How many municipal workers cleaning streets and toilets are from higher castes ?
The monopoly of the church on God and crown was precisely why it was imported into India by the British to consolidate their power.
"Caste" is often used to white wash the Islamic and Christian colonization of India that lasted for a 1000 years, that reduced the richest nation to one of the poorest.
This poverty creation machine that the British colonization is not merely an effect of exploitation or greed, it was very much driven by the same racist and Christian supremacy that drove the nazis.
The "dalits" are very much the biggest victims of colonization.
Very good point, BTW. You're not going to find a rigid social stratification system in a rich society. Stratification takes over as an outcome of societal collapse, as people are reduced to fighting over scraps of their former wealth and will cling to any form of seeming stability, however damaging in the long term. This is exactly what occurred in the West of late antiquity and the dark ages, culminating in the early middle ages.
If the guys writing the history didn't mess it up, wasn't buddha himself against the caste system? That seems way before there was even a Church in the West to begin with.
Gautama Buddha was against any rigid interpretation of the varnas, but he was not unusual in that - this was close to Hindu orthodoxy even at the time.
Buddha considered himself very much a Hindu.
The Buddha rejected the authority of the Vedas entirely and this infuriated the Brahmins of that time. He had both philosophical and pragmatic objections to the theistic stance of Brahminical groups, along with a total rejection of their focus on mass animal slaughter in the name of rituals.
From the original Pali canon, this discourse captures the Buddha's position:
https://suttacentral.net/an3.61/en/sujato
And, Adi Sankara wrote an entire polemic trashing the Buddha as an insignificant man who should be shunned by everybody. Here is a passage straight from the Vedanta Sutras written by Sankara:
Moreover, Buddha by propounding the three mutually contradictory systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only, and general nothingness, has himself made it clear either that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions, or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused.--So that--and this the Sutra means to indicate--Buddha's doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness.
Brahmins are a small subset, who at different regions and times might have been corrupt. Just like the church.
But unlike the church, Hinduism is experiential and no one has a monopoly, which is precisely why Buddhism is one of many 1000s of movements.
There is no singular holy book and no need even in communities where it existed.
You really need to look into the Buddha's teaching properly before trying to appropriate it to fit your agenda.
A Hindu will feel very comfortable in a Buddhist temple and practice and vice versa. Hindus themselves have extremely diverse traditions.
I see where we have diverging views. My Swedish landlords who happens to be a Christian once asked we where is your holy book.
In her mind not having a one-one equivalent with Christianity delegitimises the religion.
In trying to intellectualise the debate, you have taken the limited view of a Christian.
The vast majority of the Hindus are open to the ideas of Buddhism as well as 1000s of tribal/rural/regional gods and rituals. Not only is there no conflict, there is perhaps no clear boundaries.
This is completely alien to xtianity/Islam.
In another comment you said that casteism was brought by the West to India. (I do not agree with this but lets go with for now). So it clearly follows that Hindus (Hinduism) adopted casteism from somewhere externally. This is not for debate because we have seen and continue to see Hindus practicing casteism for whatever reason.
Hinduism can be simultaneously extolled for adopting "good" ideas from Buddhism but is also beyond criticism for adopting casteism from the west?
You arbitrarily laid the boundary for Hinduism at "caste" arguing that it was brought externally and hence not an inherent Hindu feature, yet somehow you take pride in Hinduism being a religion that does adopt external ideas. Which one is it?
If you have been under Islamic and xtian occupation for a 1000 years, there isn't a lot of options.
Some communities are driven to extreme poverty and it becomes a dog eat dog world.
Considering Islam in Perssia completely wiped out the culture in 50 years.
And it took only 150 years for xtianity to wipe out pagan culture in Europe or the Americas.
Caste as a system was clearly used by the British to separate communities at different levels of destitution coopting some as native informants.
Even in current day USA people are divided on their political, regional, occupational lines. Dems and Reps each consider themselves superior and the other one dumb. Inspite of public schools there is a big impact of family background even in politics.
1. There is no reason to believe the Pali Tripitaka represents the authentic words or teachings of the Buddha. He would have spoken Magadhi as his mother tongue. Pali was a Western Prakrit and moreover a trade and literary language not a popular one. Also the Pali Tripitaka was composed and edited by the Hinayanists several centuries after the Buddha’s life and expresses doctrinal developments that would be anachronistic in that era.
2. There is no particular reason to believe that Buddha and early Buddhism was against caste except in the general sense that they are against worldly behaviors of any type. You won’t find anything about it in the Aryan eightfold path (Aryashtangamarga) for instance. (Aryan is usually translated as “noble” in this case. Did you ever wonder why?). The ten major disciples of the Buddha were all either Brahmanas or his royal relatives. The first major historical Buddhist ruler Ashoka in his rock edicts exhorts his subjects to respect both “Brahmanas and Shramanas”. The Ashokavadana, the earliest Buddhist hagiography (and canonical in Theravada) states that a Buddha can only be born in a Brahmana or Kshatriya womb.
3. Buddhism is against karma and holds that liberation is from Jnana only. Animal sacrifices are mentioned a lot because they are particularly vivid examples of the negative consequences of karma but the Buddhist critique applies just as readily to lighting a ghee lamp for worldly reasons. The Jains were more consistently for non-violence than the Buddhists. (No predominantly Buddhist culture is predominantly vegetarian). Jnana only is the position of Advaita Vedanta too. The difference is Smarta Hinduism developed a modus vivendi where karma was acceptable for householders. There was no lay Buddhism during its Indian phase only the sangha so the question could be put aside.
