...CLASS AND CASTE- BACKWARD CLASSES AND DALITS The term Apartheid was coined to define the social and political policy of racial segregation enforced by the whites on the black natives of South Africa. Apartheid of India is ‘Casteism’. So, is India a replica of South African apartheid? Certainly not. The South African natives were segregated on the basis of laws, made by men in authority ,which were later dismantled by human efforts, again by men in authority. But in India, the discriminatory nature of class as well as race is duly recognised by the Constitution but not practised as the men in authority here are not distinct. Hence, the apartheid between Bharat and India is beyond the reach and ambit of human intervention. Class and caste discrimination in India is as old as the Himalayas. The enormity of human degradation, inequality, discrimination and untouchability is beyond comprehension and is enforced by scriptures which are held and hailed as sacred. Violation of scriptural ordinance is blasphemous and therefore unimaginable. It all started with the advent of the Aryans and the writing of the Vedas. The caste system has been there in India since then but it was merely a class system on the basis of division of labour. But it accelerated during the British Raj as they produced the Scheduled Caste List to enforce their ‘ Divide and Rule’. The colonial experience resulted in the obsession of Indians with fair skin colour. But even this inferiority complex fails to provide...
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...Globalization and the Caste System in India Mimi Winters Abstract India has experienced significant economic growth as a direct result of globalization even during the current global economic crisis. Yet many argue that this success does not reach all levels of Indian society. Indeed, some argue that globalization has actually had a negative impact on the lowest members of Indian society, the Dalits. This paper explores both sides of the argument by briefly explaining India’s 3,000-year-old caste system and its influence or lack of influence on the reduction of poverty among the Dalits. Globalization and the Caste System in India India is becoming one of the most significant players in the world economy today. Its rapid economic growth can be contributed to its increasing role in the global community. “Economic liberalization, including industrial deregulation, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and reduced controls on foreign trade and investment, began in the early 1990s and has served to accelerate the country's growth, which has averaged more than 7% per year since 1997” (Central Intelligence Agency, 2012, para. 3). India’s GDP was estimated at $4.463 trillion with a real growth rate of 7.8% and $3,700 per capita in 2011 (2012, para. 14). A majority of this success can be directly contributed to globalization. Although growth is expected to slow due to the global economic crisis, India is still experiencing...
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...Their Indian class set up is historically one of the main specifications in which people of india are socially separated through class, religious beliefs, location, group, sex, and spoken language. Even Though this or other forms of distinction appear in all the human communities, it might be an issue once one or more of these specifications cover one another and turn the only foundation of organized ranking and unequal entree towards valuable sources such as riches, earnings, power and ranking. The Indian class set up is thought of as a sealed setup of social stratification, which means that a individual's social state is required that class these people were born into. There are boundaries at discussion as well as conduct with individuals out of some other social standing. This document is going to be going through the various aspects of the Indian class setup as well as results in India today. The class set up is the group of individuals towards a few hierarchically rated classes named varnas. They're categorized in accordance to career and figure out use of riches, power, and opportunity. Their Brahmans, normally priests as well as students, are in the best. Following tend to be the Kshatriyas, or governmental rulers as well as military. They're accompanied by the Vaishyas, or sellers, as well as the fourth was the Shudras, who are normally employees, peasants, craftsman, as well as servants. At the very bottom part is the regarded as the untouchables. These people complete...
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...During our study to understand the caste and class dynamics between the PGP students at IIM Bangalore, we came across results and insights that potentially led us very different conclusions than what we had initially assumed. Our team floated a survey to gauge the popular reactions of people with respect to some commonly held class and caste notions. The survey, open to all PGP students at IIMB, attracted close to 80 responses. Thereby the sample size is not sufficient enough to project the findings as being generic to the Indian society at large. The survey conducted focussed on 3 main aspects of student identity at an educational institute in India. The fact that it is a part f their identity is proof enough to assume that there are schisms in the Indian society on the lines of class, caste and community. Considering the kind of people that an elite institution like an IIM would attract, the survey results were interestingly different from our presumptions. Before going further I would like to state that we were lucky enough to attract sufficient and proportionate responses spaced out equally across the social background spectrum. Most people who participated in the survey refused that they have had a discriminatory experience of any sort till date. However a majority still stated that discrimination does exist in the basis of various divisive factors. The paradox resolved itself when we dug a little deeper through the caste and class spectrum. The key factor...
