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The Indian caste system is the traditional organization of South Asian, particularly Hindu, society into a hierarchy of hereditary groups called castes or jatis. It is classically described as a system in which caste is fixed by birth, marriage occurs only within caste (endogamy), each caste exclusively performs a particular craft of agrarian society (such as weaving or barbering), and contact between members of different castes is carefully circumscribed. As a complex, ancient, yet constantly evolving social phenomenon, however, caste defies easy description. Hindu religious principles underlay many aspects of the caste system.


Basics of the Caste System

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The Indian caste system is the traditional organization of South Asian, particularly Hindu, society into a hierarchy of hereditary groups called castes or jatis.[1] It is broadly characterized as a system in which caste is fixed by birth, marriage occurs only within caste (endogamy), and each caste exclusively performs a particular craft of agrarian society, such as weaving or barbering. Hindu religious principles underlay many aspects of the caste system.[2]

The caste system is commonly divided into two components: a theoretical basis provided by the ancient religious concept of the varnas, which divide and rank mankind into four classes, and the complex sociological reality of the nearly 3000 jatis that exist in modern India.\cite{Madan,Basham}[3]

The four varnas appear in the oldest scripture of the Hindu religion, the [[Rig Veda|Rg Veda], composed somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BCE.\cite{Basham}. They are further elaborated in later scriptures, most notably in the the Manusmrita, or "Laws of Manu", written somewhere near the second century of the Common Era. The varnas group humanity into four ranked classes. The highest varna is the Brahmans, or priests. Next comes the Kshatriyas, the warriors, and then the Vaishyas, the merchants. The lowest varna is the Shudras, consisting of laborers, artisans and servants of the higher varnas.

In practice, the caste system consists of thousands of jatis, generally of a local or regional nature. Each has its own history, customs, and claimed descent from one of the four varnas. Members of a jati may have many different professions, although commonly they will be related in status and nature to the jati's traditional occupation.[4] Wealth and power generally rise with caste status, but individuals may be rich or poor. Subgroups within a jati may practice hypergamy or exogamy. There is no official or universal ranking that determines the caste hierarchy. Precedence depends on the local community’s estimation of a jati’s secular importance and ritual purity, and is therefore somewhat fluid. A jati can increase its status by growing in size, wealth and power, avoiding low or unclean work, and adopting priestly ways, such as vegetarianism and teetotalism, a process called sanskritization.[5] Generally, however, Brahmans are the highest caste, and at the bottom of society are those associated with occupations considered extremely unclean, such as handling garbage, excrement, or corpses. In the past these castes were called untouchables, because their touch polluted. They were often forbidden from entering temples, living inside the village, drinking from wells used by high castes, or even letting their shadows fall on a Brahman.[6]

As India approached independence from British rule in the early 20th century, the caste system was increasingly criticized as a discriminatory and unjust system of social stratification[7], especially in regard to the impoverished untouchables. Two great figures of independence, B. R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Ghandi, led major reform movements, although they proposed radically different solutions.[8] The current Indian constitution bans discrimination on the basis of caste and use of the term “untouchable”, and the Indian government has instituted affirmative action programs for those who have become known as the Dalits, or “crushed peoples”. Individual Dalits have achieved great political and financial success, but as a group they still complain of sometimes violent discrimination. The growth of information-age India has reduced the economic importance of the caste system, but its social and religious aspects remain a significant and sometimes divisive part of Indian life.[9]

History

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Main article: History

Elements of the Indian caste system have existed in South Asia for at least three millennia. The Varnas are first described in the Rig Veda, a Hindu sacred text dating from 1200-1000 B.C. In this text, Purusha, the cosmic man, is torn apart to create the world. The Brahmins arise from his mouth, the Kshitrayas from his arms, the Vaishyas from his torso, and the Shudras from his feet.

A caste hierarchy was evidently in existence around 500 B.C., when Buddhism arose in the Punjab region of India with the explicit goal of overthrowing the rule of Brahmin priests and eliminating caste. Buddhism is historically understood to be reaction by warrior-based Buddhist leaders against entrenched Brahmin priests.

In 300 B.C., Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador to the Indian courts, described a division of society into seven groups.

By 200 to 400 A.D., orthodox Hinduism had driven Buddhism out of India. Around that time, the primary Hindu source for the theory of caste system, the Manusmritra, or "Laws of Manu", was written. This sacred text explicates the theory of the four Varnas in great detail, and provides a religious explanation for the numerous actual jatis that evidently existed at that time. as a consequence of inappropriate marriage between members of the four great varnas. The Manusmritra mentions an early example of untouchables, the Chandals. The Chandals are also mentioned in the account of a fourth century Chinese traveler, Li Xiou.

