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The Indian CaSte System ---- Background
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To: editor@rbhatnagar.ececs.uc.edu
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Subject: The Indian CaSte System ---- Background
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From: Srikanta N Mookerjee <snmst1+@pitt.edu>
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Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 17:33:05 -0400 (EDT)
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T H E I N D I A N C A S T E S Y S T E M
Part 1
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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
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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.
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