Caste in India

The centrality of caste in Indian society and the religious definition of it same a part of the conventional wisdom of comparative sociology, so that social stratification was perceived as being essentially a religious phenomenon, emanating somehow from the very nature of Hinduism. Caste has both a positive and a negative significance for many members of contemporary Indian society. What is difficult is to weigh and measure these different components and draw an accurate balance sheet. Where the evidence is contradictory and points in different, even opposite, directions, the sociologist is very like to draw on it in accordance with his own bias, and that bias may lead him either to exaggerate or to underrate the contemporary significance of caste.