Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchius)

Louis Dumont, the French sociologist, is regarded as an Indologist.  Dumont used ethnographic detail in this study and applied holistic approach. He also learnt Sanskrit.

As a study of the caste system in India, Dumont’s Homo Hierarchies offers several new perspectives of social structure. The notion of ideology and traditions are intrinsic parts of his paradigm. He has brought the method of structuralism to bear upon his study of the caste system. 

The chief elements of his methodology are:

1.  Ideology and structure

2.  Dialectic transformational relationship and comparison 

3.  Indological and structuralist approach

4.  Cognitive historical approach

The Homo Hierarchicus: The caste system and its  Implication (1966) is Louis Dumont's treatise on the Indian caste system. It analyses the caste hierarchy and the ascendancy tendency of the lower castes to follow the habits of the higher castes. This concept was termed as Sanskritisation by MN Srinivas. 

 The notion of hierarchy has a pivotal place in Dumont’s study of caste  system.  Hierarchy implies opposition between pure  and impure, which also determines its dialectics.

Hierarchy is said to distinguish Indian society from  ‘modern’ societies whose fundamental social principle is equality. 

The major theme of this review can be anticipated thus: "any hierarchy, like any equalitrian system, is opposed by those who see its effect upon themselves as disadvantageous, no matter how  loudly or piously it is advocated by those who benefit from it". 

Those low in a hierarchical system universally see it as disadvantageous to  them  and object to the system or to the manner in which it is applied  to themselves. Any social hierarchy, then, is perpetrated and perpetuated by  elites and is struggled against as circumstances permit, by those they oppress.

Caste System and Dumont :-

Dumont's explanation of caste and culture in India, based on a series of oppositions  or dualities (modern / traditional, hierarchy / equality, purity / population,  status / powers etc) which is remarkably consistent with the dialectical  and structural viewpoints of his European, and especially French, intellectual forbearer's. 

Dumont notes the status claims of  upwardly mobile castes, but says, ‘to make a claim is one thing, and  for  it to be accepted is another".

Dumont explains all instances of ranking as either the rational manifestation of the hierarchical principle (ritual status) or contradictory and presumably irrational impositions of power. 

He asserts that ‘no  doubt, in the majority of cases, hierarchy will be identified in some way with power, but there is no necessity for this, as the case of India will  show’. 

Actually, the case of India can be used to show that  ideology is  primary (as Dumont does), or that power is primary, or that both are  crucial and inseparable in the functioning of Indian caste.  This does not distinguish inequality from exploitation; it identifies  their common characteristics and caste systems in India and elsewhere  epitomize this relationship.

The theoretically weakest part of the book is where Dumont discusses and dismisses the notion of cross-  cultural  comparisons of caste organization.

Dumont and Varnas:-

Dumont has viewed that India has the traditional hierarchy of Varnnas, colours. Through this there is the fourfold division of the society, such as Brahmins or priest, Khatriyas or warriors, Vaishyas or the traders/ merchants and the Shudras or the servants.  

He found that there was no categories below this called to be the untouchables. 

Caste and varnas are to be understood with relationship of hierarchy and power. He has made a disjunction between the ritual  status and the secular power which includes the political and economic power. There is the subordination of the political and economic criteria of the social stratification to that of the ritual status in Dumont’s model. 

At the end Dumont discusses, the significant changes in the castes. He views that the traditional interdependence of castes has been replaced by “a universe of impenetrable blocks, self-sufficient, essential, identical and in competition in one another”. 

Various sources of changes in caste system includes judicial and political changes, socio-religious reforms, westernisation, and growth of modern professions, urbanization, spatial mobility and the growth of market economy. But, despite all these factors making for change, the most ubiquitous and the general form the change has occurred in contemporary times is one of a ‘mixture’ or ‘combination’, of traditional and modern features. 

Critics of Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus:-

• Dumont’s work is based on traditional Indian Texts. Consequently, the features of the caste system, as projected by Dumont, seem to be unchanging. In reality, the caste system has changed in various ways during a period of time. 
• Dumont also seems to characterize Indian Society as almost stagnant, since he emphasizes the integrative function of caste system. 
• Dumont  has been criticized on the ground that he is always concerned with the system integration and system maintenance than with change or conflict.
• Even Dumont was criticized for his ideas on Purity and pollution, as they are not universal.