Revision summary
Caste and gender are the two fundamental discrimination axes in India. Caste grades touch, marriage, and work; gender grades property and the body. Law and politics have changed their public legitimacy. Endogamy, atrocity, unpaid care, and violence persist. Class, faith, and tribe matter, often through these two axes.
Model answer
Introduction
The two fundamental axes of social discrimination in India are caste, including its untouchability pole, and gender as organised by kinship. Class, religion, and tribe cut across them. They are changing in form more than they are ending as structures.
Body
Axis one: caste
- Graded inequality, endogamy, and disability, as Ambedkar and G. S. Ghurye’s feature lists both underline in different ways.
- M. N. Srinivas showed local dominance can outweigh ritual rank, yet labour and marriage still discriminate.
- Change: law, vote, and a reserved middle class. Persistence: atrocity, segregated work, and marriage ads.
Axis two: gender
- Seed and Earth, property, and honour make women a discriminated sex-class inside every caste.
- Public violence and unpaid care are the everyday form.
- Change: schooling, law, and some office. Persistence: sex ratio, domestic violence, and proxy politics.
Why these two are fundamental
- They organise who may marry, inherit, and be touched, which class alone does not explain.
- Religion and ethnicity matter, as do Adivasi land losses. They often work through caste-like ranking and gendered honour.
Are they changing?
- Andre Beteille’s disharmonic structure: equality is the official axis, discrimination the practical one.
- Yogendra Singh: recombination, not disappearance.
- A. R. Desai: class change without a full end to ascriptive labour.
- Urban anonymity and markets muddle everyday rank; they do not dissolve the two axes.
Interaction
- Dalit women show the intersection: two axes at once, not an average of both.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD CA[Caste endogamy labour] --> D[Discrimination] GE[Gender property honour] --> D CH[Law vote school] --> MD[Change of form] D --> MD
Conclusion
Caste and gender are the two fundamental axes of Indian discrimination because they structure intimacy, labour, and honour. They are changing: more public equality, more identity politics, more law. They are not finished: endogamy and patriarchy still sort life chances.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Why have we started using another category of tribes called the Particularly Vulnerable Groups (PVTGs) Why are they so called ?
Next question in the 2017 paper (Q8). View answer →
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Why not class as a fundamental axis?
Class is real and organises surplus. In India it is still scheduled through caste and gender in marriage and dirty work.
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Has urban life ended the axes?
It muddles some public rank. Marriage and inheritance still carry them.
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More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2017 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a critique of the structural and functional perspective used by M.N. Srinivas in the understanding of Indian society
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Srinivas studied India as an observed village structure, not a book of sacred rules. Function explained how custom held groups together. Desai’s class reading and Beteille’s disharmony expose the harmony bias. The village monograph cannot stand for mill, city, and tribe. Keep the field tools; refuse the closed-system claim.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2017 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Which is more significant, the principle of 'hierarchy' or the principal of difference; in inter caste relations in the present day ?
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Hierarchy still ranks bodies through honour, endogamy, and atrocity. Difference organises caste as political identity and rights. Srinivas’s dominant caste already split ritual rank from local power. Beteille’s disharmony names equality as value beside ranked practice. Public life leans to difference; intimacy still leans to hierarchy.
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What are the distinct features of islam as practised in India, and how have they changed over time ?
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Indian Islam is regional, often shrine-centred, and internally ranked. Minority status after Partition made community a political fact. Reform and print pushed scriptural uniformity against custom. Caste-like divisions and dargah practice persist. Change is toward a firmer boundary, not toward one identical piety.
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