The Namghar Committee and the Kaibarta Family: Caste or Class?
Bhogpur is a village of about 1,200 people in Jorhat district, Assam. It has roughly 62 Tai Ahom households, 38 Kaibarta (Scheduled Caste) households, 24 Koch Rajbongshi households and 25 Bengali-speaking Muslim households. The Namghar, the village prayer hall, is run by a committee whose office-bearers have always been Tai Ahom elders. Last year a Kaibarta household - the father is a primary school teacher, the son has just joined state government service as a junior assistant in Guwahati, the family has built a two-storey pucca house and donated ₹51,000 towards the Namghar's renovation - was not considered for the committee, and the family still sits in the last row during kirtan. Meanwhile a Tai Ahom household that lost four bighas of land to river erosion and now works as daily wage labour continues to sit in the front row, and its eldest man presides over the committee. The Kaibarta family has quietly begun writing 'Kshatriya' on school and hostel forms, and has joined a statewide caste association.
1. Does this case show that class has replaced caste in rural Assam? Answer using at least three sociological concepts.
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Short answer: no. The case shows class mobility without status mobility, which is precisely what caste theory predicts when caste is analysed as a status order rather than as an income ladder.
Caste versus class (Weber). Weber separates class (a market situation - income, property, occupation) from status group (a community defined by social honour). The Kaibarta family has clearly moved up in class terms: salaried teacher, government job, pucca house, tractor, a large donation. Its position in the status order has not moved: it sits at the back and is excluded from office. The Ahom household has fallen in class terms but keeps ritual precedence. If caste were simply class, the seating and the committee would have followed the money. They did not.
Dominant caste (Srinivas). Ahom dominance here rests on a preponderance of numbers, historical land control and long patronage of the Namghar. Control of the prayer hall is an instrument of that dominance, not a side effect of it.
Sanskritisation (Srinivas). Writing 'Kshatriya' and claiming ties to a wider caste association is a bid for higher ritual rank by adopting the symbols of the 'twice-born'. Note the twist: classical sanskritisation accepts the hierarchy and imitates those above; here it is combined with organised caste-association politics, which is closer to assertion than to deference.
Seating is data. The front row and the committee are not trivial; they are the visible grammar of rank. The donation is best read as a claim on prestige that the status order has refused to honour.
2. If the Kaibarta family moved to Guwahati, would caste disappear from their lives? Reason carefully.
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No - but it would change form, and that is the point of the question.
The tempting answer is 'the city is anonymous, so caste weakens'. Anonymity does loosen caste in public encounters: on a bus, in a bank queue or in a shopping mall, the family's surname may not be read at all, and the salaried son may find his office promotion blocked by nothing more than performance.
The decisive tests, however, are not in public. Three domains would carry caste into the city:
- Marriage. Endogamy is the most stubborn mechanism of caste, and urban caste endogamy is often stronger because it is arranged through networks, matrimonial columns and caste associations that explicitly list sub-caste.
- Housing and neighbourhood. Landlords' preferences and the search for a 'good building' quietly reproduce the village's exclusions in a different map.
- Networks. Job information, credit and school admission circulate through kin and caste associations; the statewide association the family has just joined is an urban-style organisation, not a village one.
Theologically the family may gain more room to assert a Kshatriya identity in the city, where the local Ahom committee is absent. So the city does not dissolve caste; it privatises it and re-locates the enforcement from seating in a prayer hall to the far less visible decision about who one's child marries.
3. Is the 'Kshatriya' claim best described as sanskritisation, as assertion, or as both? What evidence would settle it?
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It could be both, and the exam wants you to say what would decide between them rather than to commit in advance.
Sanskritisation predicts imitation of the twice-born: engaging Brahmin priests, adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, wearing the sacred thread, dropping polluting occupations, and accepting the hierarchy while claiming a higher rung within it.
Assertion predicts something different: use of the census, reservation categories, caste associations, political bargaining and public demands for recognition - with the group refusing to be grateful for a rung.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Historically, many caste movements have begun as sanskritisation and turned into political assertion once a broader organisation and a franchise existed.
Evidence that would settle it:
- Observation of actual rituals: is a Brahmin priest hired, and are expensive life-cycle rites imitated?
- Does the family keep the Scheduled Caste certificate and its benefits while claiming Kshatriya status, or renounce them? This is the sharp test - the two claims are politically incompatible even when held together in practice.
- Interviews: is the claim made in a private vocabulary of purity, or in a public vocabulary of rights and history?
- Who carries the claim - elders only, or the salaried son and the association's office-bearers?
Strictly, 'Kshatriya' written on a school form is a claim about category; whether it is a claim about ritual rank is an empirical question, not a definitional one.