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Anonymous Wrote:
I posted the following in 1999:
Forwarded article from "indian lady" <...@erols.com
CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA BY PROF KOENRAAD ELST
http://www.eu.spiritweb.org/HinduismToday/94-09-Caste.html
Sub Verdict from Belgium
Last month, two ardent Hindus battled out the controversial
pros and cons of caste. This month's assessment, from
Europe, focuses on history and how jati and varna have, for
the most part, helped rather than hurt Hinduism.
By Prof. Koenraad Elst
In an inter-faith debate, most Hindus can easily be put on
the defensive with a single word-caste. Any anti-Hindu
polemist can be counted on to allege that "the typically
Hindu caste system is the most cruel apartheid, imposed by
the barbaric white Aryan invaders on the gentle dark-
skinned natives." Here's a more balanced and historical
account of this controversial institution.
Merits of the Caste System The caste system is often
portrayed as the ultimate horror. Inborn inequality is
indeed unacceptable to us moderns, but this does not
preclude that the system has also had its merits.
Caste is perceived as an "exclusion-from," but first of all
it is a form of "belonging-to," a natural structure of
solidarity. For this reason, Christian and Muslim
missionaries found it very difficult to lure Hindus away
from their communities. Sometimes castes were collectively
converted to Islam, and Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) decreed
that the missionaries could tolerate caste distinction
among Christian converts; but by and large, caste remained
an effective hurdle to the destruction of Hinduism through
conversion. That is why the missionaries started attacking
the institution of caste and in particular the brahmin
caste. This propaganda has bloomed into a full-fledged
anti-brahminism, the Indian equivalent of anti-Semitism.
Every caste had a large measure of autonomy, with its own
judiciary, duties and privileges, and often its own
temples. Inter-caste affairs were settled at the village
council by consensus; even the lowest caste had veto power.
This autonomy of intermediate levels of society is the
antithesis of the totalitarian society in which the
individual stands helpless before the all-powerful state.
This decentralized structure of civil society and of the
Hindu religious commonwealth has been crucial to the
survival of Hinduism under Muslim rule. Whereas Buddhism
was swept away as soon as its monasteries were destroyed,
Hinduism retreated into its caste structure and weathered
the storm.
Caste also provided a framework for integrating immigrant
communities: Jews, Zoroastrians and Syrian Christians. They
were not only tolerated, but assisted in efforts to
preserve their distinctive traditions.
Typically Hindu? It is routinely claimed that caste is a
uniquely Hindu institution. Yet, counter examples are not
hard to come by. In Europe and elsewhere, there was (or
still is) a hierarchical distinction between noblemen and
commoners, with nobility only marrying nobility. Many
tribal societies punished the breach of endogamy rules with
death.
Coming to the Indian tribes, we find Christian missionaries
claiming that "tribals are not Hindus because they do not
observe caste." In reality, missionary literature itself is
rife with testimonies of caste practices among tribals. A
spectacular example is what the missions call "the
Mistake:" the attempt, in 1891, to make tribal converts in
Chhotanagpur inter-dine with converts from other tribes. It
was a disaster for the mission. Most tribals renounced
Christianity because they chose to preserve the taboo on
inter-dining. As strongly as the haughtiest brahmin, they
refused to mix what God hath separated.
Endogamy and exogamy are observed by tribal societies the
world over. The question is therefore not why Hindu society
invented this system, but how it could preserve these
tribal identities even after outgrowing the tribal stage of
civilization. The answer lies largely in the expanding
Vedic culture's intrinsically respectful and conservative
spirit, which ensured that each tribe could preserve its
customs and traditions, including its defining custom of
tribal endogamy.
Description and History The Portuguese colonizers applied
the term caste, "lineage, breed," to two different Hindu
institutions: jati and varna. The effective unit of the
caste system is the jati, birth-unit, an endogamous group
into which you are born, and within which you marry. In
principle, you can only dine with fellow members, but the
pressures of modern life have eroded this rule. The several
thousands of jatis are subdivided in exogamous clans,
gotra. This double division dates back to tribal society.
By contrast, varna is the typical functional division of an
advanced society-the Indus/Saraswati civilization, 3rd
millennium, bce. The youngest part of the Rg-Veda describes
four classes: learned brahmins born from Brahma's mouth,
martial kshatriya-born from his arms; vaishya entrepreneurs
born from His hips and shudra workers born from His feet.
Everyone is a shudra by birth. Boys become dwija, twice-
born, or member of one of the three upper varnas upon
receiving the sacred thread in the upanayana ceremony.
The varna system expanded from the Saraswati-Yamuna area
and got firmly established in the whole of Aryavarta
(Kashmir to Vidarbha, Sindh to Bihar). It counted as a sign
of superior culture setting the arya, civilized, heartland
apart from the surrounding mleccha, barbaric, lands. In
Bengal and the South, the system was reduced to a
distinction between brahmins and shudras. Varna is a ritual
category and does not fully correspond to effective social
or economic status. Thus, half of the princely rulers in
British India were shudras and a few were brahmins, though
it is the kshatriya function par excellence. Many shudras
are rich, many brahmins impoverished.
