Sanskritisation and Westernization

Its criticisms

1. It leaves the hierarchy intact, which is not a criticism of the concept but of treating it as emancipation. Ambedkar's position is the sharpest contrast: he regarded imitation of the higher castes as futile and turned instead to conversion and to the transformation of the structure through constitutional means.
2. It describes rather than explains. It says what happens without saying why the model is accepted.
3. It is Brahmin-centred in its original formulation, which Srinivas partly corrected with the dominant caste.
4. It may be less significant now. Modern mobility for a group runs increasingly through education, employment, reservation and political organisation rather than through the imitation of ritual practice, and some groups now assert their own traditions rather than adopting another's, which is the reverse of Sanskritisation.

Westernization

What it covers

Srinivas used it deliberately as a broader and more neutral term than modernisation, and distinguished levels.

Technology: railways, printing, machinery, medicine, communications.

Institutions: the modern state, a codified legal system, courts, an organised bureaucracy, universities, the press, political parties and representative government.

Ideology and values: rationalism, humanitarianism, equality, individual liberty, secularism, and the very idea of social reform.

Its characteristics

1. It is a value-neutral concept, or was intended to be. Srinivas used it to describe changes, not to praise or condemn them.
2. It is uneven. It affects some groups, regions and spheres far more than others, and its most conspicuous carriers were the western-educated professional classes.
3. It is selective. Societies adopt some elements and reject others: technology and institutions travel more readily than values.
4. It produces contradictory results. The same influence that brought equality and rationalism also brought a colonial administration and the systematic classification of caste noted in [Caste].
5. It interacts with Sanskritisation, and here is the finding that makes the pair worth teaching together: Srinivas observed that Westernization of the dominant groups can accelerate Sanskritisation among those below, because western education and employment give a group the resources with which to advance a ritual claim. The two processes are not opposites; they run alongside each other and each can drive the other.

The criticism

That the term attributes to western contact changes that had indigenous sources; that it flattens very different influences into one; and that Srinivas himself acknowledged its imprecision. Some writers prefer modernisation, treated in the next chapter, though that term carries its own difficulties.

The two compared

A worked example

A cultivating caste in a Maharashtra district, ranked in the middle of the local order.

The material change comes first. After land reform its households acquire secure title, and irrigation raises incomes.

Sanskritisation follows. Households give up meat and liquor on ritual occasions, adopt the sacred thread, engage Brahmin priests for ceremonies previously conducted by their own elders, restrict widow remarriage, and begin to use a higher-sounding name with an origin story to match. Within two generations the local ranking has quietly moved.

Westernization runs in parallel and is carried by the same prosperity. The children go to school and then to college in the town; some enter government service; the household acquires a scooter, then a television; and the young hold ideas about marriage and about caste that their grandparents did not.

And the two pull against each other, which is the observation worth making. The ritual claim requires the hierarchy to be real and important. The western-educated son who says caste should not matter is undermining the very ladder his family has spent forty years climbing. That tension inside a single household is what Indian social change actually looks like, and it is a far better answer than treating the two processes as a list.

Quick revision

1. Sanskritisation: a low or middle-ranking group adopts the customs, ritual and ideology of a higher, usually twice-born, caste and claims a higher position. Coined by M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, 1952. MU prints "Sankritisation".
2. It is mobility for a group, not an individual, and it usually follows an improvement in economic or political position, generally the acquisition of land.
3. It is positional, not structural: the group moves up the ladder and the ladder is confirmed.
4. Srinivas broadened the model from the Brahmin to the locally dominant caste.
5. Westernization: change from contact with the West at the levels of technology, institutions, ideology and values. Intended as value-neutral, uneven and selective.
6. The two run together: Westernization of a group can supply the resources that make Sanskritisation possible.
7. Criticisms: Sanskritisation leaves the hierarchy intact and is Brahmin-centred, and matters less now that mobility runs through education, employment, reservation and political organisation; Westernization is imprecise and attributes indigenous change to external contact.

Test yourself

1. Define Sanskritisation and name its source. The process by which a low or middle-ranking caste, or a tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual, ideology and way of life in the direction of a high and frequently twice-born caste, and claims a higher position in the hierarchy than that traditionally conceded to it. The term was coined by M. N. Srinivas in Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, published in 1952. MU's syllabus prints it as "Sankritisation".

2. Why is Sanskritisation called positional and not structural change? Because it alters the position of a particular group within the hierarchy while leaving the hierarchy itself entirely intact. The ranking of ways of life by ritual purity, and the belief that some are superior, are not challenged by the process; they are relied upon, since the group's claim to higher standing makes sense only if the ladder is real. The result is mobility for one group and confirmation of the structure that subordinates others.

3. What must accompany Sanskritisation for it to succeed? An improvement in the group's economic or political position, most often the acquisition of land, and sometimes numerical strength or political office. Srinivas observed that ritual change generally follows material change rather than substituting for it: a group with no improvement in its material position rarely succeeds in having a higher ritual claim conceded by the local community.

4. What does Westernization cover, and at what levels? The changes brought about in Indian society and culture by contact with the West, at the level of technology, including railways, printing, machinery and medicine; of institutions, including the modern state, codified law, courts, bureaucracy, universities, the press and representative government; and of ideology and values, including rationalism, humanitarianism, equality, individual liberty and secularism. It is uneven between groups and regions and selective, since technology and institutions travel more readily than values.

5. How do the two processes interact? They run alongside each other and each can drive the other. Westernization of a group, through education and salaried employment, supplies exactly the resources that make a Sanskritising claim sustainable, so the two are not opposites. They also pull against each other within the same household: the ritual claim depends on the hierarchy being real and important, while western education produces members who deny that caste should matter at all, undermining the ladder the family has been climbing.