Cleanliness Requirements of Caste System

Factual Questions
41

Nope; if you’re not a Hindu, you have no caste, and are (to a strictly orthodox person) lower than the lowest caste. There are apocryphal stories about Hindus helping wounded English men and women during the 1857 mutiny and being rejected by their families afterwards. I’m not sure if these stories are true or not, but I would say that I’ve met some really orthodox Hindus in my time (my grandmother was one of them) and they can be very strict about this.

ETA: I think the term you’re looking for is “Kshatriya”.

It depends. For women, definitely no walking about in underwear. Men get away with a lot more, at home. I wouldn’t, but then again that’s a personal thing. Although my family’s very liberal in general terms, nudity at home is a cultural taboo that remains.

ETA: Re: bathroom habits, personally it’s a case of when in Rome, wipe as the Romans do. I do think water is cleaner (at least I feel cleaner) and a good scrubbing with soap and water (twice) is a must. Also, if you don’t scratch with your fingernails, the problem of contamination is much reduced.

42

Hindu caste is Hindu caste. If you don’t have a Hindu caste, you’re casteless.

Nobility is not caste. Not all Indian nobles are Kshatriyas. It’s possible to find nobles of several castes and even noble Muslims. Nobility doesn’t affect your caste status.

And your job is not necessarily the same thing as a caste. Just because you work as a a priest doesn’t mean you have the full status of a Brahmin.

Most Indians work very hard at being “regular” so that they never feel the necessity to use a toilet outside their own homes.

But, yes, the floors in Indian bathrooms are always wet. That’s because the whole room is essentially a shower stall.

Not allowing shoes is not a “Felix Unger” trait. Almost no one allows shoes to be worn in their houses, no matter how liberal.

The strictest Felix Unger types will not let you inside the house if you’re not of the right caste, so you won’t have to worry about what to do if you get inside.

Except for the bathroom/toilet, there is no privacy in an Indian house. Your grandmother, mother-in-law, nephew, or one of several servants (particularly the floor sweeper) can walk in on you at any time of day or night, so nudity, no. Underwear … weeeell … sometimes “the man of the house” can get away with walking around in his bloomers, but not if there is company around. Women have to be fully dressed at all times, even when they’re napping, which usually means about three layers of clothes.

Traditionally, you can’t convert to Hinduism. You are born into a caste; you are born into Hinduism. Even the most liberal, educated, secularized, modernized, Westernized Hindus will look sideways at someone who claims to have “converted” to Hinduism. And even atheists, like me and Anaamika, do not reject the label “Hindu.” When it comes right down to it, Hinduism is about your identity, not your beliefs.

43

So, how do couples living in an Indian household have marital relations?

44

What if you’re left-handed?

If I ever get to travel to India, what should I do? Tie my hand behind my back?

45

My personal favorite is the Embrace Of Sesame With Rice.

46

Well no. It’s not as if people are going to enquire too closely. But should you ever end up in India, don’t greet people or offer them anything (especially money) with your left hand, if you can possibly avoid it.

Um. I’m not quite sure. I’d say the existence of Indians proves that it’s happening somehow, and I would further speculate that it’s not a candles-and-rose-petals affair for most people, but rather quicker and more functional. However, it’s not as if people are going to come barging in at all times of the day and night, as **acsenray **seems to be implying. Agreed, during the day there’s always the possibility that someone might drop in, whether to sweep the floor or to rummage in your drawer for chocolate, but after a certain time at night, you can be quite sure no one is going to gatecrash.

47

Auntbeast, thank you for the kind words. What a nice thing to wake up to Monday morning. :slight_smile:

Marital relations in the house - well, you just do it. After a certain time of the night people don’t bother you, true. But it’s like this. My Uncle in Panipat has a fairly large house by standards, and a yard. Well, when I went there, there was one large room where my aunt and uncle slept. Sort of segregated. Then the three boys all slept in another room, and I slept in the bed with my great-aunt. Doors were closed between these rooms, but the doors are thin and we easily could have walked back and forth. But pretty much everyone goes to bed at the same time, so you were expected, if you got up at night, not to wander into the parents’ bedroom.
Most houses are much more insular than this, but they usually give the “main” couple as much privacy as possible. I have seen mothers & fathers - loving ones - move out of the room so their son and his new bride could have the room, so they could have a little privacy while they are newlywed.
And you definitely don’t do it during the day, as the door is usually unlatched and neighbors can walk in any time!

