India's Caste System and Affirmative Action

Gender Roles and the Status of Men and Women in India

• The focus study examines gender roles and the status of men and women in India.

Syllabus

• Students will study a country determining the nature of traditional society and culture, analyzing power and authority.
• Studies involve examining the impact of continuity and change on individuals and groups at micro, meso, and macro levels of society.
• Students explore continuity and change through gender roles focusing on the status of men and women.
• Examination of change includes whether it is necessarily progress, which groups benefit and which do not.
• Students also examine how access to technologies impacts change rate and direction.
• Applying social theory, specifically functionalism and assessing its appropriateness is included.
• Studies will also need to Determine current trends and suggest probable future directions for a country
• Implications for gender roles in the future are evaluated by looking at likely changes and probable continuities are evaluated.
• Tech importance to the future of a studied country will be explored

Historical and Cultural Background

• India is the largest part of the South Asian subcontinent, sharing area with Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
• Landforms are variable: torrid plains, tropical islands, parched deserts, and the highest mountain range.
• India is bounded by Pakistan, China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma, the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.
• The area of the Republic of India is 1,222,237 square miles (3,165,596 square kilometers).
• The 1991 census counted 846,302,688 residents, including 407,072,230 women, and 217 million urban dwellers.
• A 1998 estimate put the growth rate at 17 per one thousand, reaching one billion by May 2000.
• Life expectancy in 1991 was sixty years, with almost 5 percent of the population age 65 or older in 1997.
• The population is still primarily rural, with 73 percent living outside cities and towns in 1997.
• There are four major language families with numerous languages: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda/Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman.
• Adopted in 1947, the national flag is a tricolor of deep saffron, white, and green horizontal bands with a blue wheel in the white band.
• The national emblem is the lion column-capital of Emperor Asoka at Sarnath, which is preserved in the Sarnath Museum.
• The national anthem is a song composed by Rabindranath Tagore, entitled Jana-gana mana.
• The Saka-era calendar was adopted in 1957 and is often used with the Gregorian calendar.
• Indian history goes back thousands of years, with Paleolithic hunting and gathering cultures followed by settled agricultural communities.
• The Indus Valley had its first urban civilization around 2700 B.C.E.
• There were princely states and kingdoms, war and conquest, punctuated by foreign invasions and the birth of Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.
• The Empire of Asoka (272–232 B.C.E.) and the Mughal Empire (1526–1707), were unified by the British.
• After 1858, India was ruled by the British government through a viceroy and council
• The Indian National Congress moved from advisor to demanding power transfer.
• Civil disobedience led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi sought national independence.
• Independence was achieved with the condition that Muslim areas would form Pakistan.
• Mohammed Ali Jinnah became Pakastani's first prime minister, while Nehru became the prime minister of the Republic of India.
• The splitting off of Pakistan caused a massive population movement and bloodshed.
• Regional identity and mother tongue are more important and millions of illiterate individuals support regional politicians
• India is home to thousands of ethnic groups, tribes, castes, and religions, with castes related through a hierarchical structure
• Ethnic conflict occurs, but a local intercaste and intertribal economy based on barter/exchange partially addresses economic needs.
• The Indus civilization (2700 to 1500 B.C.E.) had one of the earliest urban societies and a trading economy.
• The walled citadels became palisades, walls, and moats.
• The eight historic types of towns and cities: (1) ancient pilgrimage centers, (2) local market towns, (3) medieval fortified towns, (4) ancient/medieval seaports, (5) military cantonments (British Setup), (6) modern administrative centers, (7) new industrial centers, and (8) great modern metropoles
• Regional architecture developed, reflecting Tamil kingdoms, Persian/Turkic invaders, Portuguese/British Christianity, and Jainism/Buddhism/Islam/medieval Hinduism.
• The landscape contains over half a million villages, each religion has holy monuments within villages/towns, and pilgrimage sites exist.

