Modern historians agree that Rajputs consisted of a mix of various different social groups and different varnas. Rajputisation (or Rajputization) explains the process by which such diverse communities coalesced into the Rajput community.[1][2][3][4]
Banerjee-Dube2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Banerjee-Dube-Mayaram-Shail2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).M.N.Srinivas who had used the word "Sanskritization" to denote this process, now accepts accepts that he put too much emphasis originally on the movement of groups towards the varna status of Brahmans. Both Srinivas and B.Stein now emphasize not merely the process of Sanskritization, but other factors, such as the position of the dominant peasant and land-owning classes, political power and production system in the process of caste mobility of groups. Srinivas further surmises that the varna model became more popular during British rule. Thus, growing caste rigidity was an indirect effect of British rule. The rise of Rajputs is a classic model of varna mobility in the earlier period. There is a good deal of discussion regarding the origin of Rajputs - whether they were Kshatriyas of they were drawn from other categories in the population including indigenous tribes. Modern historians are more or less agreed that the Rajputs consisted of miscellaneous groups including Shudra and tribals. Some were Brahmans who took to warfare, and some were from Tribes- indigenous or foreign.
(62, 63) We have culled from the sociological literature, particularly from Srivinas's analysis of Sanskritization, the key differences between the two modes of upward mobility, Sanskritization and Rajputization. Despite the excellent fieldwork on Rajputization by Sinha (1962) and Kulke (1976), there is no clear theoretical definition of the key features of Rajputization, and its differences and similarities to Sanskritization. We argue that theorizing is as important as fieldwork, principally because of the colonial misreading of the term Rajput and its relation to Rajput history and to Rajputization. As a corrective we demarcate the distinction between Sanskritization and Rajputization in terms of attributional criteria - which denotes a code of living, dietary prohibition, modes of worship-and social interactional criteria, which signify the rules of marriage, rules pertaining to women, and modes of power. The attributional criteria for Sanskritization are vegetarianism, prohibition against beef eating, teetotalism, and wearing the sacred thread; the attributional criteria for Rajputized men consists of meat-eating, imbibing alcohol and opium, and the wearing of the sword; the attributional criteria for Rajputized women are seclusion through purdah or the veil and elaborate rules for women's mobility within the village. The religious code for Sanskritization is a belief in the doctrine of karma, dharma, rebirth and moksha and the Sradda ceremony for male ancestors. Conversely, the religious code for Rajputization consists of the worship of Mahadeo and Sakto and the Patronage of Brahmins through personal family priests (historically the Rajputized rulers gave land grants to Brahmins) and the priestly supervision of rites of passage. The social interactional criteria for Sanskritization is claiming the right to all priestly intellectual and cultural vocations, patronage from the dominant political power, and prohibition against widow remarriage. The interactional criteria for Rajputization consists of claiming the right to all military and political occupations, the right to govern, the right to aggrandize lands through wars, sanctioned aggressive behavior, the adoption of the code for violence, compiling clan genealogies and the right to coercively police the interactions between castes.