Caste (social hierarchy)

“ Thus under the monarchy privilege and inequality pervaded every phase of life, and, as the judiciary must be, more or less, the mouthpiece of society, the judiciary came to be the incarnation of caste. ”

“ Society, even in a comparatively free country, is thus vaguely divided into hereditary strata or sections, from which the majority do not depart.
If the transmission of function from father to son has become established, a caste spirit, a sentiment in favor of such transmission and opposed to the passage from one class into another, may arise and be shared even by the unprivileged classes. The individual then thinks of himself and his family as identified with his caste, and sympathizes with others who have the same feeling. ”

“ Thus it is said with some truth—and this is perhaps the most considerable argument for caste in modern life—that a class having hereditary wealth and position, like the English aristocracy, makes a permanent channel for high traditions of culture and public service, and that it is well to preserve such traditions even at the cost of a somewhat exclusive order to contain and cherish them. ”

“ And out of caste sentiment arise institutions, social, political and economic—like the mediæval system in Europe, much of which still survives—whose tendency is to define and perpetuate hereditary distinctions.
I have, perhaps, said enough to make it clear that an impulse toward caste is found in human nature itself. Whether it spreads through and dominates the system of life, as in India, or remains subordinate, as with us, depends upon the strength or weakness of other impulses which limit its operation. ”

“ Custom and social ideals that raise or depress hope and ambition, affect efficiency. The institution called caste, which fixes the place of the worker and makes it impossible to rise out of the social position in which he is born, and disgraceful to do any work reserved to other castes, is deadening to energy. It exists in some form throughout the world, and where it is not called by that name, the same caste spirit is at work. The European peasants in the Middle Ages lived under the shadow of it. Where slavery exists the master class at times feels its hardships. ”

“ Among the tribes the boy remained under the watchcare of his father as long as the father lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother until married.
Flexible and shifting social classes are indispensable to an evolving civilization, but when class becomes caste, when social levels petrify, the enhancement of social stability is purchased by diminishment of personal initiative. Social caste solves the problem of finding one's place in industry, but it also sharply curtails individual development and virtually prevents social co-operation. ”

“ It is indeed difficult to realize the effect often produced upon a man's conduct and character, when he is removed from the withering effect of the distinction of caste, and raised to an equality of political and social privileges. ”

“ This fixity of classes is known to Europeans as the institution of{v1-269} caste; [153] its origins are still in complete obscurity, but it was certainly well rooted in the Ganges valley before the days of Alexander the Great. It is a complicated horizontal division of the social structure into classes or castes, the members of which may neither eat nor intermarry with persons of a lower caste under penalty of becoming outcasts, and who may also “lose caste” for various ceremonial negligences and defilements. By losing caste a man does not sink to a lower caste; he becomes outcast. ”

“ When those modern writers therefore, who were the declared enemies of all hereditary rank and hereditary rights, spoke with contempt and abhorrence of the Indian constitution of castes, represented it as the peculiar basis of despotism, and even applied the name of caste as a party-word to the social relations of Europe ”

“ Unlikeness in the constituents, a settled system and a low state of communication and enlightenment favor the growth of caste, and vice versa. The first provides natural lines of cleavage and so makes it easier to split into hereditary groups; the second gives inheritance time to consolidate its power, while the third means the absence of those conscious and rational forces which are its chief rivals. ”

“ You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a whole.
The only question that remains to be considered is—How to bring about the reform of the Hindu social order? How to abolish caste? This is a question of supreme importance. There is a view that in the refarm of caste, the first step to take, is to abolish sub-castes. This view is based upon the supposition that there is a greater similarity in manners and status between sub-caste than there is between castes. ”

“ To marry outside one's caste, to eat food cooked by an outcast, to cross the ocean, to delay unduly the marriage of a daughter,—these, and a thousand other delinquencies which may seem absolutely harmless to a Westerner, are not only regarded as social irregularities, but also as sins whose penalties will harass the soul beyond the grave or burning-ground. Herein does caste reveal its uniqueness, and from this does it pass on to the exercise of its extraordinary tyranny over the people. ”

“ That a low state of communication and of enlightenment are favorable to caste, while intelligence—especially political intelligence—and facility of intercourse antagonize it, becomes evident when we consider what, psychologically speaking, caste is. It is an organization of the social mind on a biological principle. That functions should follow the line of descent instead of adjusting themselves to individual capacity and preference, evidently means the subordination of reason to convenience, of freedom to order. ”

“ A caste is formed that assumes this function and that turns the whole acumen of their minds towards preserving, and enlarging such a social structure, seeing that thereby their own power and importance are increased. ”

“ We then took into consideration some facts which seemed to show that families could raise themselves to a higher rank in society by adopting the purer habits of the classes above them; and we also saw that the influence of wealth does, to a very great degree, elevate a man of low caste in the social scale. We next saw reason to suppose that we have hitherto been labouring under very exaggerated notions as to the stringency of caste regulations, and two instances were given to illustrate the way in which caste laws are sometimes set summarily aside. ”

