Thanks to some ignorant, half-witted folks in the US, there has been a sudden resurgence of Casteism and its alleged Hindu roots.
A few points merit thoughtful consideration:
- The term “Casta” is NOT an Indian or Hindu term and is not found in any ancient Hindu literature. It’s a Portuguese term used often to denote social rank in feudal Europe based around royalty and aristocracy (pretty much like what obtains in the UK to this day as we observed during the Platinum jubilee celebration)
- The Indian / Hindu term ‘Varna’ simply means classification and is NOT hereditary but based solely on one’s disposition (sva-bhava) and one’s actions (karma). Unlike European aristocratic norms, this is NOT hereditary or hierarchical in any sense of the word and examples abound in our Scriptures that establish this beyond reasonable doubt. Indeed, our Scriptures emphasize the fundamental Oneness of all things in this Universe (be they human or otherwise and be they living or not)
- Any ‘sizing up’ that occurs in the Bay Area or any other place where Hindus/Indians suddenly find themselves in senior management roles (thanks to their focus on education and an upbringing / management style based on humility) is purely social and professional snobbery to figure out somebody’s place in the pecking order inherent in every society in the world – based on one’s pedigree, place and size of residence, make of one’s vehicle, school and university attended etc. Nothing unique to India / South Asia and of no relevance to the Hindu Varna system.
I am going to debunk this myth that 1. the root of casteism in Hindu and 2. its existence is purely a Hindu/Indian phenomena
The first is actually the easier one.
Ancient Hindu texts like the Vedas, the Puranas and the Shatapatha Brahmana explicitly mention that the involvement of the Shudras in Vedic rituals is essential, and that reverence to the menial / hard working / karmic folks pleases Brahman. The Shukla Yajurveda as an example (16.27) says: ‘Homage to you carpenters and to you chariot makers, homage. Homage to you potters and to you blacksmiths, homage. Homage to you boatmen and to you Punjishthas, homage. Homage to you dog-leaders and to you hunters, homage. This is the Veda that deals with everyday living – the essence of Dharnic living – righteousness.
Some of the greatest Indian kings were ‘Shudras’ by definition – coming from classes usually engaged in non-hereditary menial work. Even the greatest of the modern Indian kings – Shivaji – comes from the Bhosle class. It is quite interesting that – in 1674 – when Shivaji was crowned Emperor, Marathi priests from Pune actually visited Kashi and spoke about the Scriptural impact of a menial class King becoming Emperor. That great priest of Kashi; Bishweshwar Bhatt, who had immense knowledge of Vedas, Puranas, Smriti and politics, issued a certificate that Shivaji could and should be crowned Emperor as nothing in the scriptures precludes any hereditary rationale for rulers – someone thinking of the coronation of Napoleon a century later?
The first great Empire in India was the Maurya dynasty – again coming from menial classes! Like the Mauryas and Marathas, there are other examples of Hindu dynasties that came from the lower castes – the powerful Cholas, Hoysalas, Chalukyas and the Rayas of Vijayanagar. Two well-known castes that go against the grain of caste are the Lingayats of Karnataka and Nairs of Kerala. The Lingayats, who claim equality with, if not superiority to, Brahmins, have priests of their own caste who also minister to several other non-Brahmin castes. The Nairs, who come under the Shudra category were soldiers and commanders in the king’s army.
Strangely – for the caste supposed to rule and inflict atrocities on other classes as per modern pseudo intellectuals: there are hardly any sustained example of Brahmin kings!
