''Homo Hierarchicus: Essai sur le système des castes'' (1966) is

Louis Dumont Louis Charles Jean Dumont (11 August 1911 – 19 November 1998) was a French anthropologist. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Oxford University during the 1950s, and was then dire ...

's treatise on the

Indian caste system The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of classification of castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mu ...

. It analyses the caste hierarchy and the ascendancy tendency of the lower castes to follow the habits of the higher castes. This concept was termed as

Sanskritisation Sanskritisation (or Sanskritization) is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek 'upward' mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper ...

MN Srinivas Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1916–1999) was an Indian sociologist and social anthropologist. He is mostly known for his work on caste and caste systems, social stratification, Sanskritisation and Westernisation in southern India and th ...

. He states that the

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...

of caste system is fundamentally contrary to our idea of

egalitarian Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hum ...

society and arises from the nature, conditions and limitations of realisation of such a society. We can not restrict ourselves to understand caste system only as a form of '

Social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...

References and Notes

Anthropology books Books about the caste system in India 1966 non-fiction books {{India-hist-book-stub

See also

References and Notes