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...Making sense and construction of social change through the studies of Sanskritization,Westernization and Dominant caste Pooja Agarwal 1313240 IIPSENG INTRODUCTION There have been various changes in the social structure of India brought about by the British administration, its economic policies, educational system and introduction of modern means of communication had a far reaching effect on Indian society and economy. Though the Indian society which is based on the caste system is often regarded as a “closed society”, there is still a possibility for changes. Within the framework of the caste itself some kind of mobility is observed. Lower castes have often tried to claim higher status by imitating the life-styles of upper-castes like the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, while the upper castes including Brahmins, attempt to orient their life-styles on the model of the Westerners. This trend has become so widespread that today not only the upper class and middle class people are trying to orient their behaviour, attitudes, beliefs and life-styles towards those of developed societies; but also the entire mass of people are involved in this process. Daniel Lerner calls this process ‘modernisation’. It denotes a process of social change whereby “less developed societies acquire the characteristics common to more developed societies”. The study of social change in India has taken different shapes and directions depending on the nature, shape and direction. Sociologists and social anthropologists...
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...Religious Politics in India There are one billion people in India, the second most populous country in the world. This means every sixth person in the world is an Indian. About 450 million Indians live below the poverty line. Suppression of religious minorities and its nuclear blasts have made India visible to the world. One of the messages that India sent to the world was that it needs to be reckoned with. The Hindu nationalist leadership on the whole sent this message. While each country needs dignity before others, many ask why such a poverty-ridden country should invest massive amounts in nuclear devices and why it persecutes a Christian religious minority that has made bold attempts to empower the poor of India. Religious Landscape in India Of the one billion people in India, 85 percent are Hindus, 10 percent Muslims, and 2.5 percent Christians. The rest belong to other religious minorities: Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsees and other groups. Though the decennial census classifies 85 percent as Hindus, there is no positive definition of what Hinduism is. Negatively, whoever does not belong to any of the other religious minorities is taken to be a Hindu. British discourse shaped the terminology used in reference to Hinduism. The British in India began by asking the Indians: "Our religion is called Christianity, what is yours?" It was then decided to call India’s religion Hinduism. The British asked, "We have the Bible as our scripture, what is your scripture?" It was...
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...What is it like to be an untouchable in India (Dalit) and Japan (Burakumin)? To be an untouchable in India or Japan is to be a part of the population that would traditionally be placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. These untouchables are traditionally associated with occupations that are considered impure, such as waste removal and the handling of human or animal carcasses, and therefore cannot interact with other members of their society, for fear of the pollution they would spread. In both India and Japan, there has been action against untouchability, yet there is still widespread discrimination of these people because of cultural ideals, the impure history attached to them and the traditional occupations that they are associated with. While the abolishment of caste discrimination in India in 1950 and the Buraka Liberation League in Japan has improved the lives of many people within these communities, there is still a great level of discrimination against the Indian untouchables, the Dalits, and Japanese untouchable population, the Burakumin. A Dalit is a member of the lowest rank in the Hindu caste system and Indian society. The term, Dalit, translates to “oppressed” or “broken”, signifying that members of the Dalit caste are immediately labelled as inferior to the rest of Indian society. In India today, Dalits make up 16.2% of its population, that number being approximately 166 million, which conveys the large spread of Dalits across the Indian population. The...
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...Canada's Untouchables! Perri Klass is a young doctor who is just out of medical school in the United States. In her story India (2005), she talks about coming face to face with the grim realities of poverty and poor health in the third world; she compares them to her experiences in the first world. Klass implies that the health issues in India do not exist in North America. She states that in her world, where she got her medical training, "all children are supposed to grow up" with only a few exceptions to the rule (p.104). My intent is to confirm that Canada has a similar group of people living in poverty and poor health, and that the problems of India exist in our first world country too. I will do this by identifying the poorest people of each country and show how each group suffers from social and economic exclusion. I will also clarify how the health of each group suffers, and demonstrate how these groups are marginalized. Social exclusion can be defined as, 'the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live' (Thorat, 2007, n.p.). Dalits (formerly known as the 'Untouchables'), of India and most of the Natives (ironically, they are also known as North American Indians) of Canada live under adverse conditions and poverty. In India the Dalits are the poorest of the poor. They have been kept from getting an education and from possessing land. They are left to do the heavy manual...
