Andre Beteille was an Indian sociologist known for his work analyzing the caste system and rural social stratification in India. Some key points: - He conducted extensive fieldwork in a Tamil Nadu village, analyzing the caste, class, and power structures. He viewed caste as representing status, class as economic criteria, and power as political power. - Beteille argued that caste, class, and power are interwoven and changing over time. While caste is ascribed, class is achieved based on ownership and control of land and other resources. - His work provided a nuanced understanding of rural social hierarchies and how they have evolved, moving away from previous static

1. ANDRE BETEILLE
By Dr Saroj
 Indian sociologist
 Andre Betieille was born in September 1934 in the town of
Chandannagore, then it was under French rule.
 His father was a French while his mother was a Bengali. They left a
deep impression on him.
 Graduated from St. Xavier’s college, Calcutta.
 Influenced by N.K. Bose, Evans Pritchard and Max Gluckman
 Did honours in anthropology from University of Calcutta
 Completed his PhD under M.N.Srinivas
Books :
Caste Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore
village (1965)
Castes: Old and New, Essays in Social structure and Social stratification
(1969)
Inequality and Social Change (1972
Studies in Agrarian Social Structure (1974)
Caste Class and Power:
 Andre Beteille did intensive field work in a village of Thanjavur
district of Tamilnadu. He stayed in that village around ten months
and after detailed observation he gave his explanation.
 The real name of village is not known but in the book he use the name
Sripuram

2.  He analysed the caste system from a very different perspective.
 Previous studies on caste:
G.S. Ghurye used indological perspective for the analysis of caste
Louis Dumont gave the concept of Homohierarchus in which he explained
that features of caste system is constant, caste system does not change
over the time.
 Andre Beteille criticized the perspective of Ghurye and Dumont on
caste and he conducted a field study and analysed through Weberian
perspective.
 For the study of caste he used Caste, Class and Power on the basis of
trinitarian model of Weber Caste, Status and Party.
 In his book Caste, Class and Power Beteille followed the established
convention of the anthropological research. Beteille tried to
understand the process of social change mainly in the three systems of
Caste, Class and Power.
 He analysed that how caste is different from class and what are the
similar features between caste and class system. Caste, Class and
Power are the system of stratification.
 Stratification: grouping of people and then layering of those groups
 Andre Beteille :- change is the fundamental feature of the social
structure of Sripuram Village.
 He analyse the there dimensional stratification system and the forces
that brought changes in stratification system of rural India.
Stratification is evolving and changing.

3.  He said that Caste, Class and Power are closely interwoven and
cannot be separated completely.
 Caste and class related in some aspect and in some aspect they differ
from each other.
Caste: divide the entire village three main segments (reflects the
segmentary nature of caste given by Ghurye)
1 Brahmin (Upper caste)
2 Non-Brahmin (backward caste)
3 Adi Dravidas (untouchables)
 Beteille observed intercaste relations.
 People are mutually interacting with other castes
 Caste is a continuous process and identifiable too which enjoys both
legal and religious sanctions.
 Various castes are assigned different roles in socioeconomic sphere
means not only occupational segregation but it covers the entire
social reality
 Traditionally punishment differ: if the offence done by upper caste
then the punishment is different in comparison to the punishment
given to lower castes for the same offence.
Class: in contrast to the caste the class are de facto categories. They are in
principles and in some respect open system of stratification. That means
one can move from lower to upper class but it is not possible in caste.
Once you are born in a particular caste you cannot move from that caste
to another. It is ascribed, while class is achieved category.

4.  Class do not enjoy those religious and legal sanctions which are
associated with castes. Social class defined in terms of
Who is the owner of means of production.
Who is non owner class
 The agrarian social structure of Sripuram: classes are hierarchically
arranged based upon ownership and non-ownership of means of
production (western notion of class), that is ownership of land.
 According to Beteille though inequalities related to different castes
have been completely removed or almost so in course of time but
culturally and socially these are still existing in people’s mind. That’s
why after independence Indian government implemented S.C and S.T
act to stop the atrocities and provide protection for various lower
caste groups.
 Classes are subdivided in terms of : the type of ownership and control
 The type of services that were contributed to the process of production
in agriculture.
 What kind of services a farmer is providing on the basis of his own
class
 A distinction is made between share croppers and agricultural
labourer.
 Further tenants, farmers, cultivators, sharecroppers and agricultural
labourer constitute distinct categories only at the conceptual level.
 But in reality they co-exist and a person who is a farmer can also be a
sharecropper or some other time he work as an agricultural labourer.

5.  In the village society these classes overlap to each other so there are
no discrete groups of different classes.
Power: after discussing caste and class Andre Beteille analyses the
structure of power in Sripuram village (Political power) .
 Caste = Status
 Class = Economic criteria
 Power = Political power
 System of caste class and some sort of power also .
 Institutional and formal power which is achieved through political
parties and Village Panchayats.
 Example: the political party which is in government wields more
power. Power of caste, class and groups of village transcends beyond
the village also. Beteille looks social stratification of the village in
context to caste, class and power of the village.
 The distribution of power has acquired a very dynamic character
after independence.
 Traditional relationship between caste and power has been reversed.
The power which was previously concentrated in the hands of
Brahmin, today the village panchayat is controlled by non-Brahmins
and the traditional elite is being pushed into the background.
 Power has also become independent to a greater extent.
 Ownership of land is no more a decisive factor in acquiring power.’

