The Tribe–Caste Continuum and Kinnaur: Aspects of Acculturation,Stratification and Factorial Heterogeneity

Introduction

Kinnaur in the western Himalayas presents itself as an interesting case study. It is a district with an extensive presence of caste and societal relations based on hierarchy, untouchability and ritual distancing, yet its people have been designated as a Scheduled Tribe and the area classified as a Scheduled Area. This article, based on fieldwork conducted in Kinnaur over a period of more than four years, examines the tribal question as underscored in academic discourses to demonstrate the universality of the tribe–caste continuum as epistemologically erroneous. Underscoring aspects of ‘hybridity’ and heterogeneity within the Kinnauri society, it highlights aspects of ethno-cultural acculturation and discusses the polytheistic and syncretic cosmology of religion and territory in Kinnaur and how the ‘sacred’ exists as a shared space between the Hindu, Buddhist and the devi-devta (deity) traditions.

Accentuating caste stratification in the region as a localised two-fold system of relative mobility between the khosia (Rajputs) and the damang-chamang (Scheduled Castes) and the negotiability of religion, identity and power, the article provides insights into the variability and local contexts of caste relations, thereby questioning the flexibility of the varna model as a pan-Indian classificatory system. While tribe and caste are significant denominators of hierarchy in the region, the article argues for the centrality of the orung (clan) and the khandan (family) in regulating rank and gradation. A discussion on subtler aspects, hitherto disregarded, and cultural assimilation emphasise the local, cultural and external subtexts of identity formation in Kinnaur. With the entire population of Kinnaur, irrespective of religion or caste, being identified as a ‘Negi’, it becomes important to understand how a titular appellation denoting status and mobility was homogeneously manifested among the people of Kinnaur and why the process of its delegitimising is gaining popularity.

Significant in comprehending the Hinduisation of tribal Kinnaur are aspects of geographical contiguity, civilisational contact, the role of the modern Indian state and the process of naming. Most likely, Hindu influences in the region spread horizontally from Bushahr to lower Kinnaur from where they were asymmetrically distributed vertically across the region. All these aspects are then brought together to examine the discourse on the tribe–caste continuum in Kinnaur to argue that the meta-narrative of unilinear cultural evolution negates aspects of choice, reciprocity and segmentation within the Kinnauri society.

Contextualising Kinnaur

In early recorded history, Kinnaur was a tehsil of the erstwhile Bushahr state (Government of Punjab, 1911, p. 65). After Independence, it constituted the Chini tehsil of the Mahasu district and on 1st May 1960, in recognition of its ethnic and cultural particularities alongside the government’s efforts to reorganise border districts, Kinnaur was nominated as an independent district ¹ (Kapoor, 1972, p. 159). Encompassing a landmass of about 6,401 km ² and present-day Kinnaur is administratively divided into three sub-divisions, six tehsils, three development blocks, sixty-five panchayats and 660 villages and shares borders with China (erstwhile Tibet) in the east, Uttarakhand in the south and Lahaul and Spiti, Shimla and Kullu districts in the northeast, southwest and northwest directions respectively. A vernacular proverb (Hang-rang mu-yoth muna to-yoth mazo Kinoring) refers to Kinnaur comprising areas between Hangrang and Mone. While geographically Kinnaur is territorially continuous, it is, in its ethnic, religious, socio-cultural and linguistic aspects noticeably heterogeneous (Riaboff, 2005, p. 43). Such considerations, allow for its ethnonymic classification into cultural zones, popularly known as lower Kinoring/Yö, middle Kinoring and upper Kinoring/Tö ² (Census of India, 2011, p. 71).

The Kanaura/Kinnara of Kinnaur

Applying the criteria of autochthony, endogamy, distinct culture, relative isolation and economic, political and social backwardness, the people of Kinnaur were classified as ‘Kanaura,/Kinnara’, ³ a ‘Scheduled Tribe’ vide of the Constitution of India, Scheduled Tribes, Part C (States), Order, 1951 ⁴ (Negi, 1976, pp. 7–9). Irrespective of caste being enumerated in the region, ⁵ Kinnaur was declared as a Scheduled Area as per the Scheduled Areas (Himachal Pradesh) Order, 1975 [CO 102] (Government of Himachal Pradesh, 2012, p. 1), implying ipso facto that the entire population of Kinnaur would, thenceforth be classified as a Scheduled Tribe and that the area of Kinnaur would be co-terminus with other tribal areas of the state. The Census of India (1981, p. 24) report on Kinnaur mentions of invalid categorical enumeration of social groups in Kinnaur: ‘It has been noticed during the actual census operations in the field that hitherto Scheduled Castes have been reluctant to declare themselves as such and would rather prefer to be called Scheduled Tribes’. Nonetheless, it argues: ‘This, obvious preference, doubtlessly is to escape the “stigma of untouchability” attached with the caste. Since they also form part of Kinnauras community in the district there is no harm in their choosing for tribe’.

