Caste system

“ 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. ”

“ One should not abandon a natural duty though tainted with evil."
Thus the most stupendous system of social and religious evil that the world has ever known—the Hindu caste system—is here boldly taught and inculcated as the most sacred duty of life. One man is born for pious leadership, another born to fight, another born for menial service; and woe be to any one of them who abandons this so-called "natural [179] duty" and strives for a betterment or a change of life! This is the divinely inculcated system of bondage which has enthralled India for twenty-five centuries. ”

“ The origin of the caste system, formulated by the great legislator Manu, was admirable. He saw clearly that men are distinguished by natural evolution into four great classes: those capable of offering service to society through their bodily labor (Sudras) ; those who serve through mentality, skill, agriculture, trade, commerce, business life in general (Vaisyas) ; those whose talents are administrative, executive, and protective-rulers and warriors (Kshatriyas) ; those of contemplative nature, spiritually inspired and inspiring (Brahmins) . ”

“ 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 ”

“ Just as ceremonialism covers all his personal life, even so caste observance defines for him all his social relations. There is not a tie or an influence which binds man to man that is not, to the Hindu, a part of the great and all-embracing caste system. So all-pervasive [pg 124] is this social tyranny that a man dare not withstand it; yea, more, he has learned to look at it as the prime necessity of his social being and therefore invariably regards it as the highest good. He may indeed believe that, in the abstract, caste is an evil and that it has been a curse to the people of the land. ”

“ It has been often shown that this caste system is most baleful. It narrows the sympathies of the people, keeps them in the same groove, fetters their minds, represses individuality, and is a bar to progress. It would be unfair, however, to say that all its consequences are pernicious. It so far benefits those bound by it that it restrains them from some forms of evil, and secures mutual helpfulness, just as the close trade guilds of our own country did, of which we have happily got rid. ”

“ The origin of caste is a subject of much uncertainty and debate. In ancient Vedic times, caste was unknown. Society, in those days, was more elastic and free, and resembled that of other lands. And yet it showed a tendency toward a mechanical division which later grew into the caste system. It was not until the time of the great lawgiver, Manu, about twenty-five centuries ago, that the system crystallized into laws, and the organization became so compact as to force itself upon all the people and become an integral part of recognized Hindu law. ”

“ In India, as in France before the Revolution, certain established usages are prejudicially affecting the progress of the individual, fettering him in many ways. I refer to caste, the denial of the brotherhood of mankind, the artificial barricading of class from class, the sacrifice of the individual to his class—condemned by native reformers like Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya long before the advent of European ideas. Whatever the origin or original advantages of the caste system, it has long operated to repress individuality. ”

“ Now the Caste System will not allow Hindus to take to occupations where they are wanted if they do not belong to them by heredity. If a Hindu is seen to starve rather than take to new occupations not assigned to his Caste, the reason is to be found in the Caste System. By not permitting readjustment of occupations, caste becomes a direct cause of much of the unemployment we see in the country. As a form of division of labour the Caste system suffers from another serious defect. The division of labour brought about by the Caste System is not a division based on choice. ”

“ A.—The caste system is opposed to the religion of the Vedanta. Caste is a social custom, and all our great preachers have tried to break it down. From Buddhism downwards, every sect has preached against caste, and every time it has only riveted the chains. Caste is simply the outgrowth of the political institutions of India; it is a hereditary trade guild. Trade competition with Europe has broken caste more than any teaching. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is the caste system to remain, and is it going to depend eternally upon the birthright of a man, or is it going to be determined by his qualification? And again in that caste system, is the discrimination of food, its touchableness or untouchableness, dependent upon the purity or the impurity of the man who touches it, to be observed as it is in Bengal, or will it assume a form more strict as it does in Madras? ”

“ The outcaste Mahārs punish a member of their community in the same manner even if somebody should throw a shoe on to the roof of his house, and the Pharasaical absurdities of the caste system surely find their culminating point in this rule. Similarly if a man touches his shoe with his hand and says ‘I have beaten you,’ to a member of any of the lower castes in Seoni, the person so addressed is considered as temporarily out of caste. If he then immediately goes and informs his caste-fellows he is reinstated with a nominal fine of grain worth one or two pice. ”

“ How are you going to compel people to recognize the status due to a man in accordance with his worth, who is occupying a lower status based on his birth? For this you must first break up the caste System, in order to be able to establish the Varna system. ”

