India's Caste System – A Socially Useful Fallacy

The caste system of India, rooted in the Hindu concept of Varna, divides society into four main groups: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Sudra (Sagar, 1975: 38). Once born, the caste system dictates many facets of an individual’s life from occupation to diet. For instance, Brahmins, the elites, are traditionally priests, Kshatriyas are warriors, Vaishyas are farmers and merchants, and Sudras are laborers. Beneath all of these groups and completely excluded from the distinction of ‘caste’ are the Dalits. Dalits are considered defiled and thereby 'untouchable' because their work traditionally involved hunting or disposing of animal carcasses and the disposing of human waste: the lowliest functions of society. As they are considered defiled and lowly, traditionally untouchables were excluded from religious sites, public places, and education: even contact with an Untouchable's shadow was deemed tarnishing.

India’s constitution bans discrimination based upon caste, yet discrimination continues. Antidiscrimination laws against untouchables are hard to enforce since much of the discrimination is an act of omission rather than commission (Rothermund, 2008: 170). For instance, it is much easier to identify discrimination when it means forcefully keeping Dalits from a public good. However, discrimination that entails avoiding Dalits or excluding them from events is much harder to restrict. While the government has instigated several affirmative action programs to benefit the Dalits, too often these good intentions are futile because an official of an upper caste, who oversees the program, purposefully hinders its implementation (Rothermund, 2008: 171).

The inequality of the caste system, especially toward the Dalits, begs the question of why it has persisted. Under Varna, as outlined in Hindu religious texts, castes existed but individuals were not confined to a particular caste for their entire life. While the system still upheld a high degree of inequality, with good Karma an individual could rise from a Sudra to a Kshatriya or a Dalit to a Vaishya, etc. However, when the British ruled India they used this system of Varna to conduct censuses and to establish social order (Sagar, 1975: 69). Because of this system of rule, caste – as the Bristish called it – became a fixed definition of an individual’s worth.

This misconception of Varna - the caste system - has endured because it is socially useful. The caste system delegates the uncomely jobs, poor dietary options, and deplorable living situations to a select group of society. Furthermore it assigns a social stigma to the Dalits: that they are defiled by birth with only the hope of a future reincarnated state that will be more favorable to them. Since Dalits are conditioned to believe that their state will improve in a future life if they conform to the inequality encroached upon them, they provide a work force for India which only requires the basest of benefits and pay. Furthermore, the religious and permanent nature of the caste system places no obligation upon those of higher castes to assist these designated poor and inferior members of society. In short, the caste system allows these people to be viewed as disposable.

So while the Indian government has laws and even policy in place to prevent caste-based discrimination, the truth is that the concept of the ‘Untouchability’ is incredibly useful for the short-term building of the nation’s economy. However, as India’s economy grows and the divide between the wealthy and the incredibly poor becomes widened, India is continually placing herself at a greater risk of social uprising and disaster while her antidiscrimination policy remains virtually unseen in reality.

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Bibligraphy:

Rothermund, Dietmar (2008). India: The Rise of an Asian Giant. London: Yale University Press.

Sagar, Sunder Lal (1975). Hindu Culture and Caste System in India. Dehli: Saraswati Printing Press.

Religion-Based Inequality in India

More Hindus reside in India than in any other nation of the world. Similarly, India is also home to the third largest Muslim population in the world. Yet, demographically, 80.5% of Indians are Hindu while only 13.4% of the population is Muslim. Christianity is next on the list, composing 2.2% of the country’s population, followed by other religions which, combined, account for the remaining 3.9% of Indians.

In January, 1950, the Constitution of the Republic of India was ratified. The constitution acknowledges these demographics and India’s past of religious-centered violence with distinct descriptions of the republic’s features, such as: “secular” and promises of “Equality of status and of opportunity” (Nussbaum, 2007: 122) . However, this provision of equality within a secular society has become rather symbolic due to the provision for personal law and the quota system.

The fact that India’s Constitution provides for every religion to practice its own personal law, which includes property and family law, seems to undermine the government’s secular intent (Nussbaum, 2007: 141). With each religious population legally exercising its own practice of law in these areas, the Republic of India essentially commits itself to the enforcement of these religious standards. Also, with a separate legal code, religious populations are formally distinct and judicially unequal. Additionally, once born into a particular religion, it is nearly impossible to separate one’s self from it because religion entails both a spiritual and legal identity. While it is possible for religious parents to claim a secular identity for their child, since property law is included within the provision of religious personal law, the child will suffer disinheritance from any familial property.

To battle the country’s high rates of economic inequality, India has instigated a system of affirmative action. However, while this system of affirmative action claims to provide job assistance for Dalits (or Untouchables) and women, the quotas created by this policy distinctly omit Muslims and Christians (Nussbaum, 2007: 137). Demographically, the Islamic and Christian sectors of society fall below the poverty line and suffer high rates of unemployment. By excluding them in this affirmative action policy, the government is structurally denying these two subgroups equal opportunity of employment.

So while India espouses the ideals of a secular and liberal democracy, institutionally it discriminates against its religious minorities. A reflection of this is seen in incidents of religious violence. A relatively recent example of religious violence is the Gujarat Genocide in 2002. In the state of Gujarat, India, a massacre broke out in response to a fire, allegedly started by Muslims, which killed fifty-eight people. While nearly all these victims were Hindu, there is no evidence of foul play on the part of Muslim extremists. Despite the lack of evidence, over the course of the next few weeks two thousand Muslims were brutally massacred. Surprisingly, the local authorities were ordered to do nothing in response (Nussbaum, 2007: 2). At this time, the government was under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which espouses Hindu nationalism. In response to the genocide, many of India’s high-ranking government official actually rationalized the atrocities. In fact, the Chief Minister of the BJP, Narenda Modi, stated that the acts of genocide in Gujara were “natural” and that those living in Gujara have “criminal tendencies" (Nussbaum, 2007: 26). This validation of violence against the innocent within a religious population displays the discontinuity between the ideals within India’s Constitution and reality.

The BJP party lost the 2004 elections and, since then, religious inequality in India has improved. While it may be easy to optimistically associate the country’s rising GDP and global integration with a decrease in disparity along religious lines, the reality is that religious minorities are still endure discrimination and persecution. The 2007 incident in Orissa, India and the attacks on Muslim villages in 2005 are both evidences of the continued state of persecution in India. Even more disconcerting is that, through legal provisions, historic precedent, and Hindu extremist groups, this persecution has a certain amount of structural provision in Indian society. If India is to continue along its path of global success, it must address its institutional framework that permits religious inequality.

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Bibliography:

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2007). The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.