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...Gary Zhang Mr. Gyenes 10-30-15 Asian and Middle East Early India Tradition and Culture 1a. The disitinguishment between the Indian caste and Greek territorial sovereignty is very clear in William McNeill’s point. Although people have different ways to Greek’s speculative reasoning approach, the main thing is how each civilization views as the supreme leader. At that time a high majority of all population in India was very religious. People always identify someone based on what caste they are in but their occupation or the past achievements. “One would identify oneself based on what caste you were in, and not by your occupation or your past achievements.”( William H. McNeill, Greek and India Civilization, Page 86) It would reflect on yourself to tell someone that you were a Brahman, a member of the highest cast. Greek territorial sovereignty was very different than the India caste system. This territorial sovereignty are happy to allow the government to do a specified piece of land. They believed that the government was the ruler, not those people at the top of the system like India did. This was the difference between the India and Greek territorial sovereignty. 1b. The affects that the caste system had to Indian society,, it was really large. People are associated with was largely dependent on what caste they were in. “A modern caste is a group of persons who will eat with one another and intermarry, while excluding others from these two intimacies...
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...In ancient India, a social system was developed in order to divide people into a pattern of different classes. The system is called varn.a, or "color," where there are five different social levels. In English, this is known as a caste system. Within each level, there are sub castes that their people refer to as jâtis. These are subdivisions that make up the birth, life, or rank of people. Originating from Hinduism, this system has taken over the society of India. A person born into a class can never change or mix with other classes. People live, eat, and work with the other members of their group. The caste has been illegal in India for over 50 years, but still today continues to shape people’s lives. The different social levels are Brahmin, Kshatiya, Vaishya, Shudram and Harijans. The Brahmin is the class at the top of the system. They consisted of mainly priests, teachers, and judges. Peace, self harmony, righteousness, vision, wisdom, and faith are some of the characteristics of these people. They were the highest and the most important of all of the levels. The Kshatriyas were the people next after the Brahmins. They were the warriors of India. These people were said to have a heroic mind, inner fire, and courage. The Vaishya were mostly the merchants, but they also consisted of people involved in trade and agriculture. Everybody that did not fall under these categories was a separate class which, to most people, was separated from the system. People who...
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...Business and religion Business and Religion, just by looking at these two words, it looks like they are just completely different words and nothing is related to each other. But that is wrong. Business and Religion, these two are deeply related and difference in religion can influence the way of operating business and also the way of communication. Religion is one of the important key factors that we all need to know when we try to step into global business and dealing with people from other country or the other culture. There are countless religions around the globe but there are eleven major religions around the world. Those are Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism, Jainism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. 2.1 billion people around the world believe in Christianity, which ranked most number of adherents and Islam is the 2nd most and has 1.5 billion adherents. In some country, religion and the way of people living, including business and communication are tightly related. And most of the countries have the major religion, which most population believes. In this research, you will see example of 4 countries and their religion and showing how their religion is influencing their way of people living and the way of business and communication. First example is United States of America and Christianity. 224,457,000 people are the adherent of Christianity in USA. This is about 85% of USA’s population. There are cases that often company incorporates...
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...originally written by the author named Ananthamurty in 1965. It was then translated into English by a world known poet named A.K.Ramanujan in 1976. It is a novel based on a true society that lives in the north of India called Brahmins. Brahmins are part of the Hindu religion predominately living in the hills of India. This story tells a tail about the spiritual leader of the agrahara having to decide the rites of a fellow villager. Women play a huge role in this book but that is not customary in reality. Hinduism make up about 82% of the India population which is about 800 million people. It is one of the oldest religions in the world and the authors of the sacred text is still unknown. They follow the words of followers that have filtered the texts down the past 4000 years. One of the most famous followers of modern times would be Mahatma Gandhi. There is a documentary that has been written about Gandhi that is highly criticized by some in India saying that he was not as great of a man that most people make him out to be. One of the caste that is an area of study for this book is about the Brahmin caste. The best way to describe the caste system is that it is very much like the class system here in the United States. The Brahmins are the high class caste in India. In the Hinduism, there are different stages that need to be addressed in life. The first stage would be to become a student, the next stage is to start a family with a wife and children and then once your life’s...
