An analysis of the Hindu caste system

An analysis of the Hindu caste formationThe caste trunk is whiz and only(a) of the oldest forms of favorable stratification and sluice though it whitethorn be prohibited by the law, the political divisions continue to pull round in the minds of the people leaving many oppressed. Before the caste system, India had four groups or divisions already completed the Negrito, Mongoloid, Austroloid and Dravidian. It was during the Aryan invasion just about 1500 BCE when the caste system was cr cancel outed. The word caste derives from the Portuguese word casta , marrow breed, race, or kind. In this system, the citizens ar divided into categories or castes. Varna, the Sanskrit word for color, refers to large divisions that include various castes the other(a) terms include castes and subdivisions of castes some propagation c each(prenominal)ed subcastes. Among the Indian terms that argon sometimes translated as caste ar jati, jat, biradri, and samaj. there be thousands of castes and subcastes in India. It follows a grassroots precept All workforce atomic number 18 created unequalised. to each one category or jat has a special role to exploit in the rules of order as tumesce as a unique function this structure is a means of creating and organizing an effective union.The caste system in India is primarily associated with Hinduism just now also exists among other Indian religious groups. Castes are ranked and named. membership is achieved by birth. Castes are also endogamous groups. Marriages and relationships amid members of different castes, tour non actu exclusivelyy prohibited, lay out strong accessible disapproval and the threat of ostracism or even violence. To illustrate, in a nonorious case in August 2001, a Brahmin boy and a lower-caste girl were publicly hanged by members of their families in Uttar Pradesh, India for refusing to end their inter-caste relationship.The first of the four basic Vedic books, which are considered the sour ce of Indian wisdom, is the chess Veda- a collection of over 1,000 hymns containing the basic mythology of the Aryan gods. The Rig Veda contains one of the roughly famous sections in ancient Indian literature in which the first man created, Purusa, is sacrificed in order to give jump off to the four varnas.The varna of brahmans emerged from the mouth. They are the priests and teachers, and look after the intellectual and spiritual needs of the community. They preside over acquaintance and education. The varna of Kshatriyas emerged from the arms. Their responsibility is to rule and to protect members of the community. They are associated with rulers and warriors including property owners. The varna of Vaishyas emerged from the thighs. They are the merchants and traders and those who look after commerce and agriculture. The varna of Sudras emerged from the feet. They are the laborers.Castes or subcastes besides the four come toed include much(prenominal) groups as the Bhumihar o r landowners and the Kayastha or scribes. Some castes arose from very specific occupations, such as the Garudi snake charmers or the Sonjhari, who collected gold from river beds.Each caste is believed by devout Hindus to pull in its own dharma, or portendly ordained code of proper conduct. Brahmans are unremarkably expected to be nonviolent and spiritual, according to their traditional roles as vegetarian teetotaler priests. Kshatriyas are supposed(p) to be strong, as fighters and rulers should be, with a taste for aggression, eating meat, and drinking alcohol. Vaishyas are stereotyped as adept businessmen, in accord with their traditional activities in commerce. Shudras are often described by others as tolerably pleasant.The origination of rigid ranking is supernaturally validated through the idea of rebirth according to a persons karma, the add up of an individuals deeds in this life and in past lives. After death, a persons life is judged by divine forces, and rebirth is assigned in a high or a low place, depending upon what is deserved. This supernatural dominance can never be neglected, because it brings a person to his or her po vexion in the caste hierarchy, applicable to every trans process involving food or drink, speaking, or touching.The Rig Veda mentions how the four varnas were created but it does non mention the concept of untouchability. The idea of an Untouchable caste is not in the Vedas or the law books, which list completely four varnas. It is a part of the system that has been created by society itself.Untouchables are the fifth group. They are considered dishonorable that they fall away(p) of the caste system. In 1950, the term Untouchable was eradicated under Indias constitution, and untouchables are now formally referred to as the Scheduled Castes. Gandhi referred to untouchables as untouchable, which means people of God. Politically active untouchables feel that this term Harijan might evoke pity rather than respect, and prefer the term Dalits, which means, oppressed.Dalits are descendants of the ancient Dravidians of India who garbled their language and were subjugated referable to the linguistic and socio-cultural oppression by the perpetrators of the caste system. While Dalits in Tamil Nadu speak Tamil, their brethren in other parts of India speak different Dravidian or tribal dialects or languages that arose due to mixtures of Tamil, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, such as Hindustani (Hindi).As an Indian is born(p) into the caste system, they are supposed to stay with that caste until death. What a person in each of these varnas can and cant do, is prescribed in detail in the laws of Manu, written by Brahman priests at least 2,000 age ago. The laws of Manu are sculpted in Indian culture. Umashankar Tripathy, a Brahman priest, says, Manu is engraved in every HinduUntouchables or Dalits seemingly live also by a certain bunch of rules. The occupations of people in caste systems are hereditary and dalits perform jobs that cause them to be considered impure and thus untouchable and for little or no pay at all. They are restricted to occupations such as landless farm workers and peasants, and forced