Originally published in 1968, all papers in this volume except one were presented to a conference on Social Structure and Social Change in India held in Chicago in 1965, which reviewed research in the social anthropology of South Asia that had been carried out since 1950. Showing that the caste system is dynamic, with upward and downward mobility characterising it from pre-British times, the studies suggest that the modernising forces which entered the system since independence - parliamentary democracy, universal suffrage, land reforms, modern education, urbanisation, and industrial technology - provided new opportunities and paths to upward mobility, but did not radically alter the system. With bibliographic references and index.