ABSTRACT
The mainstream theories of social change, popular all over the world until sometime back, anticipated a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of institutions like caste. This was to happen along with the process of economic growth, urbanization and spread of modern values across regions and countries of the South, the less-developed Third World. The nationalist leadership of India and a majority of its middle-class elite also expected this to happen, almost inevitably, as a process of evolutionary change. With the introduction of modern education, democratic system of governance and the unfolding of the developmental process initiated by the Indian state after its independence from the colonial rule, the closed system of caste hierarchy was to give way to a modern civil society, based on individual merit and associational identities.