I argue that Casteism is essentially a British phenomenon fostered on an Indian public that was bereft of true spiritual leadership in the early part of the 19th Century – principally by folks like Lord Macaulay whose policies were drafted and implemented to systematically destroy the inclusive and humanitarian ethos of the Hindu mind.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Chancellor of the University of California, has conducted an exhaustive study of how the British transformed Indian society for the worse. In his ‘Castes of the Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (2001),’ he says the concept of caste hierarchy was a British construct. For instance, before the emergence of British colonial rule, ‘kings were not inferior to Brahmins’, and ‘[u]nder colonialism, caste was thus made out to be far more – far more pervasive, far more totalising, and far more uniform – than it had ever been before, at the same time that it was defined as a fundamentally religious social order,’ says Dirks. Further, ‘In fact, however, caste had always been political – it had been shaped in fundamental ways by political struggles and processes….What we take now as caste is, in fact, the precipitate of a history that selected caste as the single and systematic category to name, and thereby contain, the Indian social order…In pre-colonial India, the units of social identity had been multiple, and their respective relations and trajectories were part of a complex, conjunctural, constantly changing, political world. The referents of social identity were not only heterogeneous; they were also determined by context. Temple communities, territorial groups, lineage segments, family units, royal retinues, warrior sub-castes, ‘little’ kingdoms, occupational reference groups, agricultural or trading associations, devotionally conceived networks and sectarian communities, even priestly cabals, were just some of the significant units of identification, all of them at various times far more significant than any uniform metonymy or endogamous caste groups. Caste was just one category among many others, one way of organising and representing identity‘.
In 1798, English Orientalist Henry Colebrooke wrote: ‘Daily observation shows even Brahmins exercising the menial profession of a Shudra.’ Dirks’ claims are backed by Indian authors. M.N. Srinivas explains in Castes in Modern India: ‘It is well known that occasionally a Shudra caste has, after the acquisition of economic and political power, Sanskritised its customs and ways, and has succeeded in laying claim to be Kshatriyas.’ Srinivas cites the Raj Gonds, originally a tribe, but who successfully claimed to be Kshatriyas after becoming rulers of a tract in Central India. ‘The term Kshatriya, for instance, does not refer to a closed ruling group which has always been there since the time of the Vedas,’ he says. ‘More often it refers to the position attained or claimed by a local group whose traditions and luck enabled it to seize politico-economic power.’
Dirk further writes: ‘Within localities, or kingdoms, groups could rise or fall (and in the process become more or less caste-like), depending on the fortunes of particular kings, chiefs, warriors, or headmen, even as kings could routinely readjust the social order by royal decree..’ demonstrating that caste has nothing to with hereditary privilege but a mere vocational parameter – a ‘Varna’ in Sanskrit and Hindu texts.
S.S. Ghurye of Bombay University explains in Caste, Class and Occupation (1961) how the British infused caste identity among Indians by the simple task of conducting a census. The ‘nice grading of contemporary groups provided a good rallying point for the old caste-spirit’ he writes. Several caste advocacy groups were formed and these groups wrote petitions to the British, requesting a higher rank in the hierarchy to be drawn up by the census authorities‘.
Rajni Kant Lahiri, Professor of Hindi, University of Kanpur, writes in the European Conspiracy Against Vedic Culture: ‘The British rulers documented caste and tribe in all its complexities in the gazetteers and counted it in census operations from 1881. For 1911 census, Herbert Risley, the commissioner, went a step further and said the census had also to identify ‘social precedence as recognised by native public opinion’. It means the caste had to be located in the ritual and social hierarchy and it was to determine which caste was high, which intermediate, and which low. It was a divisive game played by the western rulers to divide and rule and reduce Hindu society into many fractions.’
The British, of course, were thoroughly pleased with the outcome of their social re-engineering. Administrator and diplomat Lepel Griffin believed caste was useful in preventing rebellion, while James Kerr, the principal of Calcutta’s Hindu College wrote in 1865: ‘It may be doubted if the existence of caste is on the whole unfavourable to the permanence of our rule. It may even be considered favourable to it, provided we act with prudence and forbearance. Its spirit is opposed to national union.’
In fact – it is the Christian Church that was instrumental in dividing humanity into various castes! As Ghurye writes: ‘It is well to remember in this connection that even the Roman Church, in its desire to propagate its faith, was prepared to accommodate caste in its practical programme, though it was opposed to the humanitarian principles of the Church. Pope Gregory XV published a bill sanctioning caste regulations in the Christian Churches of India.’ In Ancient India, as mentioned earlier; Hindu texts like the Vedas, the Puranas and the Shatapatha Brahmana explicitly mention that the involvement of the Shudras in Vedic rituals is essential, and that reverence to the lower classes pleases Brahman.
Another hymn (18.48) from the Yajur Veda (reason for quoting Yajur as opposed to the other 3 Vedas is that this one deals with everyday living!) says: ‘O Lord! Please fill the Brahmanas with light, the Kshatriyas with light, the Vaishyas with light and the Shudras with light; and in me fill the same light.’
