Dominant Caste in Rampura

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The Dominant Caste in Rampura M. N. Srinivas American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 61, No. 1. (Feb., 1959), pp. 1-16. The Dominant Caste in Rampural American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 61, No. 1. (Feb., 1959), pp. 1-16. M. N. SRINIVAS Tlte M.S. University o Barodrc, Z d i a f H E concept of the dominant caste is crucial to the understanding of rural social life in most parts of India. Whether analysis is to be made of the hierarchy of a multi-caste village, the settlement of a dispute a t the level of village or caste, or the pattern of Sanskritization among the several castes of an area, a study of the locally dominant caste and the kind of dominance it enjoys is essential. Occasionally a caste is dominant in a group of neighboring villages if not over a district or two, and in such cases, local dominance is linked with regional dominance. Such linkage also exists when the caste which is locally dominant is different from the caste which is regionally dominant. I stumbled on the importance of the idea of dominant caste only in 1953, after I had made two field trips to Rampura, a multi-caste village about 22 miles southeast of hlysore City in South India, and the present analysis is based on material which was collected previously. A full understanding of the dominance which a caste such as the Peasants (Okkaligas) enjoy needs a study of the entire region over which they are dominant, and over a period of time. I regret that I do not have the data for such an analysis. RIy analysis would have been even sketchier but for the fact that in 1952 the headman of the Peasants in the neighboring village of Kere loaned me several documents which related to the settlement of disputes in the Kere area over a period of forty years. These documents referred to villages in Kere hobli (an administrative division referring to a group of 20-50 villages) which is
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