Caste

Caste (pronounced kahst)

(1) In sociology, an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, economic position, etc, and having mores distinguishing it from other such groups.

(2) Any rigid system of social distinctions.

(3) In Hinduism, any of the social divisions into which Hindu society is traditionally divided, each caste having its own privileges and limitations, transferred by inheritance from one generation to the next.

(4) In entomology, one of the distinct forms among polymorphous social insects, performing a specialized function in the colony, as queen, worker or soldier.

1545-1555: From the Portuguese & Spanish casta (race, breed, ancestry), noun use of casta, feminine of casto, from the Classical Latin castus (pure, chaste), from castus (cut off, separated; pure) the notion being "cut off" from faults and was the past participle of carere (to be cut off from (and related to castration)).  The ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kes (to cut) from which Latin later picked-up cassus (empty, void).  It was originally spelled cast in English and later often merged with the noun cast in its secondary sense "sort, kind, style."  Many of the derived forms (half-caste, quarter-caste, castless, outcaste (actually modeled on the English outcast) et al) were coined under the Raj and reflect the concerns and prejudices of the colonialists.  Caste & casteism are nouns; the noun plural is castes.

Application to Hindu social groups was picked up by English in India in the early 1600s and the English used the Portuguese casta (the earlier casta raça (unmixed race) comes from the same Latin root)) but the spelling soon became caste.  Interestingly, the phrase "caste system" seems not to have been in use (at least in surviving documents) until the 1840s.  Caste differs from class in that caste has come to mean a group of persons set apart by economic, social, religious, legal, or political criteria, such as occupation, status, religious denomination, legal privilege, skin colour, or some other physical characteristic.  In the west, over time, wealth or other desirable characteristics can permit upward movement between classes whereas in societies with defined (even if informally) caste systems, the distinctions tended to be static and inter-generational.

The Raj and after

Although it exists in many regions and religions, the best-known caste system is that of the Hindus, probably because, under the Raj, it was well suited to the purposes of British colonial administration, run as it mostly was by the class-conscious English.  The pre-Raj historical development of caste is contested but its origins are certainly in ancient India although modified to suit the needs of the various elites, the two most recent being the Raj and the government in New Delhi.  Historically, the Hindu castes, as a codified structure, existed only as divisions within the political elite, priests, intellectuals and generals and it was only later, as the means of of communications and methods of centralized control improved, that it was extended to previously casteless social groups which became differentiated caste communities.  Under the Raj, the colonial administrators rendered rigidity to the caste organization and until 1920, permitted only those of the upper castes to be appointed to senior civil service positions.  This changed in the 1920s, not because of any sympathy by the British towards notions of social justice but because of social unrest and agitation for independence so the Raj applied the classic colonial fix which for centuries the British did better than anyone: take the side of the oppressed minority.  From then on, the Raj enacted a policy of affirmative action by reserving a certain percentage of civil service positions for the lower castes.

Despite the impression in the west, the new constitution of independent India didn’t actually abolish caste but it did outlaw discrimination against lower castes by essentially (and unsuccessfully) proscribing untouchability and central and state governments continue to use caste as a mechanism to promote positive discrimination in education and employment.  The implications of this, particularly the unintended consequences, are not without controversy.  Although there exists a bewildering number of sub-castes, the four major hereditary castes are:

Brahmins: priests, scholars and teachers.
Kshatriyas: rulers, warriors and administrators.
Vaishyas: agriculturalists and merchants.
Shudras: workers and service providers.

In the narrow technical sense, the untouchables (popularly still known as Dalits, although the government has mandated Scheduled Castes) are not part of the caste system but, by outsiders, are regarded as the caste system's lowest rung.  Dalit was from the Hindi दलित (dalit) (downtrodden, oppressed), from the Sanskrit दलित (dalita) (broken, scattered)).  Few institutions have proved as suitable for adaptation to the structured databases of the internet than the Indian marriage market which works by determining compatibility, based on matching the values in the fields; collectively, what a candidate enters into these fields constitutes their "biodata" and on the basis of this they will hope to be judged a suitable boy or girl.  In India, it's widely acknowledged that while the algorithms which underpin the sites are helpful as an exclusionary tool (and thus a great time-saver), the actual selection process of from what remains lie still with the families & individual prospective brides & grooms, the relative influence varying between households.  In contemporary India, while as a system of social stratification caste remains one of the most powerful cultural dynamics, there is now more reluctance to discuss its operation and there is some evidence of changing attitudes among younger generations, especially the urbanized.  However, in the rural areas where most of the population lives, caste seems still to be as crucial a determinate of structure as ever.

The informal social stratifications which emerge organically in an institution like a high school are interesting because they are determined by both outside influences and their interaction with the formal stratifications inherent in the educational system (age, academic & sporting achievement, the geographical catchment from which the cohort is drawn etc).  The term clique is often used and in the microcosm of a school, that's probably the best word because unlike a caste, movement between cliques is possible, depending only on group acceptance.  Clique was borrowed from the French, from the Old French cliquer which was imitative (on the idea of "click") and thought to have been influenced by claque (a group of people hired to applaud or boo (literally “a slap; a clap")).

Any review of the work of anthropologists, sociologists and behavioral zoologists would probably confirm that on planet Earth, among all groups of humans or non-humans which have been organized into any sort of collective arrangement, some form of a system of social stratification can be identified.  In human cultures, some have for centuries operated in the manner of castes in that they were unchanging and based entirely on descent with social movement either culturally or legally proscribed while some came to acknowledge wealth could permit "upward mobility".  In rare cases this could be almost instant but more commonly was something which unfolded over several generations, each becoming more refined than the last, the combination of gentility and financial largess towards their erstwhile "betters" (effectively bribes or "cash for honors") being rewarded with titles and appointments to offices within the establishment.  In the West, this lent societies an economic and cultural dynamic often lacking in places where hierarchies tended to be static.