Jāti

Jāti is the term traditionally used to describe a cohesive group of people in the Indian subcontinent, like a caste, sub-caste, clan, tribe, or a religious sect. Each Jāti typically has an association with an occupation, geography or tribe. Different intrareligious beliefs (e.g. Vaishnavism or Smarthism or Shaivism) or linguistic groupings may also define some Jātis. The term is often translated approximately in English as caste.

Professor Madhav Gadgil (1999) has described Jātis as goal governing, closed communities, based on his research in rural Maharashtra:

Indian society is even today an agglomeration of numerous castes, tribes and religious communities. The tribal and caste groups are endogamous, reproductively isolated populations traditionally distributed over a restricted geographical range. The different caste populations, unlike tribes, have extensive geographical overlap and members of several castes generally constitute the complex village society.

In such a village society, each caste, traditionally self regulated by a caste council, used to lead a relatively autonomous existence. Each caste used to pursue a hereditarily prescribed occupation; this was particularly true of the artisan and service castes and the pastoral and nomadic castes. The several castes were linked to each other through a traditionally determined barter of services and produce (Ghurye 1961, Karve 1961).

These caste groups retained their identity even after conversion to Islam or Christianity. Each of the caste groups was thus the unit within which cultural and perhaps genetic evolution occurred, at least for the last 1500 years when the system was fully crystallized and probably much longer. Over this period the various castes had come to exhibit striking differences in cultural traits like skills possessed, food habits, dress, language, religious observances as well as in a number of genetic traits.

Under the Jāti system, a person is born into a Jāti with ascribed social roles and endogamy, i.e. marriages take place only within that Jāti. The Jāti provides identity, security and status and has historically been open to change based on economic, social and political influences (a process known as sanskritisation). In the course of Indian history, various economic, political and social factors have led to a continuous closing and churning in the prevailing social ranks which tended to become traditional, hereditary system of social structuring.

This system of thousands of exclusive, endogamous groups, is called Jāti. Though there were minor variations in its manifestation across the breadth of the Indian subcontinent, generally the Jāti was the effective community within which one married and spent most of one's social, religious and cultural life. Often it was the community (Jāti) which provided support in difficult times, in old age and even in the resolution of disputes. It was thus the community which one also sought to promote.

With the passage of the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, inter-jati and inter-varna marriages (which together constitute what is colloquially referred to as "intercaste marriage") are now legally sanctioned in Hindu-majority India. In practice, however, intercaste marriage remains rare and Indian society remains highly segregated along jati lines.