The Prudence of Mine and Yours: Ethno-religious Acculturation in Kinnaur

Kinnauri theism, a process of assimilation over time, is constructed around multiple ‘living traditions’ and ‘community-centred’ beliefs (Thakur, 1997, p. 6). Amalgamating Hindu, Buddhist and localised devi-devta dogma, the pantheon in Kinnaur is polytheistic with syncretism as its core. Like its cultural zones, the organisation of religion in Kinnaur, too is asymmetrical. While the devi-devta system ⁶ is ubiquitous throughout, cultural practices of Hinduism are widespread in lower and those of Tibetan Buddhism pervasive in upper Kinnaur—middle Kinnaur, as a melting pot, synthesises both traditions. Such distinctions are however not stark as the predominance of one tradition in each region, does not imply its relative absence in the other and conversely, the ubiquity of another ⁷ is not an inference of its uniformity through the region.

As a form of its religious expression, universally recognised symbols ⁸ from Hindu, Buddhist and devi-devta traditions are also replete in objects, images, actions and ideas alongside certain non-standardised ones across Kinnaur. Consequently, concepts, ritual grammar, traditions, cosmologies, religious authority, rites of passage, sacred pilgrimages and so on seem to be symbiotically forged within the region with societal endorsement of their insertion into the sacred and the material. Hindu Kinnaur appropriates Kinner Kailas as the jurisdiction of Śiva and Parvati and the realm of the souls of its ancestors. ⁹ The Buddhists, on the other hand, refer to it as Gang Rinpoche, the abode of Vajrayana deities, Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi. Dominant cults of the devi-devtas in the region legitimise their Hindu/Buddhist origins by claiming lineage from Śiva, ¹⁰ Vishu, ¹¹ Durga ¹² and the Buddhist ¹³ traditions. For instance, each year in the eleventh month (maagh) of the Hindu calendar, all the devi-devtas of Kinnaur leave for Kinner Kailas to partake in dev gamble ¹⁴ for a period of 15 days. Śiva then, depending upon their performances, allocates yearly harvests, and numbers of livestock and adjudicates on matters of life and death in their territories. The devi-devtas of upper Kinnaur celebrate Buddha Jayanti, circumambulate the monasteries, discard animal sacrifice, pay obeisance and disburse donations to the male monks (lamas) and regularly retreat for meditation sometimes for as long as three months and so on.

Caste relations in Kinnaur exist as a two-fold gradation between the khosias and the damang-chamang/beru (Parmar, 1975, p. x). The khosias claim parity with Rajput ancestry and are internally differentiated based on their orung into three categories (I, II and III) each having its jati (sub-caste). The khosia of the IIIrd category, the waza (potter) khosia are considered inferior to the first two categories. Among the damang-chamang, as well, there is a three-tier division between the damang/barhi (black/silver/goldsmith), the ores/lohar (carpenter/ironsmith) and the chamang/koli (weaver/cobbler/flayer) with the former two categories being considered equal in status (Negi, 1976, p. 191). Others such as Chib (1984, pp. 80, 96) and Saxena (2022, p. 11) mention of a fourth category kolis/dakes ¹⁵ and the chanal (basket weavers/leather workers) among Scheduled Castes. Parmar (ibid.) writes that ritual distancing on considerations of purity and pollution and notions of untouchability in Kinnaur is more pronounced between the two varnas rather than between the individual jatis among them.

With the Kinnauri social structure being devoid of the Brahmin and the Vaishya varnas, ¹⁶ their roles are analogously performed by the khosia and the damang-chamang. Ritualised roles within the kardar sangh (management committee) of the devi-devta system too are largely appropriated by the khosia of a high orung and the menial ones ¹⁷ consigned to the damang-chamang (Chib, 1984, p. 80). The role of the Vaishya, however, is correspondingly assumed by both, thereby accentuating normative status dissonance ¹⁸ on the functional allocation of occupational tasks according to the caste system. While the vertical allocation of roles and localised aspects in selection might appear contradictory, the externality of the Brahmin and the Vaishya is only notional. Arguably, it is not their absence, but an almost uniform presence of caste and untouchability in a social structure designated as tribal that is significant.

