Varnasrama Dharma

[Guest guest]

Dear Members of the Mailing Group:

 

In continuation of the discussion (not polemics) on Caste etc., I

would like to throw out some random thoughts. The idea being not to

state canonical principles but merely continue the evolutionary

process.

 

My personal idea of caste - the way it is now in India is as follows;

 

Caste: A group of people tied together by social, cultural and

religious ideas similar primarily among themselves and with their OWN

appreciation of their relative social position. No one caste is

higher than others (as stated by a consensus cutting across many

caste groups and believed primarily by the group in question) and all

are different from others.

 

I recently met a gentleman on my travels who informed me that he was

a Saiva Vellala. He was a strict vegetarian (no eggs) and worried

that his father would get furious to find out that he had eaten eggs

for a short while. As his family had houses to rent in Madras, their

rule of thumb was - only to saiva vellalas or perhaps to brahmins as

they could ALSO keep up with the vegetarian cooking requirement. In

fact, brahmins came No.2 in their mindset. This is an example and by

no means the only one where I have met groups that consider

themselves to be superior with little in common with the commonly

held caste system hierarchy.

 

One would expect (given the supposed hierarchy of the caste system)

that in intercaste marriages, the lower group may not feel as

antagonistic towards the higher group in the marriage (i mean the

families) as the higher group would towards the lower group (dilution

of standards etc.). However, these days, the primary boycotts seem

to cut across the higher/lower group distinctions. It is "why did

you mess up OUR group" that comes across most strongly.

 

Even in the so called highest caste, I have seen many many examples

which confound the simply held views on caste. I have seen Kashmiri

brahmins proclaim their purity and superiority. However, my

grandparents would consider them to be quite low in the overall totem

pole due to their nonvegetarian habits. Then of course there is that

great south indian divide - tenkalai, vadakalai, mandyam, hebbar,

madras etc. that occurs in iyengars alone, let alone the vadama,

vathima, brihatcharanam groupings in iyers.

 

Coming to the so called "casteless" societies like the UK and the US,

I have seen caste proclaimed a lot stronger than I have seen in

India. For example, the caste system here is a set of several

groupings. An easy one is economic. For example, do you expect that

the wealthy new england families would like it if their children

married into middle class families ? No Way. How about between

Whites and Hispanics and Blacks etc. ? And of course in Good Ole

England, you have the royals, the uppah class, the lower class that

speak cockney etc. Intermarriage among these is more common (it is a

matter of percentages) but subject to the same societal frowns that

intercaste marriages are subject to in india (although that is now

changing).

 

The difference between the caste system here and the one in india is

simply that one is allowed to climb up the economic caste ladder (of

course the ones based on birth, family etc. are closed just like the

system in india). So, stability for society seems to come from

groupings - what man rebels against is an arbitrary fixed path set at

birth without regards to the potentials lying unlocked in that child.

 

Mukund Srinivasan