In the order of precedence, the Brahmans doing the priestly functions on Hindu temples or teaching in religious schools or 'Gurukuls' occupied the top slot, the Kshatriyas were associated with warriors or military leaders and rulers or administrators, the vaishyas were identified with the merchants and commercial class i.e. business owners and the shudras, the fourth rank in that social order were associated with the unskilled workers, servants and farmers. Below these are grouped Dalits (also known as Untouchables or Scheduled Castes), and Adivasis (often called Tribal).

The emergence of Rajput and Gujar-Pratihara kingdoms in the medieval India and the rise of Jats from the thirteenth century onwards, the assertion of Izhavas and later of Mahars in the modern period and so many other examples are enough to prove this point. But no castes other than the Brahmins adhere to this origin story and hence there-by accept their current status in the caste hierarchy. The entire so-called untouchable and other castes have their own origin tales that are totally against the orthodox view. For example, the Kahars, a backward caste of Central Bihar claim that they are descendents of the lunar dynasty – the moon, which are the eyes of Purusa. This story tries to establish the superiority of Kahar’s over and above the Brahmans and Kshatriyas by stating that they are made up of superior and finer material. The present day caste wars, uprisings and demands for more share in economic and political power would not have arisen if Brahmanical-textual view were accepted uncritically by all.

There are various characteristics which determine the caste of a person. These are given below:

1. Determination by birth: The membership of a caste is determined by birth. A person remains the member of a caste upto which they are born and this does not undergo change even if change takes place in his status, occupation, education, wealth, etc.

2. Rules and regulations concerning food: Each individual caste has its own laws which govern the food habits of its members. Generally, there are no restrictions against fruit, milk, butter, dry fruit, etc. but kachcha food (breaded.) can be accepted only from a member of one’s own caste or of a higher caste.

3. Definite occupation: In the Hindu scriptures there are mention of the occupations of all Varna’s. According to Manu, the functions of the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vishay’s and the Sudras are definite. The function of the Brahmins is to study the Vedas, teach, guide and perform religious rituals, to give and receive alms. Sudras have to do menial work for all the other Varna’s. Having developed from the Varna system, the occupations in caste system are definite.

4. Endogamous group: The majority of persons marry only within their own caste. Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Sudras and Vishay’s all marry within their respective castes. Westermarck has considered this to be a chief characteristic of the caste system. Hindu community does not sanctify inter-caste marriage even now.

5. Rules concerning status and touch ability: The various castes in the Hindu social organization are divided into a hierarchy of ascent and descent one above the other. In this hierarchy the Brahmins have the highest and the untouchables the lowest place. This sense of superiority is much exaggerated and manifests in the south. The very touch and sometimes even the shadow of a member of the lower caste is enough to defile an individual of a high caste. In Kerala, a Namboodari Brahmin is defiled by the touch of a Nayar, but in the case of a member of a Tiyyar caste a distance of 36 feet must be kept to avoid being defiled and in the case of a member of the Pulayana caste the distance must be ninety six feet. The stringent observation of the system of untouchability has resulted in some low castes of the Hindu society being called ‘untouchables’ who were, consequently, forbidden to make use of places of worship, cremation grounds, educational institutions, public roads and hotels etc., and were disallowed from living in the cities.

Indian society was never static. The main traditional avenues of social mobility were sanskritization, migration and religious conversion. Lower castes or tribes could move upward in the caste hierarchy through acquisition of wealth and political power. They could consequently claim higher caste status along with sanskritising their way of life, by emulating the life style and customs of higher caste. Occupational association of caste has marginally changed in rural areas. Brahmins may still work as priest but they have also taken to agriculture. Landowning dominant castes belonging to both upper and middle rung of caste hierarchy generally work as supervisory farmers. Other non-landowning lower castes, including small and marginal peasants, work as wage labourers in agriculture. Artisan castes like carpenters and iron-smith continue with their traditional occupations. However, migration to urban areas has enabled individuals from all castes including untouchables to enter into non-traditional occupations in industry, trade and commerce and services. Inter-caste marriage is almost non-existent in rural areas. Restrictions on food, drink and smoking continue but to a lesser degree because of the presence of tea stalls in villages patronized by nearly all the castes. The hold of untouchability has lessened and distinction in dress has become more a matter of income than caste affiliation. People migrate to cities and bring back money which has changed the traditional social structure. Caste has acquired an additional role in the operation of interests groups and association in politics since the introduction of representative parliament politics. Thus, we find that caste has undergone adaptive changes. Its traditional features, i.e., connubial (matrimonial), commensal (eating together) and ritual, still prevail in rural areas. The core characteristics of the castes, which have affected the social relations, are still operative. However, the status quo of the intermediate and low castes has changed due to their acquiring political and economic power. The hegemony of the high castes has given way to differentiation of these statuses in some regions of India so that high castes do not necessarily occupy a higher class position or power.