The ritualised functions of the khosia do not extend to officiating in the rites of passage; these are generally solemnised by the lamas. ¹⁹ Given the tradition of designating the eldest male child as a lama by the khosia, the lama innumerably could be a khosia and thus, officiate de facto in the rites of passage ceremonies as well. Ceremonies relating to birth and death also vacillate between Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The dead are disposed of by burning, drowning and exposure to scavengers ²⁰ and their remains interred into the waters of the Sutlej or taken as far as Haridwar. ²¹ The circumambulation of the Kinner Kailas, for ancestor propitiation, is also prevalent and each year in the seventh month (ashwin) of the Hindu calendar, some Kanaura, as a part of their religious duty perform funeral rites (shraadh) to repay their ancestral debt (pitri-rin). Upon birth, a child is initiated into Buddhism by a lama and given a Buddhist name and subsequently, upon coming of age, the same child is also named (namkaran) according to Hindu rituals. Many Kanaura have both Hindu and Buddhist names even today. The process of ‘naming’, according to Deuster (1939, p. 84), exacerbated the Hinduisation of the region. Negi (1976, p. 191), Chib (1984, p. 97), Saxena (2005, p. 182) and Negi (2012, p. 101) citing sociolinguistic evidence write that the khosias of lower and middle Kinnaur speak popular Kinnauri boli (language) known as hamskad or khoshiaskad and those of upper Kinnaur speak a variation of Tibetan known as bhoti (both classified under the WH sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman languages). The damang-chamang, on the other hand, speak chamskad and thebar kad (classified under West Pahari sub-group of Indo-Aryan group of languages).

Stratified Kinnaur: Centrality of Orung/Khandan and Aspects of Factorial Heterogeneity

While caste, community, class, occupation, age, sex and so on constitute important markers of differentiation, the primacy of orung and khandan in regulating rank, hierarchy and gradation in Kinnaur appears to be absolute. Alongside, subtler indicators such as those of ‘residence’ and the ‘frequency of social interaction’ also seem to be ascending. In a segmentary social structure, an orung in Kinnaur is akin to the largest effective corporate and social grouping analogous to a sept. With various septs organising into an orung per standards of status, ritual purity and rules of descendance from an unbroken gotra (patriline), the widest extension of orung-like ties could be thought of as constituting a tribe. Although this specificity allows orungs to cohabit, its oral code still enforces prohibitions in matrimony and inter-dining.

The positional location of the khosia in the caste system is ideologically reinforced by their status in the orung system and translates into a hierarchy based on khandans, ²² a distinction internally acknowledged and widely practised. Despite the people of Kinnaur being ethnically subsumed as ‘Negis’, legal nativity claims of membership to the ‘Kanaura’ tribe may not constitute standardisation of identity internally. During fieldwork, the author was constantly reminded: ‘Everyone here is a Negi, which family are you from?’ Additional evidence of ‘belonging to’ a khandan, therefore, is required to substantiate membership to an orung, which then facilitates the placement of an individual hierarchically within the region. Normatively, in Kinnaur, all Kanaura are considered ‘andarke’ (insiders) and the rest are differentiated as ‘kocha’/‘baharke’ (outsiders). Such discursive and subjectively created identities, besides descent also place significance on residence and nature and frequency of cultural contact. The oddity of the kocha, albeit informally, sometimes is extended to include even the dislocated Kanaura (‘insider-outsiders’). The contestation of ascribed identities by locally legitimised fluidities may appear paradoxical and by extension suggestive of flexibility in identity formation in Kinnaur. Alternating societal emphasis on additional forms of social mobility is merely symptomatic as it does not supersede the omnipotence of either the orung or the khandan. Kinnaur, therefore, is internally differentiated, heterogeneous ²³ and has attributes of a caste society. The contemporaneous presence of caste in tribal Kinnaur needs to be examined and understood.