It is a measure of the enlightened nature of Indian society that it accorded great respect to the working class. In contrast, most other civilisations treated labourers and agriculturists as property. In Athens, only 10 per cent of the population had the vote; the majority were slaves.
The Bible is rampant with comments on slavery, however – not one Biblical figure, including Jesus or St. Paul, is recorded as saying anything against slavery, which was an integral part of life of Judea, Galilee, and in the rest of the Roman Empire during those times. For example – Take this passage from the Bible, 1 Timothy 6:1-2: ‘All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing (Christian) masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers (Christians). Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.’
On the other hand, ancient Indian history is littered with examples of men who crossed the so-called great divide. Take Veda Vyasa, who wrote the Mahabharata: his mother was a fisherwoman. Valmiki, who wrote the Ramayana, was a Dalit in today’s parlance. Several celebrated rishis (seers) hailed from lower castes – Jabali’s mother was what one would call a prostitute today. Aitareya, who wrote the Aitareya Upanishad, was born of a Shudra woman. Parashara, the revered law-giver, was the son of a Chandala, the lowest of the Shudras, who live with the dead. Vishwamitra was not a Brahmin but a Kshatriya. Again, Saint Thiruvalluvar, who wrote the Thirukural, was a weaver. Kabir, Surdas, Ramdas and Tukaram, who are revered as saints, came from the humblest echelons of Hindu society. And please – this is purely an observaton to be taken with a pinch of salt (& pepper!) – Unlike Jesus, who had to be whitened and given blond hair in order to be accepted as the son of God by Europeans, Indian saints did not have to undergo any cosmetic surgery to be accepted by the masses.
In summary, as Krishna says in the most important Hindu philosophical treatise – Bhagvata Gita: ‘Birth is not the cause, my friend; it is virtues which are the cause of auspiciousness. Even a Chandala observing the vow is considered a Brahmin by the gods.’
On the other hand, it is worth reviewing Casteism in Europe. When westerners poke India with the caste prod, they should look back at their recent history. John Campbell Oman, who was a professor of social sciences at Government College, Lahore, wrote in Caste in India (1907): ‘…certain epochs the law in Europe has compelled men to keep, generation after generation, to the calling of their fathers without the option of change…In England an ancient enactment required all men who at any time took up the calling of coal mining or dry salting, to keep to those occupations for life, and enjoined that their children should also follow the same employment. This law was only repealed by statutes passed in the 15th and 39th years of the reign of George III; that is in the lifetime of the fathers of many men who are with us today. A more striking European example of a compulsory hereditary calling, common enough in the Middle Ages and down to the last century in Russia, is that of the serfs bound to the soil from generation to generation.’
Edward Alsworth Ross offers a detailed account of Europe’s caste system, which lasted till the beginning of the 19th century in Principles of Sociology (1920): ‘In Prussia (modern Germany), not only men, but land too belonged to castes, and land belonging to a higher caste could not be purchased by an individual belonging to a caste lower than that. This provision was abolished by the Emancipation Edict of 1807.’
Another oppressed community was that of the Cagots of France: ‘They were shunned and hated; were allotted separate quarters in towns, called cagoteries, and lived in wretched huts in the country distinct from the villages. Excluded from all political and social rights, they were only allowed to enter a church by a special door, and during the service a rail separated them from the other worshippers. Either they were altogether forbidden to partake of the sacrament, or the holy wafer was handed to them on the end of a stick, while a receptacle for holy water was reserved for their exclusive use. When a Cagot came into a town, they had to report their presence by shaking a rattle, just like a leper, ringing his bell…Some of the other prohibitions on the Cagots were bizarre. They were not allowed to walk barefoot, like normal peasants, which gave rise to the legend that they had webbed toes. Cagots could not use the same baths as other people. They were not allowed to touch the parapets of bridges.’
I end with one interesting data point: The percentage of blacks in US prisons is higher than blacks jailed by the former Apartheid regime of South Africa. And the wealth gap ratio between the average white family and the average black family in American is 18:4 – that’s greater than the wealth gap between the two races in Apartheid South Africa.
Need I say more?
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