THE FUTURE OF CASTE AND POSSIBLE REMEDIES
If my argumentation in Part Four is in any way valid, this means that the caste system as a concept will take decades or more before it can be expunged from the Indian Constitution and from Hindu life and politics. Too many Hindus in India and in the diaspora have developed deep vested interests in keeping the caste system alive.
However, there are remedies that may be available to those who wish to make changes, so that those who are Hindus, as well as Muslims and Christians (who also are cursed by the caste system in India) may no longer be criticized and “cancelled” by “Outsiders” regarding the caste system. (By “Outsiders’, we mean those who, in other words, are Westerners, Hinduphobic academics and intellectuals, and other critics of Hindu civilization from outside the Hindu community.)
These remedies are as follows.
A. Education regarding the colonial roots of the caste system.
B. Recovering the Vedic roots of varna
C. Recovering the positive dimensions of jati
D. The recentness of the terms “Caste” and “Hinduism”
E. The modern passage of time
REMEDY #1 – EDUCATION REGARDING THE COLONIAL ROOTS OF CASTE
The first remedy is to educate both academics and the general public regarding the true origins of the caste system. The caste system was imposed from above by the British, who borrowed it from Portuguese and Spanish colonizers of the Americas and adapted it to the Indian subcontinent. Courses like HSF-4000 need to be taught, and scholarly books written, that lay out how the British co-opted the jati system and superimposed the British-devised caste system of rigid immobility and hierarchical disdain upon the much more mobile and thriving jati system of 18th Century Hindu society.
Let the Hinduphobic British and American academic intelligentsia be re-educated so that their ire and disdain is directed at the British inventors of caste rather than the Hindu victims of British mercantile oppression.
REMEDY #2 – RECOVERING THE VEDIC ROOTS OF VARNA
The second remedy is also an educational one. Both the academic world and the general public must be educated as to the original meaning of varna in pre-British and pre-Islamic times.
Varna had nothing to do with caste. Varna did not mean the rigid categorical imposition of a brahmin class, a warrior class, a mercantile and agricultural class, and a laboring class upon Hindu society. This is a distorted misinterpretation of varna, tied to the myth of the Aryan Invasion of India.
Instead, courses must be taught, and books written that show that varna was a brilliant insight into the general organization of every society, whether primitive or modern.
Every society needs a just and wise governing body as well as a warrior class for defense and a policing and justice system that ensures justice and mercy for the people. This is the warrior varna.
Secondly, every society needs its brahmins, its mandarins, its scholars and knowledge keepers, who can help educate and wisely counsel the general population, so that they may find happiness and prosperity in an enriched and intellectually satisfying life.
Thirdly, society would disintegrate and die without a prospering economy. This means both merchants and farmers, shop owners and blacksmiths, or their modern equivalents.
Fourthly, every society needs its “real workers”, the laborers, the clerks and shopgirls, the factory workers, the artisans and craftsmen, to produce the goods and services. These are the four varnas, and are assigned by genetic make-up and ability and temperament, and not by birth or lineage or by parentage. Varna is as far from the rigid and imprisoning caste system as the British are from India today.
REMEDY #3 – RECOVERING THE POSITIVE ROOTS OF JATI
In Part Two, we covered the sociological roots of jati. Here, we simply wish to expand on what was said there, stressing the fact that jati has a positive dimension in that jati is a cooperative means of benefiting its members and those of other jatis through mutual cooperation and mutual respect for each other’s customs and traditions. One remedy, therefore, is to disentangle the superimposition of the caste system over the jati system by working toward a cooperative and respecting model of cooperation among jatis and the lowering of suspicion and disdain between jatis.
REMEDY #4 – RECENTNESS OF THE TERMS CASTE AND HINDUISM
Many will be surprised to learn that both the term “Caste” and the term “Hinduism” are of recent vintage. Before the British took possession of the Indian subcontinent, neither term existed as common currency within India. Both “Caste” and “Hinduism” are recent inventions.