Food and Economic Factors

• Half the population eats rice, the rest eat wheat, barley, maize, and millet, along with differences between meat eaters and vegetarians occur.
• Castes, tribes, towns, villages, and religions hold traditional ceremonies, mostly religious and related to Hinduism.
• Farming employs the largest population mostly in rural areas, involving subsistence farming on tiny plots
• Some farmers produce cash crops, while others grow tea, coffee, cardamom, and rubber for foreign money.
• The 1996 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was $380 with a nearly 6% GDP growth rate (1990-1996).
• National debt was 27% of GDP in 1994. Industries include mining operations.
• Major markets are Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, with Clothing, tea, and computer software exports to the United States.
• Agriculture determines land ownership for survival and power, with most acreage owned by a politically dominant, middle-ranking caste.
• Regions each have traditions of land tenure and taxation. Rural serfs have largely disappeared, but landless wage laborers, tenant farmers, and landlords exist.
• India has had traders, transport agents, importers, and exporters since the Indus civilization, with coinage used in urban areas for 2500 years.
• An expanding investment scene combined with inflation has formed an import and export trade. The main Industries: tourism, clothing, tea, coffee, cotton, and raw materials, with increasing importance of computer software.
• Industries were created by British administration.
• The country still relies on a railroad track, some electrified, and roadways, many unsurfaced, with The government has a Railroad monopoly. Postal service grew into Air India, nationalized in 1953.
• Private airlines have developed and international connections provided as well.
• India trades internationally with Russia, the United States, and other locations. Transborder trades are minimal but with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bhutan.

Social organization

• Divisions of labor: Division of work based on gender and age, with the caste system the most basic principle of societies’ organization.
• The caste system exceeds other Hindu/Buddhist countries and can create distinct castes within a village
• Hindu theory justifies the division of society, soul reincarnations depend on previous behavior.
• Caste is found among Indian Muslims, Jews, and Christians and Korea, Japan, and Tibet have rudimentary caste systems, signaled by untouchable social categories.
• The major cites: Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai), Calcutta (Kolkata), New Delhi, and Bangalore were residential areas.
• There is now a developed class system that overlies and displaces the traditional caste system with intercaste marriage.
• People are accurately gauged by their dress, names, dialect, deities, with whom they will publicly eat, their housing and occupations.

Government and Legal aspects

• India has a liberal democratic federal republic, the largest democracy, divided into twenty-eight linguistically-based states and seven Union Territories.
• The central parliament in New Delhi consists of the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and the Council of States (Rajya Sabha).
• States all have legislative assemblies (Vidhan sabha) and legislative councils (Vidhan parishad).
• Parliament and state legislature members are selected in elections except Lok Sabha with two seats for Anglo-Indian members with legislative representation for minority populations.
• The head of state is the unelected president, and the president is aided by a council of ministers.
• There is one legal hierarchy capped by the Supreme Court with Legal procedure based on the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973
• The constitution promulgated in 1950 curtailed influence of traditional legal systems based on religion.
• Litigation continues causing long delays but fines and imprisonment are the most common punishments.
• The Supreme Court upholds the legality of the death penalty.
• Five wars with Pakistan and one with China provided training. India thus has a strong program of national defense.

Social Welfare

• Traditionally, families care are tasked to car for the poor, elderly, incapacitated, and very young, Underfunded state governments have welfare organizations supported by private/religious foundations.
• The population needing social welfare is too vast to support, and these populations are concentrated in the cities.
• There are numerous private social, political, religious, educational, or sporting organizations with charities attempting to register but government attempts no controls.
• Gender provides a fundamental division of the labor force and "Patriarchal" is the word that is commonly associated with description of women and men in india. Priesthood and leadership are typically male.
• Women must first obey father, then husband, then son, marriages are between families, but there is potential power influence in the arrangement. Older women may be very influential behind the scenes, they wield little legal authority in property and marriage matters.
• Although different regions and religions have considerable variety in arrangements, arrangement in marriages is common. Marrying with the institution of arranged marriages is that parents control not just children but over caste system as well.
• There are two main main marriage types. North Indian in which the man must not marry a closely related cousin verses the south Indian in which a cross cousin is the ideal spouse. Uncle niece marriages is typically allowed with intermediate forms

