Origins of the Caste System

Are Hinduism and Caste Consubstantial? /p. 236/ 'Hinduism' and 'caste' are both paradigmatic examples of one major paradox haunting social sciences concerned with the Indian field. However, crucial to our understanding of India's social and cultural realities, neither of these words-that we can fairly supposed to be among the most widely used through academic literature-can be translated accurately into an Indian language. What is at stake, then, is both defining precisely what we mean when using 'Hinduism' and 'caste', and how these two notions are connected one to the other. Is the caste system Hindu? Is Hinduism necessary for the caste system to exist? Is Hinduism chiefly dependent upon this one-and-only organization (Srivivas, 1956, p. 495)? And would Hinduism inevitably disappear 'if and when caste disappears' as Srinivas also argued (Srivivas, 1956)? Is there such thing as a casteless Hinduism? In other words: to what extent are Hinduism and caste consubstantial? Behind the misleading conceptions of Hinduism as a homogeneous category, a 'religion' shared by some 80 per cent of the Indian population, one must keep in mind the variety of Hindu practices and representations. Together with other criteria such as sectarian or regional traditions, caste affiliations are crucial to the structural diversity within Hinduism. The need to bring together such heterogeneity under a unique term and category has only grown relatively recently, boosted by colonization, and independence/ nationalist fights (Sontheimer and Kulke, 1989; Lorenzen, 1999), without radically undermining neither the diversity between castes, nor the utmost importance of the caste system in Indian social structures, daily life, and religious practices. Caste, Hinduism, and Society Most studies of Hindu castes rightfully start with the distinction between varnas and jatis. On the one hand, castes as varnas divide society into four orders: the Brahmins (religious specialists), the Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), the Vaishyas (farmers and merchants), and the Shudras (servants). Such a conception of caste as varna is inherited from Brahminical ideology. On the other hand, castes as jatis divide society into thousands of inherited, endogamous social groups-a conception close to the naturalist notion of species. Castes as varnas illustrate the intrinsically socio-religious dimension of Hinduism. Not only does the ability to perform certain rituals and to be initiated depend on one's varna, but such religious hierarchy matches a social role embedded in a truly organicist vision of society. The founding myth of varnas has them originate from the dismembering of the primordial being (Purusha)-Rig Veda hymn X/ 90: Brahmins are the mouth, Kshatriyas the arms, Vaishyas the thighs, and Shudras the feet.

Canopy Forum, 2022

The premodern Sanskrit textual universe and the history of Hinduism—two partially overlapping things—cannot be understood without knowledge of caste, a hereditary system of social hierarchy and oppression. I appreciate this now, but I did not always. I studied premodern Sanskrit texts for more than a decade before I seriously thought about caste. Moreover, I am not alone in this blind spot. Judging from their scholarship, many academics who study premodern South Asia rarely, if ever, critically consider caste, which is to the detriment of our collective quest to better understand Indian history, including Hindu traditions. In what follows, I briefly reflect on the context of my own error and what this oversight—repeated by many—causes us to miss about the South Asian past and our present.

Isara solutions, 2023

Present paper highlights the very beginning of the caste system. It presents the caste system during pre independence Indian society as well as in the post independence Indian society. It also highlights the changes brought in caste and society from time to time. The transformation in society has been presented in the current paper making caste as the base. The four Varnas based on Hindu mythology are discussed in the paper. An attempt has been made to bring into light the origin and the starting of this caste system in society and transformation in it from time to time. Keywords: caste, society, social barrier, transformation in caste system, social change. Etc. In India, the caste system has existed from the beginning of time. The Indian caste system has historically been used to distinguish between members of various tribes. Given that the Indian Caste System is a closed system of stratification, a person's social standing is determined by the caste they were born into. Interaction and conduct with those of a lower social position are constrained. The caste system has been changed and varied over and again in the past. This study will highlight the role of patriarchy in caste and class distinction in India, as well as present the Indian caste system and its prevalence post-independence to the present. A caste is a group of families or a collection of families with the same name, who claim to be descended from a mythical ancestor (either human or divine), who claim to follow the same hereditary calling, and who are seen by those with the authority to form judgments as constituting a single homogeneous community. B.R. Ambadkar in his article endorses M. Senart's description of caste as "a close corporation in theory at any rate rigorously hereditary; equipped with a certain traditional and independent organization including a chief and a council, meeting on occasion in assemblies of more or less plenary authority and joining together at certain festivals: bound together by common occupations, which relate more particularly to marriage and to food and to question of ceremonial pollution, and ruling it member by the exercise of jurisdiction the extent of which varies, but which succeeds in making the authority of the community more felt by the sanction of certain penalties and above all by final irrevocable exclusion from the group." (The Surplus Man and Woman) He further says, "According to well-known ethnologists, the population of India is a mixture of Aryans, Dravidians, Mongolians and Scythians. All these stocks of people came into India from various directions and with various cultures, centuries ago, when they were in a tribal state. They all in turn elbowed their entry into the country by fighting with their predecessors, and after a stomachful of it settled down as peaceful neighbours. Through constant contact and mutual intercourse they evolved a common culture that superseded their distinctive cultures. It may be granted that there has not been a thorough amalgamation of the various stocks that make up the