“ It should also be mentioned that caste is not even in the distribution of its dispensations and punishments. A man of wealth and social influence succeeds in staving off many acts of caste displeasure which would fall heavily upon the poor and friendless man. Such a man may, and often [129] does, trample under foot every command of the decalogue, and at the same time defy and violate a good moiety of the injunctions of his caste. And yet, because of his wealth and general importance in caste councils, he stands unimpeached and unrebuked. ”

“ I could not feel the slightest pride in a society that could find no room for those two helpless girls. the stiff, paralysed society which had lost its power of extending itself beyond its rigid limits. I once read somewhere the words of a great author to the effect that in the caste system our society offered to the world a solution of a great social problem that had so far been found insoluble outside our country. ”

“ The system which divides us into innumerable castes claiming to rise by minutely graduated steps from the pariah to the Brahman is a whole tissue of injustice, splitting men equal by nature into divisions high and low, based not on the natural standard of personal qualities but on accidents of birth. The eternal struggle between caste and caste for social superiority has become a constant source of ill-feeling.... ”

“ True caste is a social condition existing by authority and general consent, in which every human being has, by birth, his fixed place in the social organism, and receives exactly the degree of respect or contempt which is accorded to the place independently of his personal efforts or qualities. ”

“ We may answer this question by considering how the social system which has given place to this new kind of social organisation—namely, the caste system—renders progress difficult or impossible.
Where the caste system is highly developed and rigidly maintained, as among the Hindus of India, its conservative unprogressive tendency is obvious enough. Each man is born a member of some one [Pg 289] of many castes, and he can never hope to pass from one caste to another and higher caste. ”

“ At some time in the history of the Hindus, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself. The other classes being subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some into large, others into very minute groups. ”

“ Caste is a symptom of arrested social development; and no community which tolerates it is free from the scourge of civil strife. Class war is the most salient fact in history. Warriors, termed Kshatriyas in Sanskrit, were the earliest caste. ”

“ Education is free to all, and, similarly, in the careers which it opens to the most successful boys there is no account of caste. Thus members of quite low castes obtain a good social position and, as regards them personally, the prejudices and contempt for their caste necessarily fall into abeyance. The process must, probably, in time extend to general social toleration. The educated classes are also coming to regard the restrictions on food and drink, and on eating and drinking with others, as an irksome and unnecessary bar to social intercourse, and are gradually abandoning them. ”

“ When such an intellectual class, which holds the rest of the community in its grip, is opposed to the reform of Caste, the chances of success in a movement for the break-up of the Caste system appear to me very, very remote. ”

“ This judicial opinion was an enunciation of the archaic law of caste as opposed to the modern law of equality, and the cataclysm of the French Revolution hinged upon the incapacity of the French aristocracy to understand that the environment, which had once made caste a necessity, had yielded to another which made caste an impossibility. ”

“ Besides setting the community too much above the individual, the caste system is faulty in presenting to the Indian mind an imperfect idea of the community. The caste is the natural limit to one's interest and consciousness of fellowship, to the exclusion of the larger community. According to Raja Rammohan Roy, writing in 1824, the caste divisions are "as destructive of national union as of social enjoyment." In Modern India, Sir Monier Williams expresses himself similarly. ”

“ The freedom in selection of occupation which now obtains appears to strike at the root of the caste system, because the relative social status and gradation of castes is based on their traditional occupations. When in a large number of the principal castes the majority of the members have abandoned their traditional occupation and taken freely to others, the relative status of castes becomes a fiction, which, though it has hitherto subsisted, cannot apparently be indefinitely maintained. ”

“ In fact, we thought you would give us a lead in the destruction of the evil of caste system, especially when you have studied the subject so thoroughly, and strengthen our hands by bringing about a revolution and making yourself as a nucleus in the gigantic effort, but declaration of the nature made by you when repeated loses its power, and becomes a hackneyed term. ”

“ If the remarks hitherto made are of any value, they undoubtedly tend to prove that all inferior races have a tendency, in the first instance, to adopt the vices rather than the virtues of the more civilized races they may come in contact with. Assuming, then, as I think we have every right to do, that this statement is universally true, it is evident that the social separation maintained by caste has been of incalculable advantage. ”

“ And even as it is a foe to nationality, so is it the mortal enemy of individualism. The caste system is really a glorification of the multitude as against the individual. Individual initiative and assertion, liberty of conscience, the right of man to life and the pursuit of happiness,—all these are foibles of the West which it has been the chief business of caste to crush ”

“ A man and woman detected in a serious social offence descend into the class next below their own, unless they can pay the severe penalties prescribed for it. If either marries or forms a connection with a man or woman of a lower class they descend into that class. Similarly, one who marries a widow goes into the Lohri Seg or lowest class. Other castes have a similar system of divisions. Among the great body of Hindus cases of men living with women of different caste are now very common, and the children of such unions sometimes inherit their father’s property. ”

“ They should admit that this institution has been, and is at the present moment, of value amongst the rural populations, but they should, at the same time, point out that times are changing, and that the peoples of the towns ask for some toleration, not because caste is necessarily a universal evil in itself, but because it is, as far as they are concerned, highly inconvenient. ”