4. Yes Astika philosophers and saints contended against Buddhist counterparts (and each other) but it is anachronistic to bring those disputes back to the time of the Buddha himself. By the time of Shankaracharya there were several mutually antagonistic Buddhist sects. (Actually three is generous. Traditionally there are said to be eighteen.). That is what he is referring to. They can’t all be “the true teaching of the Buddha” unless he was incoherent.
https://suttacentral.net/general-guide-sujato
Sujato addresses several claims in his essay, and has some helpful hints on the historical placement of the Buddhadhamma.
The Buddha was not a social reformer - his teaching was about total renunciation of the world. But there are plenty of discourses that reject the birth-based caste system and instead establishes that deeds and actions are the sole criteria for judging a person.
An example: https://suttacentral.net/mn98/en/sujato
You are mistaken about Karma (Pali: Kamma). Kamma is a central pillar in the Buddha's Teaching. It is, arguably, one of the most important aspects, since Nibbana is described as the cessation of kamma.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/kamma.html
Adi Sankara's rejection of the Buddha's Teaching was not a simplicistic dismissal based on sectarian divisions. His rejection was based on philosophical differences - the Vedanta Sutras make that very clear.
In any case, my main point was that it is nonsensical to call the Buddha as a Hindu.
I am mystified as to what you think I’ve got wrong about karma. As you say Nirvana involves the cessation of karma. Jnana alone is its cause. This is the same as Advaita Vedanta (and several other darshanas.). The point of difference is what pragmatic concessions are to be given to those who cannot become monks. To be a Buddhist in ancient India was to be a monk. There were lay people who donated to the monks but they otherwise carried on their ancestral traditions. There was no specifically Buddhist way to be a layman until after the religion left India. In Smartism, to learn Advaita Vedanta and give up karma and become a monk is the highest goal but if you can’t, rituals and worldly life still have some positive worth. Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Tantra were even more this-world oriented and in actual practice more egalitarian and accessible than Buddhism nevermind whatever rhetoric was put forth.
I don’t understand the distinction you are trying to make between sectarian division and philosophical difference. A philosophical difference is what makes a sect a sect no?
We agree that Buddha was not a Hindu. For exactly the same reasons we must say Buddha was not not a Hindu. The whole question anachronistically projects latter day concerns and concepts too far into the past. But was Buddhism (or is or could it be) Hinduism? That’s the real bone of contention anyway and its a much more ambiguous question. We could mention how Buddha is an avatar of Vishnu or Yoga borrows concepts from Mahayana or the wholesale adoption of Shaiva tantric concepts in Vajrayana. I personally like to compare with Jainism. It is just as old as Buddhism, heretical to Astikas for exactly the same reasons as Buddhism and yet thoroughly integrated into social structures, modes of worship, and literary traditions to the extent that the man in the street is not even aware that Jainism is anything more than another Hindu sect. I think that would have been the fate of Buddhism if it had survived to this day. And that’s the key. It went extinct a long time ago. So the correct answer to my question is: “we don’t know.”
It is troubling to see how the current wave of jingoism coupled with religious fervor is trying to reduce the Buddha to a mere pawn in an imaginary, all-encompassing Hindu pantheon. Maybe you are not deliberately trying to do this, but the muddled and confused efforts of numerous foot-soldiers expose the sad trend all the same.
Buddhists themselves reduced the historical Shakyamuni to one member of a pantheon long ago. This was a clear trend in Mahayana and Vajrayana before Allauddin Khilji came and settled the issue once and for all.
This is not true, there's no conflict. The Buddha was not interested in abstract doctrines but only in what was most pragmatically useful for attaining stream entry, enlightenment and liberation from craving and desire. People who are actually pursuing these goals, even in modern times (with very compelling results, though obviously any claims to arhat status will always be viewed skeptically by most) have clarified how anatta is entirely compatible with a Higher Self as with Brahman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara
From the second para:
He also explained the key difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, stating that Hinduism asserts "Ātman (Soul, Self) exists", while Buddhism asserts that there is "no Soul, no Self".
For that matter, even Shankara's description of the Atman is entirely in the negative, stating what the Atman is not. So even while accepting the existence of the Atman, he's clearly tending towards a universalist description that, again, is quite compatible with a practical understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of not-Atman.
Earlier, Gokhale, Apate, Trimkaji, Andhala, Pansara, Kale, Behre, etc [all Brahman surnames], who showed their bravery by killing rats in their homes, persecuted us, not sparing even pregnant women, without any rhyme or reason. This has stopped now. Harassment and torture of Mahars and Mangs, common during the rule of Peshwas in Pune, have stopped. Now, human sacrifice for the foundation of forts and mansions has stopped – now, nobody buries us alive. Now, our population is growing in numbers. Earlier, if any Mahar or Mang wore fine clothes, they would say that only Brahmans should wear such clothes. Seen in fine clothes, we were earlier accused of stealing such clothes. Their religion was in danger of being polluted when Untouchables put clothes around their bodies; they would tie them to a tree and punish them. But, under British rule, anybody with money can buy and wear clothes. Earlier, punishment for any wrongdoing against the upper castes was to behead the guilty Untouchable— now, it has stopped. Excessive and exploitative tax has stopped. The practice of untouchability has stopped in some places. Killing has stopped on the playground. Now, we can even visit the marketplace.
Source: https://www.forwardpress.in/2020/02/165-years-ago-first-fema...
We have a cottage industry even today that churns out fake attacks on Christians to justify interference or bullying by western countries.
And did the girl live for centuries just so she can experience the white savior?
But it's quite clear that the essay managed to rattle your threadbare, befuddled convictions.
Perhaps connected to a church or left organisation
Kind of hard to make that argument and simultaneously argue that the soul transfers to a new body at death and is confined to Earth (or worse) until the soul reaches a stage of enlightenment sufficient to move to heaven. Its arguable whether caste applies even in this life - and definitely does not between lifetimes as even the highest type of body on this planet (human) is not assured.