Caste and Class in India: Intersecting Inequalities

Two people can stand at opposite ends of Indian society for very different reasons. One may be excluded because of the family they were born into; another may struggle because they own nothing of economic value. These two forms of hierarchy-caste and class-are not the same thing, yet in India they are tangled together so tightly that pulling them apart requires careful thought. Understanding how ritual status and economic position reinforce, and sometimes contradict, each other is the key to understanding inequality, opportunity, and social mobility today.

Two hierarchies, two foundations
Where the two systems overlap
The numbers behind the overlap
Where the systems pull apart: the intermediate puzzle
The dominant caste: power without ritual rank
Modernization, urbanization, and what changes
The rise of a Dalit middle class
Why caste survives modernization
Why the distinction matters for policy

Two hierarchies, two foundations

Caste and class are both systems of social stratification, but they rest on completely different principles. Getting this distinction clear is the first step toward seeing how they interact.

Caste is a hereditary, closed system. It is rooted in the ancient varna framework that ranked society into Brahmins (priests and scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders), and Shudras (labourers), with Dalits placed outside the fourfold scheme altogether. Over centuries, thousands of jatis, or sub-castes, emerged, each tied to specific occupations, ritual rankings, and rules about marriage, food, and social interaction. The defining features of caste are ritual status and endogamy-the practice of marrying strictly within one’s own group. You are born into a caste, and traditionally you cannot leave it.

Class works on a different logic entirely. As sociologist André Béteille put it in his classic village study, class is a category of persons occupying a specific position in the system of production-landowners, tenants, and agricultural labourers, defined by what they own and control. Class is, at least in principle, an achieved status. A person can rise or fall through education, income, or enterprise. This is the crucial contrast: caste is ascribed at birth and fixed, while class is economic and, in theory, open to movement.

Where the two systems overlap

Despite their different origins, caste and class frequently line up in India. This tendency for caste position and economic class to reinforce one another across generations is sometimes called the caste-class nexus. Historically, the upper castes also formed the dominant economic classes, while the lowest castes were concentrated among the poorest economic groups.

The clearest evidence comes from land. In a predominantly agrarian society, ownership of land was the principal source of wealth, status, and security. That land was overwhelmingly concentrated in upper-caste hands, while Dalit communities worked as landless agricultural labourers on fields they did not own. This single fact reflected and reinforced both their caste position and their class position simultaneously. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar emphasised that land in India is not merely an economic asset but a marker of social dignity, which is precisely why its unequal distribution along caste lines is so consequential.

The numbers behind the overlap

Modern data confirms that the historical pattern has not vanished. The World Inequality Lab found that upper castes control about 88.4 per cent of India’s billionaire wealth, while the All-India Debt and Investment Survey indicates upper castes hold close to 55 per cent of the national wealth overall. The disparity also shows up in who owns businesses. According to the State of Working India 2023 report, Scheduled Castes make up 19.3 per cent of the workforce but only 11.4 per cent of enterprise owners, and Scheduled Tribes are similarly underrepresented relative to their share of workers.

The pattern repeats at the level of household poverty. Research on Uttar Pradesh found that Brahmins, Thakurs, and other general castes accumulate more wealth and face lower poverty than Dalits, who are also excluded from formal financial services and pushed toward informal lenders. Exclusion from credit traps these households in a cycle that is hard to break. Caste, in other words, continues to shape access to the very resources-education, land, credit, networks-that determine economic class.

Where the systems pull apart: the intermediate puzzle

If caste and class always matched perfectly, the story would be simple. They do not. The relationship is cleanest at the extremes and far messier in the middle.

Béteille’s study of the village of Sripuram in Tamil Nadu remains the sharpest illustration. He examined three things together: caste (ritual status), class (economic position), and power (political authority). His central finding was that the correspondence among these three systems was far more convincing for the Brahmins at the top and the Adi-Dravidas at the bottom than for the large group in the middle. At the extremes, caste and class reinforce each other neatly. Among the intermediate, non-Brahmin castes, the overlap breaks down-a person might hold a middling caste rank but a strong economic position, or the reverse.

