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Social Institutions: Continuity and Change caste and explicitly wrote this into the Constitution. On the other hand, the state was both unable and Sri Narayana Guru unwilling to push through radical reforms which (1856 – 1928) would have undermined the economic basis for caste inequality. At yet another level, the state assumed that if it operated in a caste-blind manner, this would automatically lead to the undermining of caste based privileges and the eventual abolition of the institution. For example, appointments to government jobs took no account of caste, thus leaving the well-educated upper castes and the ill-educated or often illiterate lower castes to compete on “equal” terms. The only exception to this was in the form of reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The development activity of the state and the growth of private industry also affected caste indirectly through the speeding up and intensification of economic change. Modern industry created all kinds of new jobs for which there were no caste rules. Urbanisation and the conditions of collective living in the cities made it difficult for the caste-segregated patterns of social interaction to survive. At a different Sri Narayana Guru, born in Kerala, preached brother-hood for all and level, modern educated Indians attracted to the liberal ideas of individualism and meritocracy, began to fought against the ill effects of the abandon the more extreme caste practices. On the caste system. He led a quiet but significant social revolution and other hand, it was remarkable how resilient caste gave the watchwords ‘One Caste, proved to be. Recruitment to industrial jobs, whether in the textile mills of Mumbai (then Bombay), the One Religion, One God for all men’. jute mills of Kolkata (then Calcutta), or elsewhere, continued to be organised along caste and kinship- based lines. The middle men who recruited labour for factories tended to recruit them from their own caste and region so that particular departments or shop floors were often dominated by specific castes. Prejudice against the untouchables remained quite strong and was not absent from the city, though not as extreme as it could be in the village. Not surprisingly, it was in the cultural and domestic spheres that caste has proved strongest. Endogamy, or the practice of marrying within the caste, remained largely unaffected by modernisation and change. Even today, most marriages take place within caste boundaries, although there are more intercaste marriages. While some boundaries may have become more flexible or porous, the borders between groups of castes of similar socio-economic status are still heavily patrolled. 41 Perhaps, the most eventful and important sphere of change has been that of politics. From its very beginnings in independent India, democratic politics Reprint 2026-27