Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development
columbia.edu
columbia.edu
I'll just leave my comment here so that the truth is available for anyone who cares.
I'm a member of the so-called "upper castes", but not a Brahmin.
Parents were very bohemian, never taught me anything about caste.
Go to college in India. My best friend in college is a Brahmin. I knew that Brahmins were priests, didn't really know anything else about their ideology. One late night, well after we had established a very strong friendship, he starts to tell me about how Brahmins are superior to non-Brahmins. Tells me that because I was "x" caste, I was meant to do "y" types of jobs. And that I shouldn't try to compete with him in things where "pure IQ" was relevant. I pointed out to him that in the national Civil Service and IIT exams, people of my caste were usually the "toppers", and usually made up 40% to 60% of the top 10 selected. Routinely doing better than Brahmins. (In India the last name is associated with one's caste, and newspapers routinely publish names of "toppers" of these exams). He shrugged it off. The crazy part? In every other aspect of his character, he was such a good guy that we remained best friends for years after.
Upper castes will tell you there's no caste discrimination in India. Three more anecdotes:
1) I take up a one-year position with my job in Chennai. Go around looking for an apartment. Looked at 2 apartments in a nice neighborhood. First question the landlords asked me: are you a Brahmin? They told me they couldn't rent to me because I wasn't.
2) In my office in Chennai I become friendly with a lot of the female staff. They start to tease me one day that they're going to find me a girl to marry. "Don't worry, we'll find you a Brahmin." The kicker? They weren't Brahmins themselves. This is the level of self-hate the Brahmin has bred into non-Brahmins.
3) I now live and work in the U.S. A new hire, Indian, joins. Visits my office one day. Tells me he left India because he hates the caste system. I start warming to him. A little while later informs me that he's a very high Brahmin. Not an ordinary Brahmin, mind you, a high Brahmin.
I have been involved in public exams in India. I think the best predictor for performance is how relevant your parents' education is, to your career, not caste per se.
Most of places I see it, is for economic reasons(priest job, reservations both are side of coins) and some have nothing to boost other than caste and no other incentives.
Always hoped education will get rid of this system that has turned evil, but that hope has also gone as western education system has nothing to offer. Probably some indigenous education reform might help, but would love to see some PhD or researched guy’s comment
Would love to see some solutions to this problem. One that I have heard is inter-caste marriage(haven’t researched much), but would love to see some more solutions for this problem or just no hope than another Shankaracharya.
If interested we can have website dedicated to solutions eradicate this system by offering people what this system gives them.
Also I think we can’t get rid of any system without offering replacement for it especially for huge and highly knitted society as Bharat.
4) Brahmin friend of mine at work. Brilliant fellow. Solid decent chap overall. I tell him about this article I read about how in some city, a non-Brahmin girl wasn't allowed to do Bharat Natyam (a classical Indian dance form that is widely taught) on some stage because she wasn't a Brahmin. I guess traditionally only Brahmin girls were allowed to perform it. Turns out he agrees with this decision.
5) I'm eating South Indian food with a colleague in Chennai (I suppose he was a Brahmin, but am not 100% sure). I love South Indian food. I comment to him how good the food is. He says, it's not as good as it used to be because in the past only Brahmins were allowed to cook at that restaurant, but now they allow anyone to cook. He knows I'm not a Brahmin, and still he thinks it's okay to say such things to my face.
It was just Bharat Natyam. A commonly taught classical dance form of India. But this performance hall denied her request to perform it because she wasn't a Brahmin.
All the super-progressive Indians I know in the U.S. are Brahmins. What's up with that?
It might be "compensation". It's like people who live in lily-white areas who constantly harp on about George Floyd. To show they're truly down with the struggle. But if a black man shows up in their neighborhood, they call the police on him.
Anyhow, being raised in a caste-agnostic surroundings I was quite underexposed to all this. Much later, I get into a premier institute in Kanpur and a senior grad student introduces himself to me thus, "Hi I am <insert name>. I am a high caste Rajput".
