Becoming Hindu

Nick-H

I don't think the problem is so much with the law as with certain people.

Caste, after all, has been against Indian law for a long time. It's a long way from dying out, though. I suppose also that, whilst against one hand of the law, it is supported by another hand with stuff like reservation.

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edwardseco

Well put Nick..

grikoo

I sincerely doubt that it will ever truly die out, and I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing (don't throw rocks at me, you'll hurt only your computer). There are plenty of modernised societies that are still split along class, tribal or race lines. If you're willing to look at the grisly truth of it, most western countries are split along such lines too.

The difference with the caste system is that it represents lines of social functionality. The attribution of class to those lines is secondary. It's hard for westerners to understand this, but while there's not much room for upward mobility, one is BORN with a distinct function in society. Whether one cleans toilets or guards the gate, under the caste system one did not have to struggle to define one's place.

Of course, there ARE class relations to each caste, and this has caused wide spread abuses of the 'lower' castes, but overall I think the underlying idea is not as bad as we westerners are inclined to think. Our tendency to think rampant individualism and anti-social behavior is the 'right' way skews our outlook in my opinion. I'm certainly not saying that caste system is the 'right' way either, just that it has advantages and shouldn't be automatically dismissed as 'bad'.

batistuta

And, your function in that society would be trying to preserve the caste system?

grikoo

No, actually I'm inclined to think that population density in developed countries has reached a point that finding functionality for every individual is absolutely impossible. I don't think any system is going to work now.

This will probably tend to cause greater class, religious, racial, ethnic, national(etc) strife, as people without a feeling of social function (and thus social belonging) tend to compensate by exclusively defining themselves by the above qualities. If one can't be proud of one's function in society, one will find other things, most usually innate qualities, to be proud of. This of course means that others without those traits will be inferior. (wrote a long paper on this phenomena a couple decades ago).

My point is that the caste system served India well for thousands of years, by providing functionality and belonging to the populus, and is likely one of the main reasons India has the only surviving culture from antiquity. But no, I think the system has broken down now and is likely to continue it's course towards simple classism.

I'm not sure, but I think we might be digressing from the point of this thread.....sorry

bokya

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chapter 4 : verse 13

chaaturvarnya maya srusta guna karma vibhagashaha
tasya kartarmapi ma vidhyakartarmavyayam.

the four order of society were created by me according to the 'guna karma' or behaviour/qualities/predisposition in each and apportioning corresponding duties to them

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chapter 18: verse 41

BramhanKshatriyavaishya shudranachya parantap
karmaani pravibhaktaani swabhaavprabhvaigurney

The duties of Bramhan, Kshatriya Viashya and shudra have been allocated according to their 'swabhaav' or behaviour
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chapter 18 verse 43

shouryua tejo dhrutidakshya yuddhey chaapalyayanam
daanmishvarabhavashya kshaatra karma swabhawajam

Exhibition of bravery , fearlessness firmness, cleverness , steadfastness in battle,
charity , are the behavioural signs and also the karma of a kshtariya

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chapter 18 verse 43

krushigaurakshanvanijya vaishyakarma swabhawajam

Agriculture, protection and rearing of cows and honest trade consitute the duties of a vaishya

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chapter 9: verse 32

ma he paartha vyapashritya yepisyupaapayoneya
striyo vaishyastatha shudrostepi yanti para gatim

O Arjun, women , vaishya , shudra and even those who are vile and evil, whoever they may be , if they take refuge in me,they they too attain salvation

the above verses prove the following;

1. caste is not based on birth, its based on the swabhav/ prakriti that is the behaviour and predisposition of a person. if the son of a bramhan is brave ,aggresive then he qualifies to be a kshatriya. if the son of a shudra is highly educated, knowlegable then he is a bramhan and so on.
2. salvation is available not just to bramhan but for anyone who believes in krishna

this is the true meaning of caste in hinduism. the bhagwad geeta is the superior most scripture of hindus.
it overrides any later day corruption that may have seeped in.
the fact is, powerful communities in the past ,to protect their vested interest , converted a caste system based on merits to a caste system based on birth.
the solution to restore the merit and behaviour.predisposition based caste system is to study and spread the knowlegde of bhagwad geeta.

jai hind.

grikoo

Historically speaking, I'm fairly sure the hereditary caste system was well in place long before the gita was written.

What's most likely is that the invading aryan peoples set up the system, placing themselves in the higher castes and the conquered dravidian peoples in the lower castes. Thus it's a race issue at it's core and definitely hereditary in nature.

The gita was written during a period of heightened philosophic thought and the verses you quote likely represent a reaction to the already existing system- an attempt at reforming it.

Philosophically speaking, the gita's system seems much nicer to us all.