Being ‘Negi’: The Dynamism of Assimilation

Alongside local and cultural subtexts of identity formation in Kinnaur, an understanding of the nuances of the rather protracted process of how the Kanaura came to be homogenously subsumed as Negis requires attention. In Kinnaur, the cognomen ‘Negi’ is almost universally appended as a surname to the extent that its entire population irrespective of religion or caste is identified as a ‘Negi’. Atkinson (1882, II, p. 555) writes that the appellation ‘Negi’ is derived from ‘the term “neg” [implying] “prerequisite” or due, and “Negi”, [is] a person entitled to such virtue of service, civil or military. The negis are Khasiya, pure and simple’. Joshi (1909, p. 107) adds that ‘in Kanawar [Negi] refers to a gentleman or well-to-do man’, [an] ‘officer’ [and to] ‘some respectable families’. Sankrityayan (1956, p. 46) believes that ‘Negi’ is used interchangeably for ‘Rai Saheb/Babu Saheb’ to address some important families in the region. Negi (1987, p. 384) writes that it is only ‘the Khosia people of Kinnaur [who] use the suffix “Negi” after their names’ and Tobdan (2008, p. 153) mentions it as a ‘title conferred by the Bashahr state upon its high officials, mostly Kinnauras’.

Notwithstanding its origins, the appellation represented a non-transferable title conferred upon person(s) of virtue or on member(s) of families from noble and honourable lineage, arguably the khosia. Given its equation with status and positional mobility, it appears that the nomenclature was, at first, assumed by the family members of the person bestowed with the title, subsequently, by the whole of the khosia and eventually, in a sparsely populated social structure devoid of strict peer group restrictions, by the damang-chamang as well. Over time, with both the khosia and the damang-chamang uniformly appending ‘Negi’ as a surname, the term became synonymous with the Kanaura identity and mutated into the ‘Negi’ caste. Such homogeneity created an impression that the attributes of Kinnauri culture were identical and shared. With the ‘Negi’ identity/caste as a discrete indicator of status, itself getting standardised, and as if, to reclaim their exclusivity and assert ritual separateness and distance, the khosia of a high orung, in the recent decade or so, have started affixing khandan name as a surname or appending it as a third name after ‘Negi’, thereby, delegitimising the process of homogenisation, at least within the region. This in a way affirms the constancy of ranking in Kinnaur irrespective of differing contexts and the variation in interpretation of specific instances.

Hinduisation of Tribal Kinnaur

Facilitated by exigencies of trade and travel, the Kanaura have had long-standing cultural contacts with ‘civilisational centres’ across central Asia, Tibet, China and mainstream India, the nature of which besides being orally transmitted has also been substantiated by various writers. ²⁴ The ethnic culture of Kinnaur neither flourished in relative isolation nor was it devoid of assimilative drifts. Berreman (1963, p. 101) writes that the nature of ‘pahadi’ (of the mountain people) religious contact was ‘casual’ and discontinuous and adds that while the ‘idiom of Hinduism was worthy of emulation’, [its practices were] ‘unfamiliar’. Kinnaur, as a land, was always contiguously aligned to Hindu Bushahr and Buddhist Tibet, and as such was never geographically isolated. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the bearings of absorption, especially for Hinduism and Buddhism, have diagrammatically opposite geographical origins and that the rate of absorption of a cultural tradition seems to mirror its proximity to a respective belief system. This contention also holds for the language and dialects of Kinnaur. With polytheism as a hallmark of Kinnaur, its religion too, is atypically tribal.

Berreman (1963, p. 303), in affirmation, writes that the cultures of the Himalayan region have been in vogue for ‘pilgrimage, retreat and pilgrimage’, [have had] ‘trade relations in north-south directions’ [and never] ‘existed in total isolation’. Chaudhuri (1997, p. 48) adds that tribal societies ‘interacted with social and political organisations’, [encountered] ‘Hindu influences’ [and were never] ‘primitive isolates’. Bose (2011, p. 2) also affirms a ‘continuous contact’ between the ‘tribal societies and their neighbours’. With Hindu social, cultural and religious practices being conspicuous in areas of lower and middle Kinnaur, it is likely that ‘local Hinduism’ (Srinivas, 1952, p. 213) initially spread horizontally from Bushahr to adjoining areas of lower Kinnaur and subsequently, its traits were shared asymmetrically by social groups in an area from where they were distributed vertically. The process of Hinduisation in Kinnaur, plausibly, accelerated with the formation of the modern Indian state.

