SECULAR ASPECT OF CASTE IN INDIAN POLITY: RECENT TRENDS

Abstract

An in depth analysis of caste system in India and political democracy in the country reveals the undeniable fact that instead of a strict bifurcation between traditional society and modern polity it is the age old traditional, local, indigenous structures, caste factions and groups, their communication patterns of aggregation and differentiation that underlines the process of modernization in Indian polity. A very significant work in this regard is The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India by Lloyd I Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (1967).