But something to think about:

If the caste system had not been hereditary, and trade skills not passed down within a family for generation after generation, do you think the superb artistry and craftmanship that are so typical of old India would have reached the heights they did?

In the US, where we now have absolutely no idea of family traditions, much less that of family business or trade, we build our churches out of corrugated steel! They look like barns (actually they ARE barns). Very nice barns, but barns none the less.

giripriya

For the record, my conversion paper from the Arya Samaj temple here in Queens did not impress the armed guard at Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu(imagine - a guard in camo fatigues with an AK-47 to keep us impure goras out - though the then present Maoist threat may have also had something to do with it). I may be allowed to enter when I return to Nepal in 2 weeks if my FIL(who is on the temple council) pulls some strings - very sad that it has to come to that. My husband and I are a family, he goes to Pashupatinath every day, we should be able to worship as a family. I recall there was another case of a white American woman who converted through Arya Samaj, married an Indian Hindu man and was still barred from entering either Kashi Visvanath or Jagannath Puri temples(I forget which) - both are racially discriminatory.

The only basis that one has to say 'you have to be born Hindu to be Hindu' is because they have never known anyone who has converted to Hinduism - as a previous poster said there is NOTHING in the scriptures and there is no supreme authority who has said this is true. It is all based on 'tradition' which changes in time. A lot of morally unjust practices such as slavery could also be called 'tradition' as well. For centuries the King of Nepal was once considered Vishnu personified, now people throw rocks at his car. It is similar to how some ultra-orthodox Jews say you have to be born Jewish to be Jewish, when in fact in ancient times there was in fact conversion to Judaism, starting with Ruth in the Bible!!! The whole idea that Jewish identity is transmitted from the mother's line comes from Roman law but was retained as 'tradition', just like the idea of Hinduism through birth only.

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A: Dal bhat khanne, maaya garne, sutne!

Nick-H

We can go on at this for ever. Can you imagine, just for instance, any of the RSS leaders reading any of this and saying, "Oh, Right! Good points!".

I believe the technical term is pissing into the wind.

mazha

The RSS actually believes in conversion, they try to re-convert tribals from Christianity. Funnily enough, the RSS also tries to dilute caste barriers, because caste is a problem while trying to unify Hindus into a political force. But then, a Hindu identity without caste is a rather difficult thing to create, so there is a bit of inherent conflict there. It is a bit like those NeoNazis, who want to cleanse Germany of Muslims, but also support Muslims because they fight the Jews! :-)

Wind or no wind, if you gotta do it, you gotta do it! So there!

mazha

If this is true, they would have placed themselves in the Kshatriya caste, and not the Brahmin caste, which has always had a lower power role. Indian literature is full of poor Brahmins going to Kings for help, either money or favours, or valour to fight thugs!

I think the "higher" and "lower" categorisation is a historical one, and a result of the move from manual labour to intellectual labour. Without this heirarchy, caste is just functional organisation that became family tradition, and similar to what existed in Europe. The higher-lower divide is not all that different from programmers looking down on goldsmiths and shopfloor workers and farmers these days.


It is interesting to note here that the artists and craftsmen are not "high" caste. If movement between castes was possible, they would've moved up to produce war games and philosophical treatises and kama sutra, which is the kind of things produced by the high castes. A whole bunch of text, kinda like what the elite in the west produce -- white papers and position papers and reports and stuff. So my conclusion: egalitarianism ultimately leads to just a lot of text and yakking, all of which sort of dissipates in time, while the craftsmanship is what remains and is accessible. So who wins the caste war in the very very end? :-)

bokya

.The biggest dilemma presented about converting to hinduism is ' which caste should i convert to ' .

2.Its not mandatory to convert to any caste. there are casteless hindu communities in india. 8 million lingayats in karnataka and maharashtra do not have a caste. 6 million varkaris of maharashtra do not have a caste.

3.The inherent democracy in hinduism to do your own thing and absence of persecution for 'heresy' means that you can join hinduism and do your own thing.you don't have to do what the mainstream does.

4.The problem is not with caste system , the problem is caste discrimination. no hindu scriptures place bramhans , kshatriyas , vaishyas above shudras. those in position of power ,due to their vested interest in clinging on to power and not wanting to share it with anyone, created the hierarchy.

5.Caste system provided a sense of identity , belonging and source of guaranteed livelihood for people of ancient india.
what is caste after all ? its a indicator of the following:
a. geographical origin of the community
b. profession of the community
c. post or title or status held by the community.