The Indian Caste System is historically one of the main dimensions where people in India are socially differentiated through class, religion, region, tribe, gender, and language. Although this or other forms of differentiation exist in all human societies, it becomes a problem when one or more of these dimensions overlap each other and become the sole basis of systematic ranking and unequal access to valued resources like wealth, income, power and prestige. The Indian

Bharatiya Manyaprad, 2019

Religion is for divine governance. The objective of it is to make the social order in which men live in a moral and ethical order. Morality is different from religion. The main objective of religion is to preserve humankind. In the savage of society and mankind religion serves without god. Religious practises become so rigid that they forgot the morality. It all has been going in wrong direction.

Western Foundations of the Caste System, 2017

Over the last century or two, the dominant accounts of the caste system have looked for its roots in the ancient history of India. The story told about the rise of this social system begins in the era when an alien people called the Aryans is supposed to have invaded the Subcontinent. The standard version of this history tells us that a people called 'the Aryans' invaded India around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous Dravidians and imposed their culture, language and religion on the latter. They are said to have brought the Vedic religion, which later developed into Hinduism and to have instituted the religiously founded caste system. In this account the idea of the caste system as an intrinsic part of Hinduism was not only reinforced, the idea of an institutionalized form of discrimination along racial lines was also added to it. The account about the Aryan invasion originated in the nineteenth century European descriptions of India and has generally been accepted as a fact about India for the last 200 years. Even though this standard account has met with severe criticisms (as we will see further), most contemporary textbooks on Indian history still begin with a section on the Aryans and their invasion (or immigration) into India. Likewise, standard descriptions of the caste system still include the idea of a segregation between the Aryans and the Dravidians. Given the centrality of the Aryans in the descriptions of the caste system, one would expect there to be a vast amount of literature on how they invaded India, how they conquered the indigenous population, how they established their authority, how the acculturation process took place, how they managed to keep the caste system in place and how they managed to convert the existing population to their religion. Answers to these questions would not only be of interest to historians. They would give us insight into the core aspects of the Indian culture and, more generally, into aspects of the interaction between different peoples which result in acculturation or in inducing changes in a culture or even change of one culture into another. If it would turn out that no answers are to be found to these questions, however, a different question arises. In that case we need to understand what makes the account about the Aryan invasion appear plausible enough to be reproduced for more than 200 years. In order to get an idea about whether or not these questions have been answered in the course of the last 200 years, we will take a look at some recent introductions to Indian culture by authorities in the domain of Indology. The Aryan impact on India In the most recent edition of his book India, Stanley Wolpert tells us that "between about 1500 and 1000 B.C., Aryan tribes conquered the remaining pre-Aryan dasas throughout the Indus Valley and Punjab". The latter, he says, were "enslaved" by the Aryans (Wolpert 2009, 28). Wolpert does not tell us much about how this happened, except for mentioning some of the weapons and other military equipment (the horse and chariot) used in this warfare. The relevance of the piece on the Aryan conquest of the pre-Aryan dasas becomes clear later in the book when Wolpert speaks of the caste system. This system, or the 'fourvarna hierarchy', he tells us, consists of four groups of which the shudras form the lowest rung. The latter he describes as the "original serfs of the three-class Aryan tribal conquerors of North India" who "may well have been dasas, pre-Aryan slaves". "Subsequent expansion of Aryan civilization", he continues, "brought more 'primitive' peoples into the fold, who were so 'barbaric' or 'polluted' as to be added much beneath the varna hierarchy as 'fifths' (panchamas), later known as Untouchables and now generally called Dalits, meaning oppressed people" (ibid., 112). While Wolpert maintains that all of this happened, he does not speak about how the Aryan conquest occurred, what allowed for the conquest or even how it was sustained. Let us, therefore, see what follows from the course of events sketched by Wolpert. If what he says is true, we can conclude that: (1) Ancient India knew of at least three groups of people: conquering Aryan tribes, pre-Aryan dasas and even 'more primitive' peoples. (2) The dasas were enslaved by the Aryans. (3) The contemporary shudras are the descendants of the dasaserfs of the Aryan conquerors. (4) At the time of the conquest the latter were organized in a three-class system, which was the bearer of a civilization. (5) The ancestors of the shudras did not belong to this Aryan civilization. The fact that the dasas were conquered and enslaved shows that they were in one way or another not strong enough to resist the Aryansin number, or with regard to military organization, kind of weapons, or otherwise. As Wolpert mentions, the Aryans brought the horse to India and their horse-drawn chariots and their archery (and axes) helped them to defeat all who confronted them. Thus, we can conclude that the weakness of the dasas to resist conquest is to be located partially in the absence of such military equipment. But he also mentions another kind of weakness, one that allowed the Aryans to sustain their position without military intervention for millennia: the low level of their civilization. The soon-to-be outcasts, he says, thanked their place outside the system to their "primitive" and "barbaric" status because of which they were placed beneath the four varna hierarchy as the "fifths" (panchamas) and thus "polluted". The shudras, who are just above them on the social ladder, are also primitive, barbaric and polluted but only less so than the outcasts. As such Wolpert