Nudity/few clothes: Well, I have seen my young male cousins parade around in shorts and an undershirt. This is when they were 17-18. And the man of the house will often walk around in his lunghi (er…a sort of draped apparel meant to cover the lower half of a man) and an undershirt. But then again, I was there, so they might have been being proper. Nudity is right out though. And yes, women sleep in their saris or what-have-you.

Actually one thing that always strikes people is - though I don’t do it anymore, I used to sleep with anklets on, glass bracelets, and whatever clothes I was wearing and wouldn’t break a bracelet.

48

Did you see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Does any of that apply to Hindus in the US and in other non-Indian places? I seem to recall that in the Washington DC area some group was running a sort of Indian Boy Scout group on weekends. Are there Hindu weekend courses for children? Who runs them? What do they teach?

49

heh.

  1. Did you see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Does any of that apply to Hindus in the US and in other non-Indian places?
    Yes, very much. Not that most Indian girls would ever be home until they were 30. Around the mid-20’s we would have been heavily encouraged to get an arranged marriage, and since it’s so common in our culture, why the hell not? It’s better than living alone miserably if you can’t live alone. And it’s considered right and proper to be married.
  2. Are there Hindu weekend courses for children? Who runs them? What do they teach?
    Well, I have attended Hindu camp and many other courses. Hindu camp, to my own surprise, was one of the most fun things I have ever done in my childhood. The local temple ran it, and you had to pay money to get in. Some of the local parents went as chaperones/guardians. We don’t do things like dances or anything like that, but we played a lot of soccer, had some religious training, and stuff like that. Our religious training is generally more fun than the Christian religious training I’ve seen - though in Protestant churches and Episcopelian it’s more relaxed, generally it seems very boring to me. We would have stories, and tales, sometimes around the campfire, sometimes indoors, of the gods. We never had to read straight from the Gita; it’s not considered a kids’ book.
50

Generally, they have to sneak it in, between 1 a.m., when everyone’s gone to bed, and 4:30 a.m., when grandpa gets up to start his yoga practice. Suffice to say, there’s usually little opportunity to get completely naked, and it’s not uncommon for you to have to be careful not to wake the sleeping child a few feet away, sometimes in the same (extra large) bed. My wife has memories of half waking when her parents were at it.

For those very religious people who follow all the strict rules of having sex, it’s even more difficult. You can’t have sex on auspicious days, you can’t have sex on inauspicious days, You can’t have sex within a certain number of days of a woman’s period. There are dozens of such rules and I once saw it calculated that if you follow all the rules, there are only one or two days a year when a married couple is allowed to have sex.

Actually, it can happen. In many households, children are allowed to sleep wherever they want, and often they find it comforting to sleep between a married couple.

Heh. Well, there are left-handers in India. They just stay in the closet. Traditionally, Indian children have left-handedness beaten out of them. Among more educated people these days, you can be left handed, just don’t touch anything (especially something considered sacred or valuable) with your left hand, don’t eat with your left hand, don’t hand things to people with your left hand. Don’t touch people with your left hand (especially elders).

51

I have to admit that this thread has me looking anew at the value of using water ‘down there’ in the washroom. I think I’m going to be using soap and water as much as I can now.

Thanks for a great eye-opening and fighting of ignorance!

52

Yes, newlyweds are often given a little more breathing room. However, as soon as that first child comes, it’s open season.

In most houses, the doors between the “inner” rooms (mostly the bedrooms) and the “outer” rooms are padlocked. However, there are few corridors, and most bedrooms have unlatched doors between them. It’s common for people to have to pass through each other’s rooms to go to the bathroom at night. And it’s common for sleeping arrangement to shift around from day to day as extended family members and guests come and go.

Unmarried individuals, in particular, are not given claim to their “own room” and pretty much find their sleeping places after everyone else is assigned for the night.

If there are a lot of people in the house (for a special event, for example, or visitors) then the bedrooms can be assigned by gender, and married couples are separated. (Anyway, it wouldn’t be nice to be having sex with so many people in the house!)

53

Yup. Well, my mom always used to go to India and insist on her own room and her own bed. :rolleyes: This is not the way they do it there. Sometimes I am more Indian than my own mother, for she would demand that I sleep in the room with her, and I’d be like, no, I want to sleep with my great-aunt, I want to be near the people I never get to see. I don’t want to be all standoffish like YOU! She was very demanding, asking for separate food to be cooked for her sans spices and stuff.