Many respondents underscored the role of the ‘Hindu outsiders’ (local government officers, schoolteachers etc.) as primary agents of cultural diffusion. Government institutions in the region had officials from ‘outside’ who had limited or no knowledge of the Kinnauri culture. Finding it difficult to pronounce predominant vernacular/Buddhist names, they gave the Kanaura Hindu ones. While ‘Hinduisation’ of Kinnaur may not have been an ideological agenda among such officials, the process of mechanically naming people, in effect, did help perpetuate the Hindu social order in the region. However, owing to a lack of primary and secondary sources and with others such as Deuster (1939, p. 84) predating the Hinduisation of names in Kinnaur, the exactness in the diffusion of Hindu religious and social practices in tribal Kinnaur remains open to interpretation and the process may have more historical antecedents. Presently, of the total population of Kinnaur, the Hindus (76.95%) constitute the dominant social group followed by the Buddhists (21.5%) and the others (1.09%). ²⁵

The Tribe/Caste Continuum and Kinnaur

Over time various scholars have engaged with the concept of the tribe–caste continuum. Risley (1908, pp. 273–277) identified four stages—one, when a tribe changes its lineage; two, when it accepts principles of any school of Hinduism; three, when it joins a Hindu religion and four, when it enters relations with Hindus without changing the name—in the movement of a tribe to caste. Bose (1941, p. 192) finds the ‘Hindu Method of Tribal Absorption’ helpful in explaining the transformation of a tribe to caste, whereby a tribe, over time, ‘acculturates with’ and adopts Hindu beliefs, practices and religious symbols. Contextualising the progression within economic, power and property relations, Bose adds that tribal societies continue to retain some aspects of their culture. For Weber (1958, p. 429), the process essentially takes two forms: one, in which ethnically distinct tribes occupying distinct territories come into contact with established caste orders and adopt a clan and a name of a caste and two, when an established caste order comes into contact with ethnically and occupationally distinct groups that no longer occupy territories of their own, though they might have done so in the past. Bailey (1961, p. 66) proposed a systematic interactional model to understand the idea of a ‘tribe caste continuum’ in the Indian context. A ‘tribe caste continuum is a polar ideal type of reconstruction, which implies that no known society corresponds to the description of known ends but falls near one end or the other end of the poles or in between’.

Ghurye (1963, p. 19) called for the cultural oneness of tribe and caste, whereby a tribe is treated as a caste and caste is understood as a cultural unit and thereby, refused to allow for any separation between them. Sinha (1965, pp. 59–61) borrowing from Redfield’s conception of ‘folk-urban continuum’ and Bailey’s idea of a tribe–caste continuum writes of them as occupying opposing ends of the continuum and believes that the movement of a tribe towards a caste incorporates (ibid., p. 57) ‘progression toward ethnic heterogeneity in social interaction, role specialisation, social stratification and the emergence of elite classes and enlargement and diversification of territorial network with civilisational centres’. Srivastava (1966, p. 168) finds the concept of cultural approximation, a form of adaptation in which an interactive and mutually beneficial cultural co-existence is rendered possible while arguing for transformation among tribes. Singh (1997, pp. 33–43) accentuates the process of transformation among tribes by focusing on the processes related to economic political and cultural change.

Habib (1987) approached the assimilation of tribes into castes from the perspective of levels of agrarian society and their status therein as agriculturists or gatherers. Tribes pursuing agriculture were placed within the middle, peasant castes; those working as agricultural labourers became untouchable Dalits, and the ones practising hunting-gathering were consigned as menial castes. Misra and Nagar (1997, p. 142) argue that the shift from hunting–gathering mode to primaeval agriculture led to the destruction of tribal habitats. The tribes adopting the change became agriculturists and were gradually assimilated into peasant and caste society. Others were simply relegated to professing labour and menial occupations. Bose (2011, pp. 19–21) writes that the affiliation of tribes, which practised simpler forms of production with that of the mainstream peasants and Hindu rural communities with greater specialisation, ushered in the conversion of some sections among them to ‘a new Hindu caste’. His conceptualisation, like Bailey’s, also accentuates choice as a factor as ‘such changes have taken place over considerable periods of time without any efforts by the Hindus to proselytise’.

Cultures such as Kinnaur contest the universality of much of this theorisation and dispute the singularity of schematic conceptualisations sans processes of reciprocity and choice as epistemologically erroneous. While considering aspects of the transformation and change among the Kanauras, it is apparent that the Kinnauri society is atypically tribal or caste. With the primacy of the devi-devta system in every village to simultaneous, adherence to varying Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, religious organisation in Kinnaur denotes a disjuncture. The divine is imagined in Kinnaur alike caste and tribal societies: on the one hand, accessibility to the celestial is determined by approach and on the other, divinity is presented as human, physically residing alongside the Kanaura, possessing them, interacting with them and dispensing social, political, economic and cultural justice. Tribal and Hindu patterns of worship are seen to exist concomitantly with no indication of a strong impression of the other. Cultural approximation of rites of passage and rituals too is fragmented.

