Assimilation

Endogamy, the rule against marrying out, which is the single most effective barrier and is why caste has proved so durable.

Sense of superiority on either side.

A large and concentrated minority population, which can sustain its own institutions and therefore need not assimilate.

Assimilation, accommodation and acculturation

The three-way distinction is what a good answer needs.

Acculturation is the intermediate stage and the one students omit. A group may adopt the dress, language and festivals of another and retain a wholly distinct identity, which is what most Indian urban experience actually looks like, and it is why acculturation and not assimilation is the more accurate description of most cultural change here.

Assimilation in India

It happens, and it is not the dominant pattern. India's plurality, described in [The Pluralistic Nature of Indian Society], has persisted for a very long time, which is itself the evidence: groups that have lived side by side for centuries remain distinct.

Where it does occur. Migration into cities produces substantial assimilation by the second and third generations, in language, dress and manner. Tribal communities in contact with surrounding peasant society have historically assimilated into it, sometimes as a caste, which is one of the processes the concept of Sanskritisation in [Sanskritisation and Westernization] describes.

Where it does not. Religious communities have not assimilated into one another. Caste endogamy prevents the mechanism that would matter most. And the constitutional arrangement itself is not assimilationist: it protects minorities' right to conserve their distinct language, script and culture and to establish their own educational institutions, which is a deliberate choice of pluralism over assimilation.

The evaluative point, which must be handled carefully. Assimilation is not automatically desirable. A policy of assimilation means the disappearance of minority cultures, and the loss falls entirely on the minority. Indian constitutional arrangements accommodate difference rather than dissolving it, and the argument about whether that entrenches division is the one in [The Pluralistic Nature of Indian Society].

A worked example

A family from a Tamil-speaking district moves to a Mumbai suburb in 1975.

The first generation speaks Tamil at home and broken Hindi outside, cooks its own food, marries within the community and keeps its festivals. There is accommodation with neighbours, no more: arrangements about the stairwell and the water, and no shared social life.

The second generation is schooled locally, speaks Marathi and English fluently, eats both cuisines, has friends outside the community, and keeps the festivals. This is acculturation: much has been adopted and the identity is intact.

The third generation speaks Tamil imperfectly, has no strong attachment to the ancestral district, and may marry outside the community. If it does, the fourth generation will not be distinguishable, and that is assimilation.

Notice the two things that decided it, and they are the two named above as the strongest factors. Schooling together produced the contact, and marriage decided whether the boundary survived. Every other factor operated through those two.

Quick revision

1. Assimilation is the slow fusion of groups into a common cultural life, so that the difference disappears. Park and Burgess's definition.
2. Characteristics: slow, gradual, unconscious, mutual to a degree, affects the whole culture, requires sustained contact.
3. Helped by: toleration, close contact, intermarriage, cultural similarity, a common language, education, economic interdependence, equal status.
4. Hindered by: isolation, wide cultural difference, prejudice and discrimination, visible physical difference, strong group identity, endogamy, sense of superiority, a large concentrated minority.
5. Accommodation: difference remains. Acculturation: traits adopted, identity remains. Assimilation: difference disappears.
6. Amalgamation is biological mixing; assimilation is cultural fusion.
7. In India assimilation occurs among urban migrants across generations but is not the dominant pattern; the constitutional arrangement protects distinct language, script and culture rather than dissolving them.
8. Assimilation is not automatically desirable: its cost falls entirely on the minority.

Test yourself

1. Define assimilation and give four characteristics. The process by which persons or groups of differing cultures acquire one another's memories, sentiments and attitudes and, by sharing experience and history, are incorporated into a common cultural life. It is slow, taking generations; gradual and largely unconscious, since nobody decides to be assimilated; mutual to some degree, the absorbing group also being changed; and complete only when the groups are no longer culturally distinguishable.

2. Distinguish accommodation, acculturation and assimilation. Accommodation ends a conflict by an arrangement under which the parties can coexist, and the differences remain entirely. Acculturation is the adoption by one group of cultural traits of another, such as dress, language or festivals, while its identity remains distinct. Assimilation is the fusion of the groups into one cultural life, so that the difference itself ceases to exist. They differ in speed, in consciousness, and above all in whether the difference survives.

3. What factors most help and most hinder assimilation? It is helped above all by sustained close contact and by intermarriage, which makes the next generation members of both groups, and further by toleration, cultural similarity, a shared language, common schooling, economic interdependence and equality of status between the groups. It is hindered above all by endogamy, the rule against marrying out, and by residential isolation, and further by wide cultural difference, prejudice and discrimination, visible physical difference, a strong desire to preserve identity, and a minority large and concentrated enough to sustain its own institutions.

4. Why is assimilation not the dominant pattern in India? Because the mechanisms that produce it are weak here and the arrangements that preserve difference are strong. Caste endogamy blocks intermarriage, which is the most powerful accelerator; residential concentration limits contact; religious differences have not narrowed; and the constitutional scheme itself protects the right of minorities to conserve their distinct language, script and culture and to run their own educational institutions. Groups have accordingly lived side by side for centuries while remaining distinct.

5. Is assimilation desirable? Not automatically, and an answer should say why. Assimilation means the disappearance of a culture, and the loss falls wholly on the minority, whose language, practice and identity are what cease to exist. A society may reasonably prefer accommodation and pluralism, which is the choice Indian constitutional arrangements make; the objection to that choice, that recognising difference entrenches it, is a genuine argument on the other side rather than a decisive one.