Domestic Structures

• The residential unit is normally the household, varies in structure like the lodgings of extended families, with Large buildings holding distrect households all distinguished primarily by sources of cooking and use of the same cooking hearth
• The written written are mostly unknown but their is the understanding that sons inherit property in states for their fathers and for daughters, can hope to receive a dowry at the time of their marriage
• Much caste variation of who enters occurs some have the oldest son inheriting everything, some will have brothers inherit equal shares except for the youngest, who inherits the house also. There are common occurrences where even though modern law suggests, the the Daughters should inherit equally with their brothers this rarely happens except in Islamic families
• largest can based group of cast which there are several 1000 cast is an endogamous it with its own traditional occupation range made up of various clans but also can based also exogamous and up the smaller groups from what is all lineages of very size class and depending on the number of number the neighborly localize that they are made the cast is

Socialization

• Infant Care. Almost all completely the sole task of mothers, and grandmothers with the mother doing work elsewhere older sisters and grandmothers can become cheap providers after about the age of two older sister to spend a lot of time in this activity
• Child rearing and education at 1995 government spent over 2% of its resources on school regardless government goal of eradicating illiteracy of the age it has not been a steady increase. Amongst people % were illiterate. Amongst people a percent increase was observed. Amongst, sexual despite while 64% of men were literate, what's women were
• millions of rural parents feel is waste. Has sixteen for many good permission to send a school that make most girl 2 in the last century for many important
• high school was students. Years of education have been have been emphasis on in a emphasis on commonly universities. There are 166 university University, most well known through the centralized professor central university central of all better but but

Etiquette

• Indians are often made comfortable can adopt a figure and govern

Beliefs

• With a percent enumerated Islam to Christianity over the
• The thousands of really many of the Buddha are

Other

• Labor provide the

Banyan India's Caste System Remains Entrenched

• India's caste system is ancient and imposes superiority, suffering on humans based on birth.
• Hindu texts describe four tiers (varnas): Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Shudras.
• The British Raj continued the caste system, leading to discrimination against Dalits ("untouchables").
• India's constitution includes affirmative action, with a "reservation" policy for public jobs and college places.
• The policy aims to assist Dalits (232m) and adivasis (120m-odd).
• A commission deemed 52% of Indians as "other backward classes" with reserved places in the 1980's.
• The Supreme Court limited reserved public jobs to 50%, often breached by states.
• Now, other castes are lobbying for backward status like Gujarat's Patidars, Haryana's Jats, and Maharashtra's Marathas.
• These groups protests in for expanded reasons
• Low farm incomes and limited urban opportunities are primary motivations.
• Government jobs have become the hope for advancement absurdity.
• Unofficial caste surveys find over half the country may consider themselves "backward".
• 80% of the population may be eligible for reservation, implying affirmative action is for the majority.
• The success of reservations is unclear due to government incuriousness.
• There are fostered lower-caste bourgeoisie.
• Economic growth has reduced poverty.
• Inequality has grown.
• Intermarriage between castes remains rare.
• Housing segregation by caste is common and can lead to to violence against lower castes.
• The three uppermost varnas are in most of both public and private jobs, and the toxicity even extends to other religions for their catholic beliefs.
• Quotas may be better than nothing.
• Comprehensive social programs are needed to fight poverty, inequality and discrimination.
• Reservation policies perpetuate caste iniquities, and political affirmative action facilitates a choice