This is the first time I am meeting him and not even a minute had elapsed since our first eye contact. I am so dumbfounded by this I literally stand there at a loss for words. Finally I mumble "Congratulations" as I had no idea or prior exposure on how to react to such a situation.
Since they need to ask I guess that this is not something obvious.
They hadn't asked me my name yet. I was taken to them by a rental intermediary. A guy who helped people find apartments. Online rental finding places, like Craigslist, weren't common back then (at least in India).
The most shocking thing about the experience to me was that even though it was illegal for them to deny me an apartment on the basis of my caste, there was simply nothing I could do about it. If I went to the police, it would be a whole other circus (bribes, inaction, etc.).
To me, it sounds very illogical : like only wanting to rent or marry millionaires...
It was written 1,000 years ago, but could have been written 75 years ago. It reads that fresh.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/text...
The level of oppression of lower castes (described in this book) is unbelievable, and remains partly practiced even today. The biggest problem was that you couldn't escape your caste ("caste" is derived from "cast", something you were locked, or cast, into).
1. Nobility
2. Clergy
3. Landowners & Merchants
4. Artisans
5. Outcasts - butchers, sanitary workers, undertakers ....
Some European countries still legally protect a lot of family names, which you would have to buy if you need a fancy royal name.
1. Sikhs & Gurkhas are warrior class, they are overrepresented in the military.
2. Parsi's are extraordinarily successful businessmen, they are among the wealthiest Indians.
3. Brahmins are extraordinarily successful academically.
4. Jains are successful businessmen.
In the case of [4] it is survival bias, being a true Jain is very hard and only the rich elite could adhere to it.
Some communities in India have had a head start or rather the barbaric colonial rule had pulled down much of the population to abject poverty and gave few people not in abject poverty a head start.
Equally there is a special hate campaign against Brahmins emanating from church as they are seen as guardians of high culture and scriptures.
As a vast majority of Indians have not converted to Islam or Christianity in spite of the hostile foreign occupation anywhere between 400 to a 1000 years, I can safely say we are all warriors and the last surviving major ancient civilisation.
The caste-debate is a two way street and is mostly kept alive by few vested interests. Among the youth it is mostly the "reservation" that exposes them to "Caste politics", as online education & private sector picks up it is going to be less relevant.
To be fair to Brahmins, as non-brahmin with a brahmin-like first name from Tamil Nadu I have been at the receiving end of the political-church driven hate campaigns that even teachers take part in.
I think we should not tolerate any kind of hate especially hate campaigns, esp. for the younger generation.
> In contrast to these cases, Indian endogamy has maintained discernible genetic differences even within the same village for thousands of years. In 2009, geneticist David Reich estimated that the Vyasa community of South India had been genetically isolated from its neighbors for 2,000 years. Endogamy rates were 99% per generation at a minimum.
Who your kids end up marrying is mentioned as a big driver of caste in the article. I think that holds true today as well. All things being equal, your professor / lawyer / doctor parents probably don't want you to marry a janitor.
And, I'm pretty sure this is true everywhere.
In a highly competitve place (mostly due to population), they'll say something like, "he's from the janitor class, but thats okay, because he's a doctor" to justify marrying outside the caste.
That's irrelevant when discussing the mechanism, genesis and development of a system that goes back millienia.
> they'll say something like, "he's from the janitor class, but thats okay, because he's a doctor"
What are you basing this on? Exogamy between castes remains very low, even between different high castes.
What are you basing this on?
https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/in...
Well, I don't think there is a concept of "janitor class" "everywhere"...
Of course social classes exist everywhere, but I think your example just shows what a caste system is : if a son-of-janitor becomes a doctor the in-laws in most modern societies will see a doctor, whereas in a caste system they will see a (son-of-) janitor.
I married within my own tribe because I like my tribe’s food and customs, and I wanted a spouse who likes the same. It all comes down to socioeconomic class at the end anyway, whether it be called “caste”, or “doctor/lawyer/engineer”, or MIT/cal tech/Stanford grad, etc.