This complexity is visible everywhere today. Some members of lower castes have achieved real economic success through education and entrepreneurship, while some upper-caste individuals live in genuine economic hardship. The existence of poor Brahmins and prosperous Dalit professionals challenges the assumption that caste rank always dictates economic class. The match is a strong tendency, not an iron law.

The dominant caste: power without ritual rank

The sociologist M.N. Srinivas captured another way the two systems diverge through his concept of the dominant caste. He observed that a caste could command enormous local power without sitting at the top of the ritual ladder. In his study of Rampura in Karnataka, the peasant caste was dominant even though it ranked ritually below the village Brahmins, because it was numerically large, owned the land, and controlled village affairs.

For Srinivas, a caste becomes dominant when it combines numerical strength, ownership of land, and economic and political clout-not ritual purity. This idea matters because it shows that power and economic class can flow to groups that the traditional caste hierarchy placed in the middle. The rise of dominant agrarian castes such as the Jats, Patels, and Marathas, who today wield significant economic and political influence, is the living proof of Srinivas’s insight.

Modernization, urbanization, and what changes

Economic change does loosen the old alignment. Béteille’s conclusion from Sripuram was that the processes of economic change and political modernization had given the productive system and the organisation of power an increasing degree of autonomy, progressively reducing the overlap between the hierarchies of caste, class, and power. As land reforms, education, and modern political institutions spread, the once tightly bound systems began to diverge.

Srinivas described one mechanism of mobility through his concept of Sanskritization-the process by which a lower caste adopts the rituals, diet, and customs of a higher caste to claim a higher social status. This was a form of positional mobility within the caste framework. Alongside it ran Westernization, the adoption of modern education, technology, and egalitarian values introduced during and after the colonial period. Both processes opened cracks in what had looked like a permanent order.

The rise of a Dalit middle class

The most significant modern development is the emergence of a middle class within historically marginalized communities. Affirmative action-India’s reservation system for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes in education and government jobs-together with schemes like the Post-Matric Scholarship, has enabled thousands of Dalit students to pursue higher education and created a new middle class among formerly excluded groups. This group asserts new forms of identity and directly challenges the assumption that low caste must mean low class.

Why caste survives modernization

Yet caste has proven remarkably durable. The hope, expressed most powerfully by Ambedkar, was that cities would dissolve caste-that urban anonymity and economic opportunity would let people escape the hierarchy of the village. The reality has been more disappointing. Research using 2011 Census data for Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai found that Indian cities remain highly segregated, with the largest cities among the most segregated of all. Caste hamlets in villages have their urban equivalent in caste-clustered neighbourhoods.

Discrimination has not disappeared; it has gone underground. Caste continues to shape hiring decisions, rental housing, and social networks even where overt untouchability is illegal. Upper-caste professionals often reproduce caste networks privately, in marriage and housing, while publicly downplaying caste. Crucially, gaining in economic class does not automatically erase the social stigma of caste-a Dalit who becomes wealthy may still face exclusion. This is why scholars argue that caste is not vanishing but transforming, adapting itself to capitalism, democracy, and globalization rather than dissolving in them.

Why the distinction matters for policy

The interrelation of caste and class is not merely an academic puzzle. It has direct consequences for how India tackles inequality. If one assumed that caste and class were identical, then purely economic measures-income support, credit access, growth-would be enough to lift the lowest castes. But because caste-based discrimination operates independently of economic position, economic mobility alone cannot eliminate it. A purely class-based policy would miss the social barriers that keep returning, while a purely caste-based one might overlook the genuine economic deprivation found within every group. Effective policy has to address both the ritual hierarchy and the economic one at the same time.

What do you think? If a person from a historically marginalized caste achieves wealth and education but still faces social exclusion, does that tell us caste or class is the more fundamental form of inequality in India? And given that cities have not become the great equalizers Ambedkar hoped for, what would it actually take for economic progress to translate into genuine social equality?

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Table of Contents

Two hierarchies, two foundations 🔗

Where the two systems overlap 🔗

The numbers behind the overlap 🔗

Where the systems pull apart: the intermediate puzzle 🔗

The dominant caste: power without ritual rank 🔗

Modernization, urbanization, and what changes 🔗

The rise of a Dalit middle class 🔗

Why caste survives modernization 🔗

Why the distinction matters for policy 🔗