6. so there is nothing wrong in having the above identity. the problem with it is as follows.

a. caste discrimination due to creation of hierarchy
b. lack of ability to move across castes.
c. divisions creating political disunity making the country vulnerable to foreign invasions and interference
d. reluctance to intercaste marriages

7.so if the problems are tackled independantly , its possible to nullify the ill-effects of the caste system.
one does not have to kill the caste system itself.its next to impossible, as even the so-called lower castes
are proud of their caste.

8. Though caste system was discriminatory , it was not predatory. lower castes were free people and not slaves.they were paid for the goods and services they provided to the upper castes.in return priests and
warriors provided them with religios services and protection during wars. so it was a symbiotic system with interdependencies.of course the higher castes had more priviledges.it was definitely not a equality based system.

9. while we had caste system, europe had class ystem. with nobles, clergy and commons. technically it was not any different from caste system. the commons toiled for the nobles and clergy and had less priviledges than the latter. the priviledges of nobles and clergy were hereditory. even today in U.K
they have a system of ' hereditory peers' in house of lords, whereby the son of a MP becomes a MP.
it was very difficult for the commons to move up the value chain unless they did anything exception.
the harrowing of the commons by the christian clergy and priestly class ultimately resulted in creation of protestatntism. the excesses committed by jesuits in americas against natives and in india ( goa )
are well known.

10. islamic societies were even worst. they had a master-slave system, where arabs, turk conquerers were masters and conquered people like iranians iraqis, syrians, africans , afghans, indians were their slaves.slavery is allowed in islam. saudi arabia banned slavery only recently in 1956.
arabs ran a slave trade in africa much bigger than that of western slave trade.
the shia sunni conflcit has its roots in the slave system of ancient islam . the shais are forcefully connverted zorastrians , who despite their conversion were not treated by arabs and thus rebelled against them. what's happening in darfur, where arabs are killing black african muslims is just a continuation of the african slave trade.we are much fortunate that we did not have such a system in india.
caste system is nothing as compared to slavery,the latter is the worst form of human subjugation.

Nick,the indian law is not against caste, its against caste discrimination. this is what supreme court judges recently said when they dismissed a challenge to OBC reservation.

The ignorance that ' one can only be born as a hindu' is unfortunately deep rooted amongs hindus themselves. christians and muslims are only too happy to propagate it.
just imagine how hinduism spread thousand years ago to burma, thailand, indonesia, malasia, cambodia. did any hindu army invade these lands .NO. Hindu kings from Tamilnadu sent missionaries and they converted people of those regions peacefully. so conversion to hinduism was definitely possible in those times.I think with the onset of islamic rule, hinduism retreated into its shell and lost its sea-faringness and outward look as most of its energy was focussed on defending istelf against the islamic aggressor.

Munivar

I don't think Nepalis are acquainted with Arya Samaj enough to accept that certificate. Pashupatinath temple managers are stringent on these things. They took away my leather belt because it was not allowed. I lost the belt but it was a really good temple so I forgave them.

Of the many thousand temples, there are a handful that cause problems...like the Jagannath Puri temple which does not allow the white Hare Krishna types...although it can be argued that the Hare Krishnas have more Bhakthi and do more Sewa than the temple priests.

Same with Guruvayoor. They don't allow the singer Yesudass, because he was born to Christian...although it is his hindu devotional songs that is played in all hindu homes and occasions.

What can one say except that this is India and we are like this onlee...

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Yaadhum Oore Yaavarum Kaelir !!!

Nick-H

In practical day-to-day terms, unless one is going to smash one's head , or take an unwinnable task of social reform, that is about all we can say.

However, in terms of the dreadful attitudes that underlie such actions, I hope that, somehow, every little helps.

When you consider that there is a village in Tamil Nadu where the 'caste' Hindus have walled off the dalits and are alleged to have subsequently electrified the top of the wall (the wall has just been knocked down by the govt, even though it had been there for decades*); that in such villages dalits are not permitted to drink from the same glasses as others in tea shops, and that some youngsters pay for inter-caste marriages with their lives --- the fact that us white-skinned people may be kept out of a temple is a tiny, tiny part of the bad side of India.

But that does not mean it should be forgotten: it is the same attitudes, the same concept of untouchability that lives gives rise to it.




*Latest is that the 'caste' villagers have left the village in protest, are camped nearby, and are refusing to return. Perhaps the village might be a better place without them!

Munivar

Of course. India is not a 'revolutionary' country prone to sweeping changes. Changes happen slow and over time. Hopefully with more economic mobility, newer generations can let go of their social conservatism.

I do believe that a lot has changed within my lifetime though (at least in the circles I grew and up).

The Thevars and other FC castes in the South can be very irritating with their attitudes. They are still in the feudal-agricultural mode. Not many industries and economic mobility there. With only little to go around, people tend to cling on to conservative beliefs more.