Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part G (2025)

Caste in India has long been understood as a system of ritual hierarchy grounded in ideas of purity, pollution and inherited social status, yet contemporary social realities in North India reveal a significant transformation in how caste is experienced, articulated, mobilized etc. This paper attempts to examine the changing nature of caste identity tracing its movement from a predominantly ritual and status-based order toward a more assertive political and symbolic form. Drawing on sociological theory and secondary sources, the study argues that caste has not disappeared in the context of modernization, democracy and economic change; rather it has been reconfigured into a dynamic identity shaped by power, recognition and collective action. The decline of ritual authority in everyday life coupled with the expansion of education, urbanization, state-led welfare policies has weakened traditional forms of caste domination while simultaneously creating new arenas for identity negotiation. Electoral democracy, reservation policies and the rise of caste-based organizations have enabled marginalized communities to transform caste from a marker of stigma into a resource for political assertion and social visibility. At the same time, this process has produced new contradictions as political empowerment does not always translate into social equality or the erosion of everyday discrimination. The paper highlights how caste identity today operates simultaneously as a legacy of historical oppression and as a strategic tool for collective mobilization. By focusing on North India, the study contributes to ongoing debates on caste, democracy and social change emphasizing that caste identity is neither static nor purely ritual but a contested and evolving social reality embedded in contemporary power relations.