6.  Numerical support and strategic positions in the party machinery
play and important part.
 Adult franchise and panchayati raj has introduced a new process into
the village society.
Criticism:
Beteille considers caste as representing only one aspect of social
stratification but in the same vein he also talks about intercaste relations-
related with economic and political organization.

7. AGRARIAN STRUCTURE : ANDRE BETEILLE
Agrarian’ means anything related to land, its management or
distribution. Related to land distribution is also the aspect of ‘equitable
division of land’. It refers to the political movement in favour of change
in conditions of propriety in land. It is called ‘agrarianism’.
Agrarian system Includes land tenure system. Beteille has defined
agrarian social structure. To him agrarian does not mean only peasantry.
He observes:
The meaning of the phrase (agrarian system) may not be immediately
clear but what is implied is something more specific than the study of
peasant societies and cultures, as this is generally understood by
anthropologists. The term ‘peasantry’ has variety of referents. But it is
most meaningfully used to describe a more or less homogeneous and
undifferentiated community of families characterised by small holdings
operated mainly by family labour.
The study of agrarian system has been taken up as mentioned earlier by
anthropologists, sociologists and economists. On a broader plane, the
agrarian system as is conceived by social scientists in general, has been
related to:
(i) land and its utilisation; and
(ii) productive purposes. He observes:
The study of agrarian systems will centre round the problem of land and
its utilisation for productive purposes. In a land-based social and
economic system the significance of this kind of study hardly requires
emphasis.

8. Beteille, to refer to him again, it would be said that the land problem in
India and for that matter the study of agrarian social structure revolves
round two major issues as under:
1. Technological arrangements, and
2. Social arrangements.
Technological arrangement means the management of land. It includes
landownership, control and” use of land. Technological arrangement is
discussed in relation to variations in ecological conditions. In other words,
land is looked in terms of the geography which surrounds the land. The
ecological setting of agriculture in India is highly variable. The diverse
nature of ecological conditions in India has been described by Beteille as
under:
There are areas of heavy rainfall and areas with hardly any rainfall.
There are irrigated and unirrigated areas. Irrigated areas themselves
differ according to the dependability of irrigation…. The different regions
show different patterns of diurnal and seasonal variations in humidity,
temperature and sunlight. All these factors have a direct bearing on the
kinds of crops that can be cultivated and the technology employed in
their cultivation.
The technological arrangements, thus, include ecological conditions along
with the new agriculture technology, such as water pumps, thresher,
chemical manure, improved seeds, etc. Another aspect of agrarian system
is that of social management.
It includes land control and landownership. It is found that the Indian
agricultural communities have recently been highly stratified. It shows
that there is close relationship between the system of stratification and
the division of work.

9. For instance, the census figures show that in Punjab and Haryana the
proportion of agricultural labourer in the total agricultural population is
relatively low, whereas in West Bengal, Tamilnadu and Kerala, it is high.
In the three states the prevalence of sharecropping is also high, but this
fact is not easily recorded in the censuses and large-scale surveys.
K.L. Sharma has discussed the problem of agrarian stratification and
argues that agrarian structures in India have always been uneven.
Sociologists and anthropologists, who have recently studied agrarian
system, have very strongly argued that changes in land relations have
affected the stratification pattern of villages. The crucial aspect of
agrarian structure is the control over land.
It is the basis of agrarian stratification. When agrarian social structure is
discussed invariably we refer to landownership, land control and use of
land. Such an approach to land helps us to find out agrarian hierarchy.
What has happened so far is that the dominant castes who, have control
over major portions of land, suppress and exploit the subordinated classes.
In the states of Punjab and Bihar where paddy is grown, larger number
of labourers is hired. Even landless labourers migrate from Bihar to
Punjab for transplanting paddy. The agrarian hierarchy, therefore, is the
resultant of the crops grown by the peasantry.
Beteille has discussed the rural stratification pattern in terms of land
control and land management. The productive organisation of land
consists of three main patterns: the first is based on family labour, the
second on hired labour and the third on tenancy conceived in a broad
sense.
The three patterns of production have several variants. And it is
interesting to note that the production which requires hard manual
labour such as that of transplanting paddy the pattern may change.
Beteille has categorized the peasantry on the basis of production system.

10. He observes:
For in talking about production based on family labour, wage labour and
tenancy, we are talking also about landlords, owner-cultivators, tenants,
sharecroppers and the agricultural labourers. These categories and their
mutual relations constitute the heart of what may be described as the
agrarian hierarchy… the most crucial features of India’s rural social
system and unless we understand its nature and forms, our
understanding of caste itself will remain incomplete.
The rural India’s basic problem today is the understanding of agrarian
system. Control over land determines the rural hierarchy. What is
interesting is that the state does not impose any income-tax on the far
production.
As a result of this state policy, those who control larger portions of land,
benefit the most. The rural agrarian hierarchy has today become more
complicated owing to the land policy adopted by the state. But the state
land policy, as we have in India today, has not evolved overnight.
It is the result of the colonial land policy which we have inherited and
have carved it in post-independent India in such a way that it has taken
a capitalistic mode of production instead of minimising the hiatus
between the big farmer and landless labourer. We have intensified the
social inequality. We now trace the land policy adopted by the colonial
rulers and later, the nationalist government.