Breaking down the question
This is a short, attributional question. It asks specifically for André Béteille's definition of class — not a generic Marxian or Weberian account. The examiner wants to see whether the candidate can reproduce Béteille's particular formulation and situate it within his wider work on Indian stratification.
At 10 marks the task is largely expository, but a strong answer does more than quote a sentence. It explains what Béteille means by class, why he defines it as he does, and how his conception distinguishes class from caste in the Indian setting.
For fuller treatment, see the note on middle classes in India.
How to approach it
Open with Béteille's core definition — class as a category of persons occupying a similar position with respect to the distribution of resources and life chances. Then unpack the key terms and note his debt to a broadly Weberian framework.
Devote the middle to what makes his treatment distinctive: the careful separation of class from caste, and his insistence on both objective and subjective dimensions. Close by noting the analytical value of the definition for studying Indian society.
Model answer
André Béteille defines class as a category of persons who occupy a broadly similar position in the distribution of economic resources and, consequently, enjoy similar life chances. Class, in this view, is not a formal group with fixed membership but an aggregate of individuals and households positioned similarly with respect to property, income, occupation and the opportunities these confer.
His conception draws on a broadly Weberian framework rather than a strictly Marxian one. Where Marx tied class to ownership or non-ownership of the means of production and to inherent conflict, Béteille emphasises a gradational ordering shaped by command over resources and the life chances that flow from it. Class position influences access to education, employment, consumption and prestige, so that classes shade into one another along a continuum rather than forming two sharply opposed camps.
Central to his account is the distinction between class and caste. Caste is a system of ascriptive, ritually ranked groups with clear boundaries, endogamy and notions of purity and pollution. Class, by contrast, is an open, achievement-oriented category: membership can change with mobility, its boundaries are fluid, and it rests on secular, material criteria rather than ritual status. In the traditional order class and caste largely coincided, but Béteille — through his study of Sripuram — showed that they increasingly diverge as land reform, education and the market allow economic position and ritual rank to separate.
Béteille also recognises that class has both an objective and a subjective dimension. Objectively, it is measurable through ownership, income and occupation. Subjectively, it involves consciousness — the sense of belonging to a stratum and of shared interests — though in India such class consciousness is often muted by the cross-cutting pull of caste and community.
The definition is analytically valuable precisely because it treats class as a relational and dynamic category, capturing the growing importance of secular economic differentiation in modern India while leaving room for its complex entanglement with caste.
Examiner's perspective
At 10 marks the examiner first checks accuracy of attribution: the answer must convey Béteille's actual emphasis — a similar position in the distribution of resources yielding similar life chances — rather than a stock Marxist definition. Getting this focus right signals genuine familiarity with his work.
The higher marks lie in the class-caste distinction and the objective-subjective dimensions. Scripts that briefly invoke Sripuram to show class and caste diverging, and that note the Weberian rather than Marxian cast of the definition, stand out within the tight word limit.