If you have a friend who is a doctor or engineer earning $400k per year, would you try to set them up with a janitor earning $40k per year? Maybe, but I suspect probably not. Progressive or not progressive, humans are still animals, and they are going to play the mating game.
Hell, as I grew older, I realized that families in my own tribe that had more male children were generally far more economically successful than the families with more female children (because it was a paternalistic tribe at the time of immigration and wealth buildup in the new country). The men stay together and support each other, the women get married out and go to live with their spouse’s family. Their children’s economic opportunities were most definitely influenced by whether or not their dad had a lot of brothers to depend on or not.
If the income/wealth gap in society is large, there is basically no way to that society does not get stratified. The only solution to excess tribalism is to reduce that income/wealth gap, which is unfortunately moving in the opposite direction.
Note that I am not a proponent of a caste system or a formal method of tribalism, but I am merely pointing out that marrying someone in your own tribe is expected behavior, and will still happen absent a formal and rigid tribal delineation.
> If some Indian tells you that they are progressive and caste is not followed these days
If an Indian brought home an educated and achieved decamillionaire spouse, I doubt their parents would care what caste they are in.
It is the same all over the world, caste or no caste.
A person can get killed for marrying into the wrong caste and it happens often enough in India. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/dalit-youth-be...
A low caste person can get killed if they "trespass" even by having mustache which is only allowed for the upper caste in parts of India or if they are seen eating before the so-called upper castes. Or for just making eye contact!
https://www.opindia.com/2022/03/rajasthan-dalit-man-jitendra...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48265387
Or you can get killed for something as simple as riding a horse! https://thewire.in/caste/family-alleges-dalit-boy-was-killed...
Or being seated in front of the upper caste.. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalit-youth-thrash...
In almost all of these cases the cops and the law enforcement will put pressure on the victim's family to withdraw cases.
Any Indian who argues that caste oppression doesn't happen in India now is not misinformed - they are just lying.
My spouse belongs to a different state, speaks a different language. It never occurred to us to find out.
We did have a religious ceremony and at that time it turned out that me and my spouse belong to the same 'gotra'. In conservative circles that's a big 'no no' because 'gotra' translates loosely to lineage, although in practice its just another label carried forward along patrilineal lines. Some would consider intra gotra marriage equivalent to incest.
Anyhow, this unexpected reveal was a surprise but no one batted an eyelid.
Caste in the same sense of occupational background exists in all cultures but was never used in such a divisive way like the British Raj did. For example people of the "Smith" surname used to be Goldsmiths or Blacksmiths. But the British put a sense of elitism into some communities in India, telling them they are higher than others. There is no Hindu scripture which says who is high or low, but merely responsibilities.
Skilfully sidestepping any explanation of the metric being used to measure “high”, the educated spiritual priests in British Raj times and intellectuals were all banded together into one and labelled "highest caste" because they represented the “highest threat” to Anglican domination and those who represented the “lowest threat” to the Anglican were pushed into the lowest caste.
During the British Raj of the 540 principalities existent at that time, over 400 were ruled by Shudra Kings (Professor Vaidyanathan, IIM Bangalore) which the British denoted as low caste. When the British left, the second largest landowner in India after the Indian Government, was the Church and thus it’s reasonable to note that the largest transfer of assets and land from was in fact from the Shudra groups (Lord Harries’ so called low-castes) to the Church. Further, there is readily available overwhelming historical evidence that the Dalits “the Untouchables” were themselves a creation of the crushing sanctions created and imposed by the Anglican Colonialists of the Church of England as is clarified below. The castes and tribes “notified” under the 1871 Act were labelled as Criminal Tribes for their so-called “criminal tendencies”. As a result, anyone born in these communities across the country was presumed a “born criminal”, irrespective of their criminal precedents.
Mixing castes was normal as it was based on deed back few thousand years ago, only recently caste mixing wasn't allowed. Some further reading:
https://pragyata.com/caste-system-pointers-for-the-social-me...