The Bahkti movement of the Middle ages is again a religious movement opposed to the caste system.

On the other hand, modern scholarship has established that the caste system is in many ways a dynamic institution that has changed and grown in response to Hindu religious movements, encroachment by tribal and non-Hindu groups, and alien dominance by the Mughals of the 15-17th centuries, and the British of the 17th-20th centuries.

The arrival of Europeans on the shores of India in the 16th and 17th century

The origins of the caste system remain a topic of debate. Nineteenth century scholars, working from linguistic and comparative religion studies, proposed that caste had been imposed on the Indian subcontinent by Indo-European invaders who wanted to maintain their superiority over their subject peoples. Modern scholarship has generally invalidated most of the evidence on which this theory was based, although genetic studies are being performed to determine whether caste status and Indo-European ancestry are related.

There are several theories regarding the origins of the Indian caste system. One posits that the Indian and Aryan classes ("pistras") show similarity,[10] wherein the priests are Brahmins, the warriors are Kshatriya, the merchants are Vaishya, and the artisans are Shudras.[11][12] Another theory is that of Georges Dumézil, who formulated[13][14] the trifunctional hypothesis of social class. According to the Dumézil theory, ancient societies had three main classes, each with distinct functions: the first judicial and priestly, the second connected with the military and war, and the third class focused on production, agriculture, craft and commerce. Dumézil proposed that Rex-Flamen of the Roman Empire is etymologically similar to Raj-Brahman of ancient India and that they made offerings to deus and deva respectively, each with statutes of conduct, dress and behavior that were similar. This theory became controversial, but drew support from many including Sophus Bugge in 1879.[citation needed]

From the Bhakti school, the view is that the four divisions were originally created by Krishna. "According to the three modes of material nature and the work associated with them, the four divisions of human society were created."[15]

Caste is commonly thought of as an ancient fact of Hindu life, but various contemporary scholars have argued that the caste system was constructed by the British colonial regime [citation needed].

Notes

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  1. ^ Caste comes from the Portuguese casta, meaning a pure breed, from the Latin castus, meaning chaste. Portuguese traders used the word to describe the society they encountered in west and southwest India in the sixteenth century, consisting of groups connected by hereditary kinship. The term was subsequently adopted by the other European nations trading with India. The word jati, derived from the Sanskrit jāta, broadly means "form of existence determined by birth" (Madan). The primary references for this section are Madan, Ghurye 1969, Olcott 1944, Srinivas 1962, and Bayly 1999.
  2. ^ For discussion of the relationship between Hinduism and caste see Srinivas 1962, Ghurye 1969, Olcott 1944, and Keykar 1909
  3. ^ The term caste is sometimes used loosely to refer to both the religious and philosophical concept of varnas, and the actual existing social groups of jatis. In this section, caste and jati are used interchangeably, following Madan.
  4. ^ Ghurye 1969, pp. 15–18, Keykar 1909, pp. 19, Russell 1916, pp. 8–10, Bayly 1999, pp. 10, 316–322. Various scholars have remarked on the continuity between rural and urban occupation. "Rural barbers when they migrate to towns work in 'hair cutting saloons'. Washermen start laundries, Smiths work in furniture shops..." (Srinivas 1962, p. 94). "Jatav/Chamars and their regional equivalents still predominate in the urban leather-working trades and municipal sanitation services..." (Bayly 1999, p. 319)
  5. ^ The term Sanskritization was coined by M. N. Srinivas (Srinivas 1962).
  6. ^ Ghurye 1969, Chapter 1
  7. ^ Gerald D. Berreman (1972). "Race, Caste, and Other Invidious Distinctions in Social Stratification" (PDF). Race. 13 (4). University of California, Berkeley: 385–414. doi:10.1177/030639687201300401. S2CID 37931747.
  8. ^ Bayly 1999, Chapters 4 and 6
  9. ^ Bayly 1999, Chapter 9 discusses "caste wars" in India in the 1990s. Jeffrey 2001 examines a violent confrontation between Jats and Dalits in rural North India.
  10. ^ The Cambridge History of Iran by Ilya Gershevitch, p. 651.
  11. ^ The World Year Book of Education by Columbia University. Teachers College, University of London Institute of Education, p. 226.
  12. ^ Origin and Growth of Caste in India by Nripendra Kumar Dutt, p. 39.
  13. ^ Georges Dumézil (translated by Derek Coltman) (1988). Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty. Zone. ISBN 978-0-942299-12-0.
  14. ^ Georges Dumézil (1935). Flamen-Brahman. P. Geuthner. OCLC 826767.
  15. ^ Bhagavad Gita As It Is, By A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, ISBN 0-89213-123-3, BBT press, chapter 4, verse 13

References

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