The caste system in India is best characterized by which of the following…

Concept: Social stratification is the arrangement of a society's members into ranked layers that decide their status, occupation and access to resources. Sociologists separate two ideal types: a closed system, in which a person's layer is ascribed — fixed at birth and unchangeable — and an open system, in which the layer is achieved and can change within a lifetime. The test of which type a society follows is therefore a single question: is rank assigned by birth, or by attainment?

Application: Apply that test to the Indian caste order (varna at the classical level, jati in practice):

1. Membership is acquired only by being born into a jati; an individual cannot enter or leave one through achievement.

2. Each jati was traditionally tied to a fixed hereditary occupation, so a parent's calling became the child's calling.

3. Endogamy (marriage within the group) together with graded rules of ritual purity and pollution keeps both the boundaries and the ranking intact from one generation to the next.

Cross-check: Now test the other features named against the same rule:

• Open class mobility is the hallmark of the class system, where schooling, income or occupation can move an individual between strata during one lifetime, so rank there is earned rather than inherited.

• Complete gender equality is a claim about equal rights and roles for women and men; the traditional caste order instead operated alongside patriarchal restrictions such as controlled marriage choice.

• Absence of social hierarchy describes an egalitarian society with no ranked layers at all, whereas the caste order is explicitly graded by ritual rank.

Result: Rank ascribed at birth and transmitted down the generations — hereditary social stratification — is therefore the feature that best characterizes the caste system in India.