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-gene-data-reveal...
And also saying that the Portuguese/British invented the caste system because "caste" is a Portuguese system makes no sense because:
a) Indians don't speak Portuguese and the words Jati and Varna have both existed in Indian languages for millenia
b) To claim that something didn't exist because a word from a foreign language is most commonly used to discuss it is like saying that gravity didn't exist before Isaac Newton as he is the one to discover it and give it meaning.
It would only be fair to look at the opposing views and reject or reevaluate theories that are on thin ice.
Jati & Varna are two separate ideas, "Indian caste system" is an import and a framework trying to combine the two.
Why do we keep using the word "caste", when we talk about Jati. A lot of Jatis do not see themselves as lower & upper and there are thousands of Jatis so no one is carrying around a dictionary to see where they stand.
People rarely talk ever about "their" varna and the vast majority do not see themselves or their jati falling into a specific varna.
70% of the temples in Tamil Nadu have priests from the Jati that built the temple and non-brahmins, there falls the idea "Brahmins" exclusively being the priestly class.
http://drambedkar.co.in/wp-content/uploads/books/category1/1...
In modern India the political parties propagate it for their demographic politics whereas nobody cares about caste in day to day life. Surprisingly in USA there is an Ivy League caste system supposedly based on merit. If that is justified so is India Class system based on ability and track record.
With the inadequate Sanskrit knowledge and billions in Missionary funds this “caste” from “caste” continues to be a milch giving cow for ngo activism & regressive politics.
It seems this claim is somewhat popular in some indian circles, judging from this quick search. One can't praise a millenary culture and at the same time claim it can be reshaped totally from a short colonial period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manusmriti
Manusmriti is 2 century BC whereas Mongol invasion is middle ages and had very little impact in India because for various reasons the Mongols did not really get inside India although there were a few battles where some Mongol generals tested the borders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_India
Bhakti movement, a reformist movement of Hinduism mentions caste, thats 8th century AD, well before Mongol invasion. There is mention of caste in Budhdhist, Jain and Sikh literature as well. A significant component of many of these religion were a rejection of the prevailing caste system.
From the sound of it, the parent's claim has a whiff of what is derogatorily referred to as propaganda of WhatsApp University -- a well oiled and funded propaganda and fake news machinery of the political party in power. Please do not fall for it.
1) Mongols never invaded India. Even though they reached river Sindh while hunting a Muslim ruler. They had deference towards India - the land Buddhism arose from. Some historians say lack of grassland etc but they never came here. Even your Wiki link says the same except for the disingenuous headline. Kashmir was invaded my Muslims from Mongol captured regions not Mingols themselves. Mongols were not Muslims.
2) Show me the Sanskrit text of manusmriti talking about anything but the varna system.
I have studied this in original Sanskrit and dont need cut/paste reference to bolster common but false propaganda from Wiki or WhatsApp university. Satmaye Jayate - truth is always victorious.
I agree with you and havent claimed otherwise (quoting myself: Mongols did not really get inside India although there were a few battles where some Mongol generals tested the borders.). Was responding to parent's claim that caste system was an artifact Mongol invasion. Not sure what relevance of them not being Muslims or the scarcity/search for grassland (both true statements) have anything to the topic though.
> Show me the Sanskrit text of manusmriti talking about anything but the varna system.
The word caste of course cannot occur in a sanskrit text. By caste one means the varna system of designating people into Brahmins, Kshatriya ... and others
That's certainly what the caste denialist narrative desparately wants to paint. It certainly is not the consensus.
Could you cite a reference ? The traditional stories that I have heard from my grandparents tells a different story. That he was born Agni Sharma (Brahmin) and acquired the name Valmiki for reciting the words "death" (mara) which repeated seemed he was chanting "Rama".
What I was asking you was more straight forward : can you show me that farmers son could marry priests daughters (or whatever "caste" combination you want) before the British colonization of India? I don't think so.