Casteism in India

For a long time I wanted to pen down my thoughts on this topic. Many people will tell you that casteism is the cancer of Indian society. I differ slightly. Casteism is not the cancer, it's the way it is used to stifle people's thought and it's unrewarding nature that's the cancer.

Let us be practical and take any nation on the face of earth and see if they are really class and caste free. In USA and UK, the most cited xamples of egalitarianism there does exists class lines. You can especially see it in east coast. Japan, China and the Koreas have their own version of caste system and untouchables. A cursory search in google will yield u tons of information on how those societies mirror somewhat similar to Indian society.

Let us look at the history of caste in India. The word caste itself is from Portugese. Portugese, as you may remember, were the first of the europeans to land in India for trade in spices. At that time the vedic form of Hinduism was entrenched in India. There's a reason why I deliberately say vedic form of Hinduism. Allow me to dwell on that reason for a bit.

Even though the predominant religion in India is Hinduism, the word itself is not found in any of the vedas or upanishads or even the Gita. India was a polytheistic society where Vedic practioners and their offshoots were living in harmony (or so) with other practioners including Tantriks, tribals etc. Outsiders clubbed all of them together and called them Sindhus (those who live west of Indus) and from that word was derived Hindu.

The first sociological problem that the residents of the land had was when the term that was used to refer to them based on the land they lived was transformed in toa religion. A religion typically should have a central God and central scripture. But Hinduism defies these rules. We have many Gods and Godesses and even though majority accept Gita as a central scripture it really is not. We cannot point out any scripture as our Bible or Quran.

The transformation of the word Hindu from a geo-political entity to a religious entity screwed up the varna system of the vedic practioners. Now they have to accomodate others who really don't believe in Vedas in to their structure. Now let us look at the varna structure in little detail. As we know there are 4 varnas.

Brahmanas - Priestly class, supposedly learned. They should concentrate only on learning vedas. They were not WEALTHY nor did they wield any POWER.
Kshatriyas - Warrior class and rulers of the land. They were not really wealthy but the wielded lot of POWER.
Vaishyas - Businessmen and traders. They held the WEALTH in the society.
Shudras - As opposed to the derogatary meaning this term takes today, Shudra really means formula. A shudra is one who knows the formula for creating day to day essentials. This included farming, blacksmith, iron smith, jewellers etc etc. They had the skills.

The key to note is that in order to maintain a balance each of the group is deprived of some qualities. The Brahmins were deprived of wealth, power and skill, the kshatriyas of wealth, knowledge and skill, vaishyas of Power, knowledge and skill and shudras of knowledge, power and wealth.

Note the difference between skill and knowledge. It's the same difference between a researcher and an implementor in today's societies. Brahmins were supposed to study astronomy and other sciences that could predict the climate, weather and such things. Shudras take this knowledge and decide when to sow the seed etc.

This societal structure was based on division of labor and not on any basis of discrimination. The real problem was how to accomodate the non-vedic society in to this varna system.

We'll see about this in a later post....