India Against Caste System

stian era. Before that we do have mentions here and there of its existence but very likely it is only from the beginning of this era which the varna template takes solid roots in the Indian sub continent. In the Manu dharmasastra (written approximately between 200 BC and 200 AD) the system is developed and manifested in all its ideological strength. Manu states that the four varnas were divinely ordained from the very beginning. Quoting from the Rig Veda, Manu says that from the mouth of Purusha, the Self-Existent One, came the Brahmans, from his arms came the Kshatriyas, from his thighs came the Vaishyas, and from his feet came the Sudras. According to Manu other castes were the result of miscegenation between members of these four original varnas. In the years following 200AD the practice of caste and therefore untouchability was intensified and applied to more groups. As a result society was structured on the varna theory. Ultimately this theory paved the way to a society divided into groups based on people’s birth and occupation. Pollution and purity became the criteria to distinguish and rank the different groups. This however is the ideological explanation of Manu, an explanation which students of religion and anthropologists alike have too readily taken up as the explanation of the caste system. Manu after all was the mouthpiece of the elite which had all the benefits from such a system! Some scholars however think that perhaps religion is not as involved with the caste system as social stratification instead might be. In the early days of civilization stratification of society was done purely on the basis of “division of labour” i.e. According to these scholars it was necessary for emerging city-states to promote an interactive system of production to ensure safety and sustainability for all. This division of labour guaranteed also a hierarchical ranking where elites could take away economic surplus from the labouring masses. The whole system condemned the vast majority of people to a sort of Hegelian “master-servant” relationship. Another sort of explanation, favoured by the contemporary Indian Dalit movement and their academic mentors, tries to explain the caste system referring to the dialectic of “conqueror and conquered”. Accordingly, the coming of the A***ns and the struggle which ensued with the local Dravidian populations of North India would explain the varna template. The A***ns because of superior warring techniques and weaponry subjugated the Dravidians which were then absorbed and ranked in the new A***n society. Some historians have tried to prove that the fall of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation of Harappa and Mohenjodaro was due to the invasion of the A***ns. The explanation however is anachronistic and fanciful since the A***ns came, if they ever did, a couple of centuries after the fall of the Indus cities. Apparently the caste system and untouchability, part and parcel of the former, originated in the Indian subcontinent as a political development. Reacting to the Buddhist religious, political and, in one word, cultural hegemony, Vedic elites in the successful attempt to regain a lost political centrality invented Hinduism to counteract Buddhism, and the caste system to offset Buddhist imperial formations. The caste system was then not a religious institute but a political one. In other words the caste system was the formal structure of early medieval Indian polities, the way Indian states were built and functioned. Religion and social stratification did have a say in it but in as much as they justified and sacralised the status quo of those early Indian polities. Be as it may, the caste system has passed through lots of historical vicissitudes and transformations. It has however maintained its roots in the Indian subcontinent showing a remarkable resilience. Unfortunately this means that even today the system’s evil aspects are here among us. Untouchability is one of these dreaded aspects.