I on the other hand was invited to sleep separately if I wanted - the times I went alone - but I never wanted to. They’re my family! I haven’t seen them in 13 years! I don’t regret a second of closeness, only the distance.

54

(1) What happens in India to folks that lose their right arm or hand in an accident? Well, really either hand, I suppose.

(2) How is/was caste tracked for an individual? Especially before computerized record-keeping? For instance, could someone be born in one city as an untouchable, and then show up in another fairly distant city (preferably somewhere in which your native language is spoken) and assume an identity as a higher caste? Could someone bluff and fake it without getting caught (e.g. all my family was killed in a house fire, the rest of my extended family are far distant and I don’t know them, etc.)?

55

I don’t know. People adjust. Some people might always be grossed out by the guy who has only a left hand. Most people close to him will learn to cope.

And remember, these are mostly cultural conventions, not religious dictums. Hinduism is not a legalistic or dogmatic religion. It’s not like Orthodox Judaism, for example, where you have a set of rules and when there’s a special circumstance you look to Talmudic analysis to come up with a solution.

I think there is some reason to believe that some groups have gone from one place to another and have been able to raise their status, especially if they are wealthy. There are always stories about “Oh, yes, this group here, they claim to be high caste, but they were really low caste from such-and-such place, etc.” But, it’s usually as a group.

An individual would have more trouble doing it, because if you are “without anyone,” you’re looked on with some degree of suspicion.

Brahmins, in particular, have their ways of finding out if you’re really Brahmin. They ask your name, your father’s name, his father’s name, your home village, your jat (caste-endogamous), your gotra (clan-exogamous), your family guru, and several other questions that I, not being a Brahmin, don’t know a lot about.

Oh, and by the way, that “four-colour” caste system that everyone learns in school (Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Sudra) … it doesn’t really exist. Caste is much more complicated than that.

56

I can safely assume that refusal to answer would be taken as a tacit admission that your claimed caste is fraudulent?

But then … it seems like one could make up answers for all of that stuff, and just play it off: “C’mon, guy, you don’t really think you know every Brahmin guru in India!” I mean … India’s a big place. With loads of cultural/linguistic diversity, yes, but still big. Seems like an individual could lose themselves in such a big area if they really wanted to, especially before modern recordkeeping. But then, the suspicion of being “rootless” would be plenty of burden in and of itself, it sounds like. It makes sense that whole groups uprooting themselves and settling elsewhere would be a more successful solution.

Also, the linguistic diversity would be an issue for the lone vagabond attempting to escape their caste. Go a few hundred miles away from where you grew up, and a completely different language is likely to be spoken.

Thanks for the discussion, ascenray and others. This is most fascinating.

57

So are Hindus in the US going to assimilate? Are the Old Ways dying out, or does modern air travel and stuff make it easier to maintain a unique cultural identity.

(In my hometown in the US, we have an extended Indian family who run a small chain of restaurants. Mexican restaurants. America works her magic, I guess.)

58

Refusing to answer questions about your family and background (and your financial circumstances!) in any circumstance is seen as strange and unsocial, even rude.

No, I don’t think you could. You’d have to learn quite a bit of the Vedas, Upanishads, etc., to answer those questions in the first place, the kind of learning that only Brahmin children tend to get. You could try to learn all that stuff (but from whom? which Brahmin is going to teach you?) Maybe these days you could go to the library, or go online, but it would take a certain degree of research. And also, you’d have to be accustomed to the kind of conversation in which such questions are asked. But you couldn’t just “play it off.”

Learning new languages, dialects, varieties, etc., is a skill that most Indians get practice in at a young age. You might have an accent, but it wouldn’t be likely that you’d be unable to communicate.

59

Now HOLD ON, everybody, what about Jains and Sikhs? Are they also subject to all the restrictions we’re reading about here? In particular, regarding nudity, I seem to remember something about “sky-clad Jains”. Are non-Hindu communities in India considered to be living in another universe?

60

To a large extent, Jains and Sikhs (and Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, etc.) are treated as their own caste groups.

But we’ve been talking more about cultural ideas, not religious laws. There will be some differences between groups, but the differences are just as wide, if not more so, among Hindus themselves.

A lot of things are seen on the streets in India, including nudity. There’s “acceptable” in the sense that “things happen on the street” and there’s “acceptable” in the sense that “people in my household/community do it this way.”

Shaivite holy men walk around wearing nothing but ash. But those are people who have cut off all personal relationships and live by begging. You have to choose one or the other.