Conclusion: Will Change Come, It Might and Yet Not

With the absence of any semblance of the division of society into four varnas, the two-tier social stratification system of Kinnaur organised around the khosia and the damang-chamang is regarded as exclusive. Mandelbaum (1970, p. 248) in this regard writes that Hinduism of the plains does not display the assumed all-India ‘monotonous sameness’ and that the caste system exists in different regions in different forms. The ideological integration of the Kinnauri society into two dominant-subordinate social groups questions the validity of the customary ‘centricity’ or organic cohesion of the pan-Indian classificatory varna system. The fastidiousness of the orung and the khandan in determining identity and rank further showcases segmentation in the Kinnauri ethnic structure. The orung, herein, is the largest effective corporate group with different orungs having unequal status. The ‘Kanaura’ tribe is the widest extension of kin-like ties. Additionally, the equation of the appellation ‘Negi’ with social mobility and localised hierarchy, its standardisation to denote a homogenised identity and the subsequent movement to affirm khandan names supports the argument that the region showcases hybridity. It is segmented and organic simultaneously, wherein, aspects of tribe and caste are merged to represent neither the one nor the other.

Some authors extend the notion of morality to dispute the absorption of a tribe into a caste society. In Kinnaur, the issue of morality will present itself as an exaggeration as it will undermine the aspects of syncretism. The premise arguably is that the Kinnauri society was never hitherto uninformed, inappropriate and irrational. This claim, however, would be required to be substantiated in archival research. Further, the onus is externally placed on the Kanaura and negates the fact that both tribe and caste in the region are being merged into a different system, exhibiting shared characteristics and not a complete whole. In Kinnaur, the Kanaura have access to land. Much of the land is not community-owned and is acquired through a dependent relationship. Many sociologists believe that in the case of the latter caste patterns are more pronounced. In Kinnaur, this distinction too is contested and endorsed only in terms of a political-economic system and not in totality of behaviour. While the Kanaura is internally segmented and territorially located, the right to land in the region is egalitarian and achieved in terms of membership to the orung and not by subordination. Much of the land among the damang-chamang is also an outcome of land distribution to the landless under the Himachal Pradesh Nautor Land Rules, 1968, Act.

Extending the concept of ‘network and centres’ (Cohn & Marriott, 1958) to Kinnaur, it is apparent that the interior uni-ethnic villages in the region are indeed connected to a rather simple network of extra-local relationships with few elaborately differentiated centres. While interactions of kinship, marriage, ritual ties and so on may largely be restricted to ethnic and territorial Kinnaur, it as a sub-culture had well-developed social, cultural, economic, religious and political linkages with Tibet, Bushahr, Central Asian countries and other mainstream territories over time.

The presence of caste in tribal Kinnaur is not merely an issue of jatikarna (castification) or of Hinduisation among the Kanauras. It is in essence a society exercising a conscious choice and acting alternately. Change should be measured by identifying the institutions and individuals that facilitated a shift in choice, by understanding the preference of one choice over the other and by rationalising the same. Kinnaur presently is less geographically isolated and more ethnically heterogeneous in terms of its demographic profile, social stratification and interaction. With a sizable number of Negis achieving mobility through class and emerging as social elites across Himachal Pradesh, there has been a considerable expansion in the spatially defined networks of social relationships. Alongside the percolation of the modern state, the processes of urbanisation, modernisation and westernisation have impacted present-day Kinnaur variably. In cultural and religious spheres as well, Kinnaur seems to adopt increasing diversity and inclusion. Presently, the region is experiencing a rather robust attraction to the satsang (religious association) culture.

Notwithstanding the treatment of tribe and caste as opposites and irrespective of native moorings, at the level of praxis, aspects of tribe and caste in Kinnaur do not appear to contradict one another and exist alongside, generating a potpourri of tribal and non-tribal cultural traditions. The Kinnauri society accords a definite position to its members in the caste hierarchy based on notions of purity and pollution and untouchability and simultaneously, adheres to varying forms of indigenous markers of identity and hierarchy. Different levels of assimilation then may be seen as the general process of social change in India.

The Kanauras as such remain suspended between a tribe and a caste.