Caste mobility - 2

...A man interested in raising his status in Hindu society raises a whole lot of problems. Where this man and his offspring would marry? With whom he would dine? With whom he would socialize? What should be his occupation? What should be his place in power structure? Such a man would thrteaten the existing social structure and its beneficiaries. This threat itself is a corrupting influence. It would be desirable to ostracize this man to avoid theses problems that transgress upon Varna dharma or cosmic order of the society. Such an ostracization would result in avoidance of an introduction of filthy impurities in the society. For example, for a Shudra to become Brahman it is essential to teach him Vedas; he should be eligible to teach Vedas to higher Varnas; he should be able to marry a Brahman girl; all the Kshatriyas should pay him respect by touching his feet or accept their secondary position to him; he should receive the same respectful treatment from Vaisyas and other section of the society without any questions. It is near impossible to find even one person from any of the Varna who agrees to treat him as such. The impossibility keeps on increasing as one adds more people and more Varnas. Thus in the total absence of extension of such facilities which are available to born Brahmans, the Shudra in question remains where he was. The insurmountable questions are raised in the process - the questions which do not have any solutions within the Varna dharma.

However, the downward mobility was automatically implied in the ostracization process which created the outcastes. Automatically, all the outcastes, who were without any ceremonial, social and property rights, became members of the fifth stratum.

The caste system does show some flexibility when it comes to movement of full jati because it automatically solves the main problems of marriage and inter dining. A group moving up can always marry within the same group. Thus the bloodlines and purity of other groups or jatis are not affected. This upward movement of a jati is an extremely slow process but it does happen. One way for this to happen is the learning of new higher-level occupational skills by some members of caste. Thus two occupational groups in the same caste are created. The number of such newly skilled people in a new occupation keeps on growing. After a considerable gap of about three or four generations the number of such people grows considerably. The people belonging to new group start intermarrying and leave out the people still following the old occupation. This process is carried forward in time till the new group becomes totally endogamous and separates. This causes a new endogamous occupational jati to emerge. For an example, some Chamars may learn a new occupation of weaving due to reasons beyond the control of anybody. The reason may be the wiping out of weaver community in that area due to any epidemic leaving nobody to weave. Or it may be due to foreign invasion that caused the weaving community to migrate totally to some other area. Or because the foreigners have created a new power structure which has created a new class of religious converts willing to employ the skinners as weavers. As long as new skinner-weavers are few in number they continue to align themselves with their skinner caste. As the time goes by these skinner-weavers grow large into numbers. They start intermarrying and a time comes when these skinner weavers become an endogamous jati in their own right. Then they cut off all the links with their previous skinner caste and separate. And a new weaving jati comes into existence. The weaving occupation becomes their heredity occupation. In due course of time the society also starts identifying them by their new endogamous occupational group at a relatively higher social status....