful, but the same people

when in individual situation and relationship can be very different. People

occupying public positions are extremely unhelpful and even normal actions done

toward others as part of normal routine are projected as personal favours. Even

senior citizens, retired persons, war widows do not get their pension approved for

years! A clerk in a government office wields greater actual power than a decision-

making executive and can withhold implementation of his superior’s orders for

ever. If the victim of delay approaches the court, the litigant is in for a shock after

shock as the case gets adjourned endlessly and after years of attending court

hearings gets an unimaginably skewed judgment written in a highly ambiguous

language. Litigants pay high fees to lawyers and bribes to court staff and even to

judges.

Surprisingly, observers tend to bypass these all-pervading differences of region,

language, wealth, status, religion, urbanity, gender and absence of the rule of law

but pay most devoted attention to that special and peculiar feature of Indian

society: “CASTE”. The most loved and recognized identity of Indians is their caste.

And, there are thousands of castes and caste-like groups. These are hierarchically

ordered and named groups into which members are born. Caste members, as far

as possible, marry within the caste or sub-caste and follow caste rules with

respect to diet, ritual and aspects of life.

Yet, no generalisation can be made because, increasingly, caste- discipline is

loosening and every individual is free to decide her or his own social ways and

such an indivi-dual will always find small or big support and a milieu to evolve a

suitable mode of living in spite of turning her/his back on caste and caste-ridden

society, though at times, this can be a harrowing experience, especially in sub-

caste communities where inter-caste and widow marriage is equated with

community honour leading to honour-killing of the perceived violator of caste-

norms, especially if the violator is weak. However, underlying norms of life,

though honesty of thought and action may not be among them, are widely

accepted in India.

Indian city dwellers are often nostalgic about “simple village life”, but Indian

villages have been losing both simplicity and gaiety of life and are boiling in the

caste cauldron of petty rivalries. They are afflicted with addiction to all kinds of

drugs like alcohol, opium and heroin. Roads, television and mobile phones are

now changing the village scene though dirt, squalor and disease still vitiate rural

India.

Indian village life is neither simple nor inviting. That is why no villager who has

come to the city goes back. According to sociologists: “Each village is connected

through a variety of crucial horizontal linkages with other villages and with urban

areas both near and far. Most villages are characterized by a multiplicity of

economic, caste, kinship, occupational, and even religious groups linked vertically

within each settlement. Factionalism is a typical feature of village politics. In one

of the first of the modern anthropologi-cal studies of Indian village life,

anthropologist Oscar Lewis called this complexity “rural cosmopolitanism.”

Typical Indian villages have clustered dwelling patterns built very close to one

another. Sociologists call them “nucleated settlements”, with small and narrow

lanes for passage of people and sometimes carts. Village fields surround these

settlements. On the hills of central, eastern, and far northern India, dwellings are

more spread out. In wet States of West Bengal and Kerala, houses are a little

dispersed; in Kerala, some villages merge into the next village and visitor are not

able to see divisions between such villages.

In northern and central India, neighbourhood boundaries can be vague. Houses of

Dalits are ordinarily situated on outskirts of nucleated settlements. Distinct Dalit

hamlets, however, are rare. Contrastingly, in the south, where socio-economic

divisions and caste pollution observances tend to be stronger than in the north,

Dalit hamlets are set at a little distance from other caste neighbourhoods

Bigger landowners do not cultivate lands but hire tenant farmers to do this work.

Artisans in pottery, wood, cloth, metal, and leather, although diminishing,

continue to eke out their existence in contemporary Indian villages like centuries

past. Religious observances and weddings are occasions for members of various

castes to provide customary ritual goods and services.

Accelerating urbanization is fast transforming Indian society. More than 26 per

cent of the country’s population is urban. India’s larger cities have been growing

at twice the rate of smaller towns and villages. About half of the increase is the

result of rural-urban migration, as villagers seek better lives for themselves in the

cities.

Most Indian cities are densely populated. New Delhi, for example, had 6,352

people per square kilometre in 1991. Congestion, noise, traffic jams, air pollution,

grossly inadequate housing, transportation, sewerage, electric power, water

supplies, schools, hospitals and major shortages of key necessities characterize

urban life. Slums and pavement dwellers constantly multiply so also trucks,

buses, cars, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, and scooters, spewing uncontrolled

fumes, all surging in haphazard patterns along with jaywalking pedestrians and

cattle.

A recent phenomenon is illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and

terrorists via Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. They stalk all big cities and State

capitals and strike at will. India’s city life is extremely insecure and crime-

infested.

Once a sleepy land of docile people, India has become one of the 20 most

dangerous countries of the world to live in.