“ It will be noticed that taken individually the definitions of three of the writers include too much or too little: none is complete or correct by itself and all have missed the central point in the mechanism of the Caste system. Their mistake lies in trying to define caste as an isolated unit by itself, and not as a group within, and with definite relations to, the system of caste as a whole. ”

“ The members of one caste must be priests only, of another soldiers only, of another scavengers, of another potters, and so on. Now, if it were true that, when dexterities or mental powers generally are specially developed by use, the improvements of faculty resulting from this long practice and use were transmitted in any degree from generation to generation, we should expect the caste system to result, after many generations, in so many distinct breeds of men of highly specialised and perfected powers of the kinds used in the pursuit of each of the caste occupations. ”

“ The vicious caste-system necessarily scheduled immorality in accordance with the caste order, as certain crimes in other countries are estimated according to the race of the sinner rather than according to any abstract standard. In the matter of precept we know no better moral laws than those promulgated by the Brahmans, but they are the laws that every people evolves for itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the Hindu revivalists began their task of reformation, they found the original caste-system shattered by the indiscriminate union of men and women. Society was in a thoroughly disorganised state. The origin of the sub-castes.The children born of couples who came from different castes, were not owned by either of the original castes. The new builders of society classified them, and admitted them into the new order, allotting to each a fixed status in society. This accounts for the origin of so many sub-castes in India. They came into existence by the breaking of marriage rules. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Man is its abject slave—cannot swerve one inch from its dictates; and these reach down to the smallest detail of his life. If the vast majority of the members of a caste were high in their morals and strict in their integrity and pure in their beliefs, the aid to a higher life which this system might render to the individual would, in small part, compensate for its destruction of his manly independence. But caste discipline directs itself to petty forms and observances and to the perpetuation of mean jealousies rather than to the development of character. ”

“ However, notwithstanding this growing prevalence and the marvellous tenacity of caste throughout the land, there are encouraging signs of its decadence. Its grip is certainly relaxing in many ways, and its asperities are softening.
It may not untruthfully be said that the growing multiplicity of castes is one of the sure harbingers of the downfall of the system. For the divisions of caste are already beyond computation. The population is cut up into so many minute sections that the caste edifice overtowers everything else, so that it is in imminent danger of toppling over. ”

“ The wide distribution of the Satem or Iranian group to the south and west of Asia shows that the Nordics in great numbers conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of these countries and imposed on them the Aryan speech. They invented the caste system to maintain the purity of their blood. In fact, the Hindu word "varna" means both color and caste. In spite of all their efforts, however, the conquering invaders died out almost completely in India and Persia—leaving behind them only their language, and, in some cases, their religion. ”

“ Nor, indeed, are the most candid foreign critics convinced that the system is one of unmixed evil. The subjoined moderate and sensible estimate of the effects of caste, upon the character and habits of the people is from the Bishops' letter quoted above. ”

“ Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of castes, the law of heredity has furthermore continued to play a fundamental part. Aptness is inevitably hereditary among the Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son follows the profession of the father. The principle of heredity of the professions being universally admitted, there has resulted the formation of castes as numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India castes are numbered by the thousand. Each new profession has for an immediate consequence the formation of a new caste. ”

“ From a practical point of view, the system of Chaturvarnya raises several difficulties which its protagonists do not seem to have taken into account. The principle underlying caste is fundamentally different from the principle underlying Varna. Not only are they fundamentally different but they are also fundamentally opposed. The former is based on worth . How are you going to compel people who have acquired a higher status based on birth without reference to their worth to vacate that status? ”

“ Caste, again, "upholds immutable distinctions by arbitrary and absurd laws, which are enforced by irresponsible authority, and maintains a standard of right and wrong entirely independent of the essential principles of moral science;" and, in order that everything may be included at one blow, we are finally told, in a note appended to the remarks of the Abbé on the moral and social advantages of caste, that "caste, and its offspring custom, are among the hindrances to all good in India." ”

“ I first propose to handle the law-giver of India. Every country has its lawgiver, who arises as an incarnation (avatar) in times of emergency to set right a sinning humanity and give it the laws of justice and morality. Manu, the law-giver of India, if he did exist, was certainly an audacious person. If the story that he gave the law of caste be credited, then Manu must have been a dare-devil fellow and the humanity that accepted his dispensation must be a humanity quite different from the one we are acquainted with. It is unimaginable that the law of caste was given. ”