The Mahabharata defines the varna qualities thus: "He in
whom you find truthfulness, generosity, absence of hatred,
modesty, goodness and self-restraint, is a brahmana. He who
fulfills the duties of a knight, studies the scriptures,
concentrates on acquisition and distribution of riches, is
a kshatriya. He who loves cattle-breeding, agriculture and
money, is honest and well-versed in scripture, is a
vaishya. He who eats anything, practises any profession,
ignores purity rules, and takes no interest in scriptures
and rules of life, is a shudra." The higher the varna, the
more rules of self-discipline are to be observed. Hence, a
jati could collectively improve its status by adopting more
demanding rules of conduct, e.g. vegetarianism. A person's
second name usually indicates his jati or gotra. Further,
one can use the following varna titles: Sharma (shelter, or
joy) indicates the brahmin, Varma (armour) the kshatriya,
Gupta (protected) the vaishya and Das (servant) the shudra.
In a single family, one person may call himself Gupta
(varna), another Agrawal (jati), yet another Garg (gotra).
A monk, upon renouncing the world, sheds his name along
with his caste identity.
Untouchability Below the caste hierarchy are the
untouchables, or harijan (literally "God's people"), dalits
("oppressed"), paraiah (one such caste in South India), or
scheduled castes. They make up about 16% of the Indian
population, as many as the upper castes combined.
Untouchability originates in the belief that evil spirits
surround dead and dying substances. People who work with
corpses, body excretions or animal skins had an aura of
danger and impurity, so they were kept away from mainstream
society and from sacred learning and ritual. This often
took grotesque forms: thus, an untouchable had to announce
his polluting proximity with a rattle, like a leper.
Untouchability is unknown in the Vedas, and therefore
repudiated by neo-Vedic reformers like Dayanand Saraswati,
Narayan Guru, Gandhiji and Savarkar. In 1967, Dr. Ambedkar,
a dalit by birth and fierce critic of social injustice in
Hinduism and Islam, led a mass conversion to Buddhism,
partly on the (unhistorical) assumption that Buddhism had
been an anti-caste movement. The 1950 constitution outlawed
untouchability and sanctioned positive discrimination
programs for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Lately, the
Vishva Hindu Parishad has managed to get even the most
traditionalist religious leaders on the anti-untouchability
platform, so that they invite harijans to Vedic schools and
train them as priests. In the villages, however, pestering
of dalits is still a regular phenomenon, occasioned less by
ritual purity issues than by land and labor disputes.
However, the dalits' increasing political clout is
accelerating the elimination of untouchability.
Caste Conversion In the Mahabharata, Yuddhishthira affirms
that varna is defined by the qualities of head and heart,
not by one's birth. Krishna teaches that varna is defined
by one's activity (karma) and quality (guna). Till today,
it is an unfinished debate to what extent one's "quality"
is determined by heredity or by environmental influence.
And so, while the hereditary view has been predominant for
long, the non-hereditary conception of varna has always
been around as well, as is clear from the practice of varna
conversion. The most famous example is the 17th-century
freedom fighter Shivaji, a shudra who was accorded
kshatriya status to match his military achievements. The
geographical spread of Vedic tradition was achieved through
large-scale initiation of local elites into the varna
order. From 1875 onwards, the Arya Samaj has systematically
administered the "purification ritual" (shuddhi) to Muslim
and Christian converts and to low-caste Hindus, making the
dwija. Conversely, the present policy of positive
discrimination has made upper-caste people seek acceptance
into the favored Scheduled Castes.
Veer Savarkar, the ideologue of Hindu nationalism,
advocated intermarriage to unify the Hindu nation even at
the biological level. Most contemporary Hindus, though now
generally opposed to caste inequality, continue to marry
within their respective jati because they see no reason for
their dissolution.
Racial Theory of Caste Nineteenth-century Westerners
projected the colonial situation and the newest race
theories on the caste system: the upper castes were white
invaders lording it over the black natives. This outdated
view is still repeated ad-nauseam by anti-Hindu authors:
now that "idolatry" has lost its force as a term of abuse,
"racism" is a welcome innovation to demonize Hinduism. In
reality, India is the region where all skin color types met
and mingled, and you will find many brahmins as black as
Nelson Mandela. Ancient "Aryan" heroes like Rama, Krishna,
Draupadi, Ravana (a brahmin) and a number of Vedic seers
were explicitly described as being dark-skinned.
But doesn't varna mean "skin color?" The effective meaning
of varna is "splendor, color," and hence "distinctive
quality" or "one segment in a spectrum." The four
functional classes constitute the "colors" in the spectrum
of society. Symbolic colors are allotted to the varna on
the basis of the cosmological scheme of "three qualities"
(triguna): white is sattva (truthful), the quality
typifying the brahmin; red is rajas (energetic), for the
kshatriya; black is tamas (inert, solid), for the shudra;
yellow is allotted to the vaishya, who is defined by a
mixture of qualities. Finally, caste society has been the
most stable society in history. Indian communists used to
sneer that "India has never even had a revolution."
Actually, that is no mean achievement.
Address: Professor Koenraad Elst, PO box 103, 2000 Leuven
3, Belgium. Dr. Elst is a Belgian scholar who has
extensively studied the current socio-political situation
in India. Keenly interested in Asian philosophies and
traditions from his early years, he has studied yoga,
aikido and other oriental disciplines. Between 1988 and
1993 he spent much of his time in India doing research at
the prestigious Banaras Hindu University.
End of forwarded article
Jai Maharaj
Jyotishi, Vedic Astrologer
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti
"A king, though endowed with little prowess,
starting on an expedition at the proper time, in
view of the good positions of the planets, achieves
greatness that is eulogised in the scriptures."
- Brhat Samhita, 104.60
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