The Importance Of Hierarchy In Maharashtra

The caste hierarchy and its linkage with the occupations are obvious in Maharashtra. The hierarchies are applicable to religious, social, political and economic domains. The traditional hierarchy is articulated in religious terms like purity and occupation. The emergent hierarchy depends on power, property and personal changes. The body and occupations play a vital role to claim purity. The functions of the body such as ablution, birth, death, secretion and menstruation create pollution. It can go with bathing and seclusions. The occupations related to leather and cleaning of human body create pollution. Such pollution is attached to the castes. Apart from this, pollution can be transformed with physical contacts, eating, sexual relations and marriages. Thus, caste remains an identity which is based on birth, occupations and its ranking in the social hierarchy. The purity uplifts the Brahman caste at the top in the hierarchy. And the impurity keeps the untouchable castes at the low rank.
‘It is clear that the impurity of the Untouchable is conceptually inseparable from the purity of the Brahman’. (Dumont 54)
The social structure in Maharashtra is divided into the alutedar castes and balutedar castes. The alutedar castes, Brahman and Marathas, have land as means of agricultural products and capital to control industries. The Maratha caste corresponds to neo- Kshatriya varna, which acquires political powers along with their traditional hold on lands. The balutedar castes, all