into wash clothes, beating drums, cutting hair, cleaning latrines and sewers, working as a leatherworker (they work with animal skin which makes them unclean), way cleaners, and manual scavengers. Manual scavenging refers to disposal of human waste by hand, using only the some basic tools, typically a brush, a tin plate and a wicker basket. Scavengers also dispose of deceased animals. Millions of Dalits work even as slaves. They mostly dedicate no opportunities for better employment.Dalits live in the most congested and cramped slums in villages, towns and urban areas consisting of huts or ghettos which are damp and cramped. They live in the most insanitary conditions with no access to public health and sanitation amongst open sewers and open air toilets. There are no state sponsored public housing rights or public health rights in India. nearly Dalits are forced to live in isolated areas. Even after death, grave sites are segregated. The scoop up housing is reserved for the f number castes the government provides separate amenities for each neighborhood, which are segregated on caste lines. Dalits are usually left hand with the worse of the amenities or none at all. everywhere 85% of Indian Dalits own no land and are dependent on landlords for work or land to rent those that do own land may find it difficult or insurmountable to enforce their rights workers rarely receive the statutory minimum wage.Furthermore, in past decades, Dalits in certain areas (especially in parts of the south) had to display extreme deference to high-status people, bodilyly stay oning their distancelest their touch or even their poop pollute otherswearing neither shoes nor any fastness body covering (even for women) in the presence of the upper castes. In northern India for example, untouchables had to use drums to let others know of their arrival. Even their shadows were considered polluted. In the south, some Brahmins ordered Untouchables to keep at least 65 feet away from them.Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher(prenominal) caste homes, make to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places. The higher-caste people do not accept food or water from the untouchable because it would transmit the pollution permanent and inherent in the person of the untouchable. Thus, untouchables are not allowed to drink from the alike(p) wells, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the alike(p) cups in tea stalls. They are not allowed to touch people from the four varnas or caste groups. They are not allowed to enter houses of the higher varnas especially in which the chula (the small ear past stove) is located. In public occasions, they were compelled to sit at a distance from the four varnas. T hey are also denied education, freedom of expression, and many other rights the higher classes lay down.Dalit children do not have access to education due to the lack of mandatory and universal original and secondary education in India. Even in rural areas where there may be schools, Dalit children are ostracized, oppressed and stigmatized from attending school. Thus, few Dalit children progress beyond primary education and they are often made to sit at the back of the class. Nearly 90 portion of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits, according to the International Dalit Conference. Dalit Children are also subjected to atrocities such as familiar abuse in rural areas, physical abuse and murder just as adult Dalits are. They have a high level of malnutrition and ill health. Some are ordained into temple prostitution as a part of religious rituals for exploitation by non-Dalit men of the village or town.Dalit women do all the back breaking wo rk society expects Dalits to do, such as manual scavenging, farm labour, stone breaking, etc., and in addition they have to bear domestic responsibilities as mothers and wives. Dalit women suffer double discrimination as Dalits and as women. They are exposed to sexual abuse at the hands of the so called caste Hindu men and also men who work or state authorities such as the guard. They are a great deal foul upd, gang-raped, beaten and pain or forced to walk through the streets naked as punishment as an act of reprisal against male relatives who have committed some act worthy of upper-caste vengeance. Atrocities such as rape of Dalit women in police custody, bonded labour and physical abuse are common in India.The chastity of women is potently related to caste status. Generally, the higher ranking the caste, the more sexual control its women are expected to exhibit. Brahman brides should be virginal, faithful to one husband and celibate in widowhood. By contrast, a sweeper bride may or may not be a virgin, extramarital affair may be tolerated, and, if widowed or divorced, the woman is encouraged to remarry. For the higher castes, such control of female sexuality helps ensure chastity of lineageof crucial importance to maintenance of high status. Among Muslims, too, high status is strongly correlated with female chastity. numerous thousands of Dalit girls are forced into marriage to temples or local deities in south India, often before puberty, sometimes in payment of a debt. They are married to temples under the guise of the religious practice Devadasis, significance female servant of god. They are then unable to marry and decease unwilling prostitutes for upper-caste men, many last being sold into brothels. The Badi Jat is attentivenessed as a prostitution subcaste. Women and girls are routinely trafficked into brothels. Perversely, and hypocritically, untouchability does not seem to concord to prostitution and customers are mainly men from the uppe r castes.If, because of any reason, there was a contact between an untouchable and a member of the Varnas, the Varna member became defiled and had to immerse or wash himself with water to be purified. In strict societies, especially among the Twice born(p) (the three top Varnas) the fey Twice Born also had to pass through some religious ceremonies to purify himself from the pollution. If the untouchable entered a house and touched things of a Varna member, the Varna members