Thanks for the insight. Not so different from Christianity, where most any dogma will be denied by some Christians somewhere.
Back to the caste system, how many Hindus do you think consider it a part of Hinduism? Most, many, some, few, etc? I don’t expect a precise number, just a feel of it.
You’d need a scholar and a statistician. All I can say is “none of the ones I know.”
They were interested in Land Ownership, and in Labor Reform. Although they mostly had no particular interest in native religion, in parts of India, land ownership and labor relations were part and parcel of the caste system – an economic system that defined land ownership and labor relations according to hereditary caste
It is very different that Christianity or any Abrahamic religion in lot of aspects.
For example : The prevalent view on the soul is that it cannot enjoy pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure are properties of life. So heaven or hell after death is meaningless. The soil can’t “enjoy” heaven nor can it “suffer” hell.
It comes with its own logic system independent of the Greek logic system imported into Christianity. “ I am, therefore I think, is a core learning.”
One of the core teachings/advice is to lay emphasis on seeking rather than believing. Having sought though, if someone finds Believing to their liking, then believing is the path for them.
Another article that may be of interest:
How do foreigners fit in? The main reason I ask is because a friend of mine from graduate school married a white guy from somewhere in the Midwest, and she was a Brahmin from New Delhi. I’ve always wondered how that worked in the caste system, and how her kids were going to be perceived.
It really depends on the part of India. Some parts of India are more liberal and advanced than other parts. Kinda like the US where some states are backward and others are more progressive.
Take Kamala Harris for example as an answer to a more liberal part of India. Here mother was from the Brahmin caste and married to a “foreigner”. If you go by media coverage, her Indian side of her family shaped a lot of values in her https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/kamala-harris-india.html
I’m sure it varies a lot, even within the same area. I had an Indian friend in college who married a woman of the wrong caste. (He was a Brahmin, she was some lower caste.) His grandmother was pissed, but his parents were supportive of his choice.
Yes. My daughter’s very good friend is a child of two Brahmins. My family has been Catholic for 300+ years (mostly, that was when there was mass conversions of people in that part of India). But they apparently suspect that I am from some lower caste. The parents don’t have much of an issue associating with me, but they have never eaten or drunk anything in our house, even something as simple as orange juice, unless it is out of a bottle or box. I suspect they are not supposed to use our cutlery or crockery. The fathers parents completely ignored me when they were at a soccer game the girls were playing in. I mean like the Victorian social cut. Looked right away when I said hello and then studiously avoided looking at me for almost two hours. These are all (parents and grandparents) people with PhDs in hard sciences.
Very very awkward for the kids.
I have had many, many Hindu coworkers, collaborators, classmates, teammates etc. Mostly, I had no idea what caste they were, unless they (very occasionally) told me they were Brahmins.
My brother manages a large group (maybe over 200) engineers, who are mostly Indian-American or Indian (here on some kind of work visa). Mostly caste is not an issue, but there will occasionally be someone who will not sit on a chair that someone else has been sitting on. Or want to go into a meeting in one of those tiny phonebooth size rooms. But it is all very subtly done, neither the slighter nor the slighted makes an issue out of it. My brother would never know unless someone else pointed it out. For the most part these are people out of India’s best engineering schools, the IITs. Many of them with advanced degrees from top-tier US schools.
Here is what my alma mater has to say on the issue of caste today.
Why not?
How would you even know that one of the other engineers is from a different caste? Is it based on name, looks, or does everyone just flat out ask what caste everyone is from?
I have no idea.
The article linked by @Elendil_s_Heir says:
80 or so percent of the time people can guess your caste by your family name. Depending on the part of the country, ethnic group, etc., there could be other things. For example,
what your family’s ancestral village is (a village often is people of all the same caste). Or what neighborhood of a city your family is on. In some cities certain castes are segregated by neighborhood
what your paternal gotra is. Gotra is another type of inherited classification. It’s often translated as “clan,” but I’m not sure that’s a great translation. You are supposed to marry inside your caste but outside your gotra.
what your father’s profession is, or your grandfather’s. Most castes are based on professions.
whether your family is vegetarian. In South India, the majority of people are non-vegetarian. But all the South Indian people I know are vegetarian. Why is that? Because all the South Indian people I know, as it turns out, are Brahmins, and South Indian Brahmins are vegetarian. It took me decades to figure this out. But someone who grew up in that part of India would know.
if you are a man, and a Brahmin, you might be wearing the poite, the sacred thread, over one shoulder. Being educated as a Brahmin man and being granted the right to wear the sacred thread is kind of like Catholic confirmation or Jewish bar mitzvah. It’s something that a devout Brahmin family will insist on. So upon meeting you someone might put their arm around your shoulder in what seems to be a friendly gesture but really feeling for the thread. It they might invite you to a pool party expecting to see you with your shirt off.
And of course, people of higher castes—especially Brahmins—tend to be lighter skinned. There are theories why this might be the case, but nothing solid. One being that the people who brought the Indo-European languages to the subcontinent were lighter skinned than the locals and they formed a social elite—like the Normans in Britain and Ireland—but through the caste system maintained a high degree of genetic separation from the rest of society.
All these and a few other things will get you close to figuring out anyone’s caste—if you grew up in that society. Maybe 95-99 percent of the time.
I don’t know. Pride? Keeping women in their place? I have heard countless stories from female relatives regarding how they can’t get certain things done unless a man accompanies them because they’ll just be ignored.
How does a lot of that come up in everyday conversation though? I mean, the US has its own caste system (it really is one if you think about it) based on ethnicity, but it’s pretty starkly obvious- white people at the top, asians, hispanics, and black people in that order.
But in India, it seems a lot murkier. Maybe the differences are more obvious if you’re on the inside, and a lot of surnames are based on historical professions like many Western ones (Weaver, Weber, Bisset, Tejedor, Tessitore, Takacs, etc…) and it’s not obvious to people who don’t speak the local language.
I’m just curious how say… a guy from Kerala and a guy from Punjab sort that kind of thing out once they get to the US and both work at the same place.
I have not read it, but there was a book a couple of years ago that made the same argument; that the U.S. has a caste system.
I read it; it’s awfully compelling and explanatory. I’d say a must-read for Dopers in fact.
, if you are that concerned about caste, then it’s also likely that you are even more concerned about ethnicity. That is, if you are prejudiced on the basis of caste, you’re also likely to be prejudiced on the basis of ethnicity. So being of the wrong ethnicity already makes you unacceptable. It might not be further required to be too inquisitive about your caste.
The people who are most concerned about caste extend to be Brahmins and Brahmins who care will find a way to communicate their status to each other.
The majority of caste problems in the United States are not between a guy from Punjab and a guy from Kerala. It’s usually between two people from the same or close by ethnicities. And it’s almost always among South Indians.