Revision summary
Beteille’s middle class is built on education, occupation and official equality. It is not only an income group and not only Desai’s bourgeoisie. Public employment and professions historically expanded it. Caste still shadows marriage and schooling. Disharmony is the justification’s other face.
Model answer
Introduction
Andre Beteille justifies the Indian middle class as a historically new formation of education, occupation, and values of equality, not as a mere income slab. It is central to his disharmonic modern India.
Body
What he means by middle class
- It is a class of service, profession, and small property that lives by credentials more than by landed honour alone.
- Expansion after jobs in administration, teaching, and later private services made it a demographic and moral fact.
- It is not the Western bourgeoisie of industrial ownership that Desai placed at the nationalist core, though it overlaps.
Justification
- The Constitution and public employment created a career open in principle, a homo aequalis inside a still ranked society.
- Sripuram already showed class detaching a little from caste; the urban middle class is that split at scale.
- The middle class carries the public language of merit, secular office, and nuclear family, while practising caste in marriage.
Limits he would not hide
- It can be caste-shadowed: dominant-caste capital converts into degrees.
- It may preach equality and hoard school and housing, the disharmony he theorised.
Use
- Justify the middle class as a real stratum of modern India, not as a copy of Europe and not as a myth.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD ED[Education office] --> MC[Middle class] MC --> EQ[Equality as value] CA[Caste marriage housing] --> DH[Disharmony]
Conclusion
Beteille justifies the Indian middle class as the social seat of official equality and occupational mobility. Its justification is historical: law, school, and office. Its contradiction is that it still marries and resides by rank.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Give a critical analysis of Andre Beteille's study of Tanjore village.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q1(b)). View answer →
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Is the IT employee Beteille’s middle class?
Yes in occupation and consumption. Caste capital often still sits behind the campus.
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Did he deny a working class?
No. He insisted India has several structures of inequality at once.
PYQ trend
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