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...Tradition And Modernity In the instinctive mode of western scholars, I had once thought of Tradition and Modernity as individual chapters, each of them thinking about its topic as an entity to be understood in its respective essence and unity. But I have come to understand in perhaps an equally perennial move by western students of Indian culture that these two terms do not in themselves exist. But they do function, dialogically. They work in relation with each other. Modernity functions as an economic and social tool to achieve some wealth, flexibility, and innovation for individuals and groups; Tradition functions, partly and at times largely, as a mythological state which produces the sensation of larger connectedness and stability in the face of shockingly massive social change over the last half-century. One might also say that Modernity is an economic force with social, cultural, and political correlatives; Tradition is a cultural force with social, economic, and political correlatives. Satisfyingly asymmetrical in their relation, they require us, in talking of one, to talk also of the other, just as they induce us to move as nimbly as possible between theoretical abstraction and experiential reality. But their separation is itself part of the mythological drama in current Indian thought, just as their mutual implication is the import of the same ironic smile that brings to an effective close any conversation one hears here about them. And so we take them in turn only...
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...THE 21ST CENTURY? DALITS OF INDIA 9 What is the caste system? Historically the caste system has formed the social and economic framework for the life of the people in India. In its essential form, caste as the system of social and economic governance is based on principles and customary rules that: < Involve the division of people into social groups (castes) where assignments of rights are determined by birth, are fixed and hereditary. < The assignment of basic rights among various castes is unequal and hierarchical, with those at the top enjoying most rights coupled with least duties and those at the bottom performing most duties coupled with no rights. < The system is maintained through the rigid enforcement of social ostracism (a system of social and economic penalties) in case of any deviations. Thus the doctrine of inequality is the core and heart of the caste system. Supported by philosophical elements, it constructs the moral, social and legal foundations of Hindu society. What is caste-based discrimination? The UN defines this kind of problem as ‘discrimination on the basis of work and descent’. It is an ancient form of oppressive, hierarchical social organisation that ordered people according to their family of birth. It has remained in place despite its legal abolition because of its religious sanction, the social and economic persecution of those who broke caste ‘rules’ defining the work done and the segregation between castes. The Brahminical system stated...
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...Presidency university ,Kolkata Political sociology paper, TAUGHT BY Y.S.SIR Changing dynamics of Caste In Indian Politics The word ‘CASTE’ is derived from Spanish word ‘CASTA’ which means , ‘breed or lineage or race’. It was first applied by the Portugues to the particular Indian Institutions known by the name of ‘Jati’. CASTE is a ‘state of mind’, ( Ambedkar, 1936 : 33) In 1955, M N Srinivas presented a paper, ‘Castes: Can They Exist in the India of Tomorrow?’, at a national seminar on “Casteism and Removal of Untouchabilty” in Delhi, attended, among others, by such distinguished persons as S. Radhakrishnan, Jagjivan Ram, Govind Ballabh Pant V .Rao, Kaka Kalelkar and Irawati Karve. The paper was published in the seminar report as well as in the Economic weeky , under the title, ‘An Obituary on Caste as a System’. Srinivas expanded this title into a sentence, “While caste as a system is dead, individual castes are flourishing” (Srinivas ,1962 : 51) M.N.Srinivas defines ‘caste’ as a hereditary usually localised group, having a traditional association with an occupational group and a particular position in the local hierarchy. (ibid : 52) Colonial Understanding Of Caste The Colonial rulers understood caste as a feature of Hindu Religion. It is through the Colonial census that ethnographic details and theories of caste evolved. According to this understanding , Caste derives it’s legitimacy from the ‘ four-fold verna hierarchy’ found in Manusmriti. (Jones,1796:103) ...
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