Having seen that the modern Indian state has been anything but caste-free in its language and actions, the focus now returns to the domain of family, locality and personal perception. Today, as in the colonial period, the claims of caste still extend well beyond the convention of public policy and the elrctoral arena. Yet it is equally clear that these norms have been significantly affected by the many changes which have transformed Indian life and thought in the years since Independence.

Caste is certainly not the only basis on which Indians have professed bonds of common entitlement and disability in their home localities, and on their dealings with external authority. Since the 1950s, crosscutting affinities of faith, class and ethno-linguistic identity have often had a more direct and lasting impact on both local and national life than claims of anti-Brahmanism, or Harijan 'uplift', or so-called caste reform movements. Yet since Independence, large number of Indians has found taking advantage in presenting themselves to state agencies as members of named regional jatis or wider multi-caste groupings, claiming either a shared inheritance of superior worth and virtue, or a history of injustice at the hands of Forward or high-caste 'oppressors'. Furthermore, references to jati and varna have almost always come into play at some level when more generalized forms of mobilization have occurred, even among those who speak on public platforms in the name of a Hindu or Aryan 'community', or as Dalits, or peasant Kisans, or as heirs to be supposedly suppressed regional culture - that of the Kannada-speakers or Tamil-Dravidians, for example.

Both today and in the past, the language and conventions of caste have proclaimed the value of absolute standards and proprieties, while accommodating uncertainty, change and conflict in both public and private life. While this has involved coercion as well as acts of 'resistance', Indians of many different backgrounds have found that both the exclusions and bonds of caste could help them to adapt and prosper them in conditions of insecurity.

Class

A useful heuristic device for studying class is Katznelson’s (1986) view to analyze it at four “levels” (which are perhaps better understood as aspects), each of which takes a different perspective: first, class as part of the structure of capitalist economic development; second, class as life patterns within particular social formations (class as an experience dealing with patterns of life and social relations with respect to work and residence); third, class as shared dispositions resulting from subjectively lived experiences of “objective” positions and limits to action; and fourth, class as conscious collective action to affect society and the position of the class within it (Katznelson 1986:14-22). With their customary focus on human interaction, culture, power, and community, anthropologists could contribute to the latter two aspects, while historians, sociologists, and economists usually center analyses at the first two levels. Interestingly many of the latter specialists have turned to anthropological insights in their efforts to understand class and capitalism. The question of class formation is best understood as “concerned with the conditional (but not random) process of connection between the four levels of class”. One anthropologist’s approach to social reproduction and economic anthropologycould be read as emphasizing exactly such a connection between these aspects of class analysis. “Cultural particularities are part of the class structure because they are crucial to the structure of exploitation and they might or might not be pertinent to class consciousness and the meaningful organization of class identity”. Culture is not merely part of a superstructure that is independent of or determined by the infrastructure. Rather, culture is part of the structure of society since it structures the crucial social process of exploitation. Most interesting here is that culture as structure goes into the making of class in the sense that Marxists have repeatedly emphasized, that “classes should be defined in terms of what people (in some sense) have to do, not by what they actually do”. Finally, it is possible that these aspects of class could be viewed as mutually dependent or even as constituting each other. Not all forms of class action are possible, given the class structure of a society, and not all class dispositions can be compatible with particular forms of class action. Such considerations are appropriate for studying a place like India, a country that has much in common with less advanced capitalist countries, but which is also unmatched for its class formations and the role of the still relatively autonomous state, even in the age of privatization and liberalization. One would thus not assume à priori that the trajectory of class formation in India would follow a model based on England, or that class-consciousness of Indian workers would be signaled is ways similar to English workers. if anthropology has contributed anything to the discussion of class, it is a recognition that societies are differentially “inserted” into the world system, that the cultural or ideological dimension of class relations (if that is what they are) is more important than is often assumed, less easy to understand, and has a transformative capacity that complements and often exceeds that of technological change.

Power

Power is a measure of an entity's ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. In the corporate environment, power is often expressed as upward or downward. With downward power, a company's superior influence subordinates. Power can be also defined as upward in a company. When a company exerts upward power, it is the subordinates who influence the decisions of the leader (Greiner and Schein, 1988). Often, the study of power in a society is referred to as politics.

The use of power need not involve coercion (force or the threat of force). At one extreme, it more closely resembles what everyday English-speakers call "influence", although some authors make a distinction between power and influence – the means by which power is used (Handy, C. 1993 Understanding Organizations).

Balance of power

Because power operates both relationally and reciprocally, sociologists speak of the balance of power between parties to a relationship: all parties to all relationships have some power: the sociological examination of power concerns itself with discovering and describing the relative strengths: equal or unequal, stable or subject to periodic change. Sociologists usually analyze relationships in which the parties have relatively equal or nearly equal power in terms of constraint rather than of power. Thus 'power' has a connotation of unilateralism. If this were not so, then all relationships could be described in terms of 'power', and its meaning would be lost.

