Caste System in India

Caste system is not unique to India! It has been practiced by civilizations around the world. It's just that Indian civilization has been around for so long. Hence, the system had more time to become established, institutionalized, percolated into family and social life.

Identifying and differentiating other groups by various factors like economy, education, cultural and religious practices, as well as birth seems to be a way for humans to establish their own identity as well as dominance.

Caste can be used or abused:

Uses: For self identification, for building supportive communities, for preserving tradition and similar positive things. This is good and even necessary.

Abuses: For establishing one group's dominance, suppressing other groups, highlighting the differences and provoking fights, tearing apart society and country, suppressing individual ambitions, suppressing individual relationships, breaking love and marriages. These are obviously very bad things.

The role of caste for the purposes identified in "Uses" section above is becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern times. Supportive communities are built in other ways. Identities are formed in other ways. Tradition... I will come back to this later. The fact is that, we don't need caste for these purposes in today's world.

Unfortunately, the purposes described in "Abuses" section above have gained prominence over the recent centuries and decades in India, with active provocation and support from powerful political, intellectual and economical groups/individuals. Other groups not directly involved in the Indian caste system have taken advantage of this system and may be, also unwittingly (or not) caused it to continue. Examples of such groups are the British, the missionaries, the historians with vested interests, etc. The reality is that today, the caste system has become more representative of the abusive purposes than the useful purposes. For that reason, it has to go.

Ironically, the most precious and permanent casualty of the caste system is our culture and tradition, the very culture and tradition which practitioners of caste think they are protecting. In a new world where everyone can and does almost everything regardless of congenital identities and status, caste system cannot be sustained. With modernization, we are fast losing our culture and tradition. People who have been conditioned by centuries and decades of caste-based thinking, are not able to come up with innovative ideas of preserving culture and tradition. Seemingly educated and intelligent people who nevertheless support caste system, instead of coming up with innovative ways of preserving and continuing our culture, want to stay back or go back to the old system with all it's inherent abuses.

Although untouchability, denial of facilities/services for caste-based reasons and similar practices seem to be almost completely absent in much of Inida, other harmful practices like caste-based reservation for academic and job opportunities, and casteist politics are as strong as ever in our society, across the length and breadth of the country. A surprisingly large percentage of people - even urban, young, educated people - are not free of casteist mentality and thinking in certain aspects of life. Meanwhile our culture and tradition is being irredeemably lost. Loss of culture is a huge loss for our country, for our present generation and for countless future generations to come, for our very Dharma!

Some people argue that the caste system helped India flourish and grow for centuries; so, it is not a bad system and we should continue with it. This argument is analogous to the following: We had a machine that used to function very well. Over the years it degenerated and started causing more harm than good. This machine is on the way to being phased out now. That is not good. Let us clean and repair it and bring it back into usage.

The problem with this argument is that the machine has some inherent design flaws which led to its degeneration and harmful effects, in the first place. These inherent design flaws cannot be discarded or repaired away because that is the nature of this machine.

It is better for intelligent people to realize this, hasten the phasing out of the caste system and think up other innovative systems to preserve our culture. The urgent need is to protect, preserve, help the evolution and adaptation of our Dharma!