used to wash or clean the places where the untouchable touched and stepped. A twice born Hindu is a male member of one of the three upper castes who has completed the yarn ceremony. The thread ceremony is a Hindu initiation ceremony, similar to a Christian confirmation or a Jewish Bar Mitzvah. A thread is given to the boy and it is thereafter worn over the left shoulder or around the waist. The thread has three strands, representing the three gunas (qualities) satya (truth) rajas ( natural action) and tamas(in ertia). Sudras and Dalits are excluded from the thread ceremony and cannot become twice-born.Horrific and unbearable are just a few words that come to mind when intellection of the abuse towards Dalits. More than 160 million people in India are considered achuta or untouchable. Human rights ravishment against these people known as Dalits is extremely prevalent although obviously illegal. Laws have been passed to prevent the abuse of the Dalits and nongovernmental organization groups have been accomplished to protect these people. However, that doesnt limit the crimes. The enforcement of laws on both local and nationwide scale intentional to protect the Dalits is lax if not nonexistent in many regions in India. Often times, especially in rural areas, where the practice of untouchability is the strongest, police officers even join in the abuse of the Dalits.Nearly 50 years later, another event gave rise to a mass of conversions by the untouchables. A man from their class became ed ucate, and then dared to try and watch a festival that the upper class men took part in. The untouchable was before long discovered and called a dirty untouchable and then killed. When the dead mans family tried to report the murder to the police, the police turned them away because they were untouchables. Eventually the police gave in and investigated the murder, later convicting a young man, but that did not satisfy the people. They were tired of being treated so poorly, and soon decided to abandon the Hindu worship and chose a new one.Other headlines nigh crimes victimizing the Dalits are as follows Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers Dalit tortured by cops for three days Dalit witch paraded naked in Bihar Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool 7 Dalits burnt-out alive in caste clash 5 Dalits lynched in Haryana Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits.Fear of public humiliation, beatings, and rape keep Indias Untouchables in their place. Statistics from Indias National Crime Records pectus indicate that in 2000 25,455 crimes were committed against Dalits. Every hour dickens Dalits were assaulted every day three Dalit women raped, two Dalits murdered, and two Dalit homes torched. Majority of crimes go unregistered, because the police, village councils, and government officials often support the caste system, which is establish on the teachings of Hinduism. Many crimes go unreported due to fear of reprisal, intimidation by police, inability to pay bribes, or simply because people know that the police will do nothing. There will be no punishment for the criminals no justice for the victimized. Amnesty estimated that only about 5 percent of attacks are registeredHundreds of thousands of Dalits have already renounced Hinduism, generally by conversion to Buddhism or Christianity, sometimes in mass ceremonies. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader, lawyer, and politician, splendidly led several hundred thousand Dalits in converting to Buddhism, saying I was born a Hindu, but I will not die one. Conversion is not a panacea, however, and converts to other religions, especially Christianity and Islam, have suffered continued discrimination. Some converts have lost reserved occupations on the grounds that they are no all-night members of scheduled castes and converts are not counted as Dalits in the Indian census.Amidst the oppression and disenfranchisedships, Dalits lifelessness have social life which is expressed through dance and music. Theyre dance and music are full of fiery spirit, spontaneousness and humour without the inhibitions and rigid classical structure that characterizes Hindu music and arts. Dalit songs celebrates life but laments their life conditions, while frankly exposing the realities of life, in a style full of humour and sensual zest, by using bare(a) instruments and vocals. In modern times, Dalit poetry and writing by social and political activists have taken centre-stage amo ngst the educated activist community.Despite the harsh treatment that the untouchables are receiving, there have been certain attempts to help them. The riddance of untouchability became one of the main planks of the platform of all social reform faecess of India. Reform movements and humanitarian acts such as those started by Buddha, Ramanuja, Ramanand, Chaitanya, Kabir, Nanak, Tukaram and others were established but they hardly had any effect on the peoples treatment on the untouchables. The Hindu state also enacted laws to punish those who rebelled against their intolerable conditions. The social oppression of the untouchables had religious sanctions.The British listed the poorest (principally Dalit) subcastes in 1935, creating minute lists of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The 1948 Indian constitution, thanks to its architect Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, reinforced this classification, for a system of affirmative action called reservation. The concept was that these measures w ould help the poorest to escape poverty and oppression.Reservation is an attempt by the Indian national government to redress past discrimination. The constitution reserves 22.5% of national government jobs, state legislature seats, seats in the lower house of the national parliament and higher education places for members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Unfortunately, this policy has not been implemented in full. Less than half the national government quota had been filled in total in 1998 and less than 15% of reserved public sector jobs. An unspoken policy discriminates in favor of upper