Even we structuralize social theory; power appears as a process, an aspect to an ongoing social structure.

One can sometimes distinguish primary power: the direct and personal use of force for coercion; and secondary power, which may involve the threat of force or social constraint, most likely involving third-party exercisers of delegated power.

Power may be held through

· Delegated authority (for example in the democratic process)

· Social class (material wealth can equal power)

· Personal or group charisma

· Ascribed power (acting on perceived or assumed abilities, whether these bear testing or not)

· Expertise (ability, skills)

· Persuasion (direct, indirect, or subliminal)

· Knowledge (granted or withheld, shared or kept secret)

· Celebrity

· Force (violence, military might, coercion).

· Moral persuasion (including religion)

· Operation of group dynamics (such as public relations)

· Social influence of tradition (compare ascribed power)

· In relationships; domination/submissiveness

All forms of power fall under one of two possible sub-headings.

· Aggressive (forceful)

· Manipulative (persuasion)] Theories of power

Bases of Power

The power can be divided into five bases:

· Positional power

Also called "legitimate power", it is the power of an individual because of the relative position and duties of the holder of the position within an organization

· Referent power

Referent power is the power or ability of individuals to attract others and build loyalty. It's based on the charisma and interpersonal skills of the power holder. A person may be admired because of specific personal trait, and this admiration creates the opportunity for interpersonal influence. Here the person under power desires to identify with these personal qualities, and gains satisfaction from being an accepted follower. Nationalism and patriotism count towards an intangible sort of referent power. For example, soldiers fight in wars to defend the honor of the country. This is the second least obvious power, but the most effective. Advertisers have long used the referent power of sports figures for products endorsements, for example. The charismatic appeal of the sports star supposedly leads to an acceptance of the endorsement, although the individual may have little real credibility outside the sports arena. Like in India Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi etc.

· Expert power

Expert power is an individual's power deriving from the skills or expertise of the person and the organization's needs for those skills and expertise. Unlike the others, this type of power is usually highly specific and limited to the particular area in which the expert is trained and qualified.

· Reward power

Reward power depends on the ability of the power wielder to confer valued material rewards; it refers to the degree to which the individual can give others a reward of some kind such as benefits, time off, desired gifts, promotions or increases in pay or responsibility. This power is obvious but also ineffective if abused. People who abuse reward power can become pushy or became reprimanded for being too forthcoming or 'moving things too quickly'.

· Coercive power

Coercive power is the application of negative influences. It includes the ability to demote or to withhold other rewards. The desire for valued rewards or the fear of having them withheld that ensures the obedience of those under power. Coercive power tends to be the most obvious but least effective form of power as it builds resentment and resistance from the people who experience it.

CONCLUSION:

From a holistic standpoint, the change that is occurring within the cultural life of the village community in rural India is creating a new social order based on a restructuring of power and authority. The forces and processes of urban migration, education, and mass communication are all contributing factors to this process. Caste, once an all-important determinant of one’s position in the social hierarchy, is today gradually being undermined. Shifting patterns of educational achievement, material well being, access to knowledge and information, and access to political and influential leaders are all significant factors determining the redistribution of power and authority within communities. Though caste remains a clear feature of village life, the caste system is undergoing notable changes – especially with regards to its traditional ability to structure power and authority within communities. The view that caste continues to have a complete and firm grip on rural life has become untenable and reflects an oversimplified view of a complex socio-political reality. On the other hand, the view that caste has been largely displaced by other variables such as class, education, and family is equally simplistic. The truth lies somewhere in between. In a rapidly changing society, caste remains an important factor in the socio-political life of changing rural communities. Economic change, political pragmatism, competitiveness, restructuring of ritual status and mobility, the introduction of new mass media, and the rising spirit of consumerism have all created a new social environment within the village that is quite different from the past. If one is to understand village society today, one must examine the complex interplay between all of these socio-structural and psycho-cultural forces within village.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The author, feel highly elated, as it gives me tremendous pleasure to come out with the work on the topic “analysis of caste, class and power”. Words fail to express my deep sense of glee to my guide, Mr Sujeet Choudry who enlightened me with his beautiful work on this topic. I would like to thank him for guiding me in doing all sorts of researches, suggestions and having discussions regarding my topic by devoting his precious time. I thank H.N.L.U for providing Library, Computer and Internet facilities. And lastly I thank all those who have helped me in writing this paper.

REFERENCES:

Dumont, Louis, 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Dutt, N.K.1986. Origin and Growth of Caste in India,

Singh, K.S. 1993. The People of India; National Series (Volumes on scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes), New Delhi Oxford University Press.

BETEILLE, A. (1996), Caste, Class, and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village,

Berkeley, University of California Press.

Hutton, J.H., 1946, Caste in India: Its Nature, Functions and Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Dubois, Abbe J.A. 1906. Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Desai, A.R., 1984. Rural Sociology in India. Bombay:

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