American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 2015

The presence of hierarchy and inequality within Indian tradition is a prominent aspect that manifests through the unequal positioning of caste and class groups within the societal framework. This intricate connection is observed in the way dharma (normative order), karma (personal moral commitment), and jāti (caste) - the foundational tenets of Indian culture - simultaneously shape the distinctiveness of Indian cultural heritage and lay the groundwork for social hierarchy. This research paper delves into an extensive and exploratory assessment of diverse scholarly perspectives aimed at illuminating the deeply entrenched traditional facets of caste within Indian society.

PURVADEVA, Peer Revied Bilingual International Research Journal, 2022

The caste system categorizes people into various hierarchical levels, which determine and define their social, religious, and hegemonic standings within the society. The caste system has also maintained a nexus and a sense of community for caste members for more than 2,000 years. A classic example of the caste system is the one found in India, which has existed there for hundreds of years. The caste system in India was traditionally a graded hierarchy based on a purity-pollution scale; it has undergone many changes over the years. After India’s independence, there has been a de-ritualization of caste, and it has moved toward being a community based on affinity or kinship rather than representing a fixed hierarchy. The association of each caste with a distinct occupation has weakened considerably, and inter-caste marriages across different ritual strata, even crossing the Varna boundaries, are not uncommon. In present day society because of industrialization, urbanization, modern education system, modern means of transport and communication, remarkable changes have been experienced in features of caste system, such as occupation, marriage, food, drink, social intercourse etc. But at the same time there are some factors like emergence of political parties, method of election, constitutional provision for S.C., S.T. and other backward classes have gradually encouraged the problem of casteism in India. So, it is difficult to predict about the future of caste system in India. In this context, I am trying to find out the present position and future of Indian caste system. The aim of this paper is to understand the continuity and the changes in the caste system in India.

Edited by Frances W. Pritchett. Editing has consisted only of numbering the paragraphs and fixing a few typographical errors. The attempt here is to see positively what this young researcher says, and how he thinks, how he arrives at what he does. This is not an explication, or even a reading/ interpretation. This is a commentary, occasionally critical, to remember that it was a hundred and one years ago that this text was presented (read out) by this young scholar, studying for his M.A. degree. I am using this version of the text because it was the most easily accessible on the web. If there are any copyight issues, please use some other version. The commentary, will remain more or less the same. The commentary is in a different and smaller italic font, and has a few clickable links (in blue and underlined) to pages on the web. Some of the paragraph breaks are mine, for clarity about the lines on which I comment. This commentary is under a Creative Commons Attribution­NonCommercial­ ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Aniket Jaaware, 08.05.2017. [email protected] Caution: The commentary assumes that you have read this essay earlier, independent of intepretation and evaluations. If you have not, I strongly suggest that you read the essay separately before you read this version with commentary. I include the text herewith. Those who have read the essay earlier, or know it better than just a reading, can proceed to page 14 directly.