castes, particularly Brahmins. Dalit representation in university teaching posts is less than 1%.New economic forces, education and patriot movements had different impacts on the treatment of the people on untouchables. Because of new economic forces, railways and buses were introduced, thus, bringing touchables and untouchables together. Modern industries established in India recruited their labor supply and labor market from both touchables and untouchables, who further worked at the machines in physical proximity to one another. The workers also fought together during labor strikes. Because of education, whether liberal or technical, their economic conditions somewhat meliorate and different sections following different occupations began to merge, on class basis, with groups of other castes following similar occupations. The new bonds were base not on caste but on common occupation and class. This very slowly began to turn the mass of the untouchables into groups such as factory workers, teachers, clerks, merchants, mechanics, or manufacturers. New economic bonds between the touchables and untouchables following the same economic activity started weakening the prejudice of untouchability. Finally, nationalist movements also contributed to the benefits received by the untouchables. For example, the Swaraj struggle demanded the elected alliance of all castes and communities in India whose vital interests lay in the political independence of the country. The nationalist movement contributed towards the dissolution of old distinctions. The social reformers were moved by humanitarian and national considerations when they crusaded against purely social evils.The Untouchables is a topic that touches on many sensitive issues relevant to every society not only to the Indian society. One prevalent issue that the Untouchables have driven out is that of being an outcast. peradventure many of us, if not all, can relate to the feeling of being unable to belong and just longing to fit in. Perhaps in high school, we tried out many roles and sought the group we most felt at home in. For the Dalits, life is high school taken to the worse extremes. From birth, they are ostracized. They are placed outside of society and seen as less than human. They are given roles that they must play, and follow a certain set of rules for the rest of their lives, or su ffer the consequences. In our society, to be treated as an outcast in this appearance is simply unimaginable. It would seem as though one would go through life apart from society apart from people. It would be as though one isnt a person at all that one would be less than a person less than even an animal.This sense of inequality was seen many times over history, in many different societies, and many are still relevant in todays society. Divisions were brought about by differences in gender, creed, and race, to name a few. Wars have been waged rallies have been set into motion and lives have been lost, with regard to all these issues. With all that has happened in our worlds history, Indias society learned nothing to deter from inequalities occupations. The Dalits are maltreated and discriminated against. The ill-treatment for Dalit women are even harder hit. Their people experience the never-ending cycle of poverty.The caste system was built and based on the idea that each caste o r jat has a special role to play in the society but shouldnt an individual have the right to choose what role he/she will play in the society? Is the caste system the best way to achieve an organized and effective society? It is understandable that breaking away from the caste system would be difficult or something very hard to get used to. India has lived through all these years with the mentality that all men are unequal and there will always be untouchables or Dalits. It has become a part of their lives and is embedded in them.There is very little pressure for change, especially within India it is said that the majority has an interest in perpetuating caste discrimination. Protests by Dalits themselves are rare for many Dalits, day-to-day survival may be a higher priority. To quote Human Rights Watch The solution lies in concerted international attention to helper national governments in this important and long overdue work.If you take a look at our society, even without the cas te system, you will see that this never-ending cycle of poverty is also a major problem in the Philippines, and one question still stands, that is, How can one break free from poverty? penury is a problem, because those experiencing it, the poor, are marginalized. They can barely afford or sometimes cannot afford basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. Yes, in India, as well as the Philippines, there have been programs, laws to aid and support these people. However, it is in the implementation of these laws that fail to solve the problem.For most Western people, the single action that has the best chance of do a difference would be to raise awareness of the problem, repeatedly bringing it to the attention of individuals, politicians, media, diplomats and above all the Indian government. The lack of will to change and unity among people (in India, as well as the Philippines) is one important problem in breaking away from poverty and making a change. Therefore, the ca ste system or these political divisions continue to live in the minds of many, leaving millions of untouchables or Dalits trapped in a world of oppression and poverty.Change is something much called for in the Indian society, in our society, and in many others around our world today. We can study the oppressive Dalit cases time and time again. We can feel disgusted, depressed, and down practice about them, and we can wonder, can their lives ever change? It isnt enough to read and wonder, in order for change, action is a must. In retrospect, there isnt much radical action one can take for the Dalits when still in second year college in the Philippines. However, we believe there is much we can do in the future, for our society, as well as others. In the words of Mahatma Ghandi, be the change you want to see in the world.