Religious Diversity In India

• Religious diversity defines India’s population with Hinduism as dominant, while Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, and Sikhism flourished.
• Indian religion is generally taken more seriously by inhabitants than it is in the West.
• Followers of Indian religions have created "communities” that coexist peacefully but live in separate social circles.
• Census data indicates that non-Muslims worry of faster Muslim population growth will cause a societal imbalance.
• According to the 2001 Census, 81% of enumerated Indians were Hindu, leaving 200 million who followed other religions.
• Hindus are the majority in all larger states except Jammu and Kashmir, where they accounted for 30% of the population and Punjab, where they made up 37%.
• The most populous religious minority group is the Muslim population where in every 1,000 Indians there are 134 Muslims but only 23 Christians, 19 sikhs 8 Buddhists and 4 Jaisn
• 4 major states make up the majority of the Jains: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan
• Jains are the only religious community that is highly located cities and towns versus rural areas.
• Muslims recorded the most growth over the period-29 percent—while Sikhs (after Parsis) grew the least, 17 percent between 1991 and 2002.
• The Hindu proportion of the population showed a scant decrease, from 84% to 81 %
• The changing balance is much less significant than it first appears with Hindu growth up tp 140 million while Muslims grew by only 37 million between 1991 and 2001.
• Female literacy ranges from 91 % among Jains to 53% among Hindus and 50% among Muslims.
• The Muslim population with The Muslim population is slightly more than that of youngers
• Jains being among India's most successful
• The preference for boys affects the sex ratio, that is a strong singal for those of a choice against females
• India for the past 40 years has been remarkable and often lead. Census data and population
• Trends suggest that there will

A study of Gender Inequality in India

• Gender inequality exists in every region and social class and prevents economic growth from improving the lives of Indian people.
• Gender inequality is complex because it exists in education, employment, income, health, cultural issues, social issues, and economic issues.
• Multi-dimensional context of gender inequalities prevalent in India with inequality in economic, social, cultural and legal biasness for policy-makers establish and policies are tried to promote the dignified
• Gender disparity between men and women in different social, economical & political, cultural and legal aspects.
• known as gender biasness, or gender stratification
• India ranks 132 / 187 countries on the gender inequality index, lower than Pakistan (123).
• South Asia, with the exception of Afghanistan, do a better job with Sri Lanka (75) topping them all.

7 types of gender inequality include

• Mortality. High mortality rates for women preponderance of men lack of gender bias in health care/nutrition.
• Natality . Ardent male bias of wanting boys more than girls.
• Sex selective abortions becomes common in India.Employment
• Women face greater handicap in work, with men often getting better opportunities and pay.
• Ownership Inequality: Traditional property rights have favored men in the most parts of India. Absence of property reduces voice/hardens economic activities.
• Special Opportunity higher education may be far fewer Indian higher education
• Basic Even with good demographic characteristics, women less than square deal.
• Household inequality is present in the family or household, which can take many different forms and executive

History

• ancient India women were in high steam by the word of water in the waters
• Manu Smiti considered a precious being
• in what was came
• the status
• people the the 1 2

In India, Today

• the sex-selection phenomena was big in the The urbanization pressure suns educated wealthy families
• the dominance, walk all day our women a

Reasons

• physical provide the

Factors Behind Growing Gender Inequality

• There is wage unequal, in the number of labour of the of the are largely to the often credit for services is to to to not

Social

• India is of family the son move husband marriages include

Dowry

• The dowry system in India contributes to gender inequalities by influencing the perception that girls are a burden on families.

Gender -Based Violence

• Genedr based violence with the high of india. india women women have less authority this also accounts for reasons. a is not
• A key factor driving gender, that are the sons. To

Legal Factors

• Women are equal and political inequality due to are like carriage. a of the other

Suggestions

We should provide education. The trends They do better

Explore the historical role of the British Raj in India's caste system, the intentions behind affirmative action policies, and the Supreme Court's role in regulating these policies. Understand caste dynamics, reservation policies, and the distinctions between different caste classifications in India. Analyze the political and social factors influencing caste-based policies.