Caste conflict has not withered away with modernisation; it has changed shape. The classical image of caste as a harmonious hierarchy sanctified by religion, associated with Louis Dumont's opposition of the pure and the impure, has given way to a picture of caste as a terrain of contestation, mobilisation and violence. Conflict arises precisely because the old order of graded inequality is being challenged by those it once subordinated, and because caste has entered the arenas of the market and electoral democracy.
From hierarchy to conflict
Traditional accounts, following Dumont, emphasised consensus around ritual ranking. Critics such as Berreman and Gupta countered that caste was always underpinned by material interest and coercion, and that the appearance of harmony masked the domination of landed upper castes over labouring lower castes. As the grip of ritual sanction has loosened, the coercive foundation has become visible. Andre Beteille's classic study of a Tanjore village showed how the earlier congruence of caste, class and power was breaking down, opening the way for competition and conflict along newly separated lines.
Atrocities and dalit assertion
The sharpest form of caste conflict is atrocity — violence inflicted on dalits when they assert dignity, claim land or wages, or transgress the boundaries of endogamy and the commons. Such violence is often a backlash by dominant castes against the erosion of servitude. The state has recognised this through the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989, a law that names specific humiliations and offers enhanced protection, though its implementation remains weak.
Dalit assertion, rooted in the emancipatory vision of Ambedkar, has transformed the politics of caste from below. Where subordinate castes once accepted their place, they now organise, contest elections and articulate a language of rights. Gopal Guru's writing on dalit self-respect and the wider dalit literary and cultural movements express a refusal of stigma that itself provokes conflict, since it unsettles the sense of entitlement of the dominant.
Sanskritisation, dominance and mobilisation
M. N. Srinivas offered two enduring concepts. Sanskritisation described how lower castes emulate the customs of higher castes to raise their position, a strategy that accepts the hierarchy even while contesting one's place within it. The dominant caste — a group with numerical strength, land and access to power — became the local arbiter of conflict and patronage. Rajni Kothari's analysis of the politicisation of caste showed how democratic competition converts caste into an instrument of mobilisation, producing caste associations and vote banks that turn ascriptive identity into a resource.
Reservation policy has become a central axis of conflict. The extension of affirmative action following the Mandal Commission report in 1990 mobilised the Other Backward Classes and triggered fierce upper-caste resistance, reshaping national politics. Contemporary agitations by relatively prosperous peasant castes demanding backward status reveal how reservation has become a language through which caste groups bargain with the state.
New arenas of conflict
Caste persists in unexpected places. Far from dissolving in the anonymity of the city, it survives in marriage markets, networks of trust and the informal economy, a point made by studies of caste and capitalism. Discrimination in modern employment, documented in audit studies, shows that ascriptive disadvantage penetrates the ostensibly meritocratic private sector. At the same time, honour killings against inter-caste couples reveal how the policing of endogamy through violence remains central to the reproduction of caste.
How to use this in the exam
Structure the answer around change: contrast Dumont's consensual model with the conflict perspective of Berreman and Gupta, then show how democracy and the market have re-energised caste. Deploy Srinivas on sanskritisation and dominant caste, Kothari on the politicisation of caste, and Ambedkar and Gopal Guru on dalit assertion. Use the Atrocities Act and the Mandal moment as pivots, and finish with contemporary evidence — labour-market discrimination and honour crimes — to show that caste conflict is a living, evolving reality rather than a residue of tradition.