According to Wikipedia, the word “caste” has its origins in Latin (castus), which means chaste or pure. Caste made its way into the Indian lexicon with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1700s.
And according to Wikipedia, the use of the English term “Hinduism” to describe a collection of practices and beliefs is a fairly recent construction. The term Hinduism was first used by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1816–17. Therefore, to criticize the Hindus for the caste system becomes totally moot when one realizes that the question wasn’t even possible before the modern age.
REMEDY #5 – THE MODERN PASSAGE OF TIME
In the end, the long-lasting remedy for the Caste system and its ultimate disappearance is the passage of time in the modern age. In a few more decades, when India has risen to become the most prosperous country on the planet, caste will be seen as antiquated and irrelevant.
We see evidence of this everywhere.
For example, I read a study by a team of anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnologists, which published some very interesting and revealing results in this respect. Back in the 1960s or so, a village in Latin America was studied at length, and it was found that the most important value was communal harmony and conformity. The greatest good was peace and tranquility and the economic good of the whole community. Individual ambition and greed were reigned in by communal customs and norms.
Many decades passed, and a new team returned to the village, and what they found was startling. What they found was that the emphasis had totally shifted from communal identity and harmony toward individual satisfaction and achievement, including the accumulation of wealth and possessions. It was no longer “united, we stand, divided we fall” (as Benjamin Franklin was quipped). Now, it was “every man for himself”.
If we look at a second example in China today. In previous generations, young people always took care of the old. Now, in the 2020s, it is becoming more and more difficult to find children who are willing to make the sacrifice to take care of their aging parents. Why is this relevant to the questions of caste? It is because the caste system is very much tied to kinship and communal identity. What we have learned from the passage of time in almost every modern society that attains a high level of prosperity is this: the number of children born falls below replacement level, and individuals begin to value individual happiness and nuclear family cohesion over the “old values” of clan, extended family ties, and kinship relations.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste#Etymology
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism#Etymology
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raja_Ram_Mohan_Roy
Therefore, we can predict with a high level of confidence that as India, or Bharat, becomes the nation with the highest populace, and as India rises to the most prosperous nation in the world by the second half of this century, due to its demographics, number of young people and the high birth rate, the old cultural values and adherence to caste will slowly melt away, replaced by the odious Western values of self-centered individualism and nuclear family loyalty alone.Similar changes are taking place in my native Philippines and in Nigeria, for the same reasons.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
To summarize. The criticism directed at the Hindus due to the caste system has been shown to be misdirected. It is the Portuguese with their “casta” system, and the British with their diabolical caste system superimposed over the Hindu jati system, which is the root cause of the still existent caste system of India. It is the British who should bear the brunt of all this misdirected criticism.
Indeed, the very terms “Caste” and “Hinduism” never existed in India or in Britain until the 1700s and 1800s. Caste was unknown in its modern form as rigid immobility and oppression.
The remedy for caste lies in education, education, education. Academia and the general public must be re-educated into the causes of the caste system as being firmly rooted in British mercantilism, British greed, and British malevolence.
In addition, the original meaning of varna and jati must be recovered and shown to have glorious roots in the Vedic wisdom traditions of old, rooted in ancient Bharat and the wisdom of the Rishis of old.
Varna is not caste. And neither is jati. Jati in its original meaning and incarnation as cooperative and natural alliances of families and kinship groups, which in coordination and cooperation with all other jatis in its neighborhood, ensured both prosperity, peace, and happiness for the entire community of people – this is the original meaning of jati that must be recovered.
Then, with time, and indeed, with the long passage of time over the next few decades, we may hope that the curse of the caste system as embodied in the Constitution of India will itself pass away, and the new and revived India and Bharat, rooted in the old and wise traditions of the Vedas and the